"Err nerr, doo ya nerr..?"
Some years ago I had the great pleasure of living in Hull. I say that, of course, with a little satirical inflection. Hull was, quite simply, an experience. Perhaps it's all about self-awareness and the remote location -a deliberate focus on the idea of social solitude and meditation. What is 'Hull'?
Maybe we should begin with the pronunciation. Most think it should be said in much the same way as 'a ship's hull'. But I remember hitch-hiking to Hull one wintry night on th'M62 Motorway and was getting no-where. At a transport caff, uncomfortably looking for a lift from truckers in the car park, I came upon a Dutch/German trucker poring over an enormous map. He looked puzzled at the name, then his face changed and he let out a loud "HÜÜL!!"
The Memsahib was in her second year of her degree at the lovely Hull College of Higher Education. I had just begun a two year catering course at North Devon College and was desperately missing her by the week/day/hour/minute. I put in for a transfer and was grateful that I got it. Grateful to leave North Devon College on Sticklepath Hill. Grateful to leave home in Lynton. Grateful, I tell you..! At last we could be together.
You have to understand I was young, deeply in love, my head full of nothing but the Memsahib, Memsahib, Memsahib. I would have stoically gone through fire and water merely to be with her. It was in her second year that she shared college digs with three other young 80s females a full 1 1/2 miles from the Howarth Arms on the lovely Cottingham Road (pronounced "rerr'd") . I hitched up there sometime in the summer and stayed for a few days. So loved up, I thought it all charming and the heady cloud of female pheromones made my stay one massive non-stop-24-hour-turn-on!
For her first year the Memsahib and her friend Jackie shared a room in a little terrace house, 10 Ash Grove, just off the Beverley Road, complete with a marvellously stocky and widowed Hull landlady, Joan (pronounced "Jern") . In her third year the situation changed. Her new flatmates in Cottingham Road were unsocial misfits. So she and her flatmate Jackie moved back in with Joan. In January 1986 I rolled up from Devon to be near the Memsahib. Joan had an adult daughter, Suzie, brain damaged at birth. She was often sat upon the floor of the dining room enjoying "What Kind of an Animal are You?" by Burl Ives. Meanwhile, the Memsahib and meself had to make sure we weren't caught kissing and canoodling in the bedrooms. So we went out a lot in the car
Let me say now that Hull was a cheap place to live. I think my rent with Joan was ten quid per week and that included dinner and breakfast! Joan obviously enjoyed having young people around. For her last year the Memsahib was promised her own college flat, but it was not ready in time. I found a free flat in the centre of Hull (which I shared with a couple of Botswanans!) and the Memsahib lived again with Joan for a short while. I remember traipsing through the snow to her house and throwing little stones at her window so she would let me in...
We also both lived for a while with the Memsahib's aunt on the 18th floor in the lovely Sutton Park. Then we looked for and found a one-bedroom hovel in Ella Street which cost us £11 per week. It was freezing, had a big draughty bay window and holes in the skirting through which one of our poor hamsters departed -never to be seen again. The 50p slot for heating the bath water in the shared bathroom devoured all our cash, so I only remember quick tepid dunks (Brenda first, of course). We bought a telly and sofa bed and spent our evenings shivering under the duvet. Before it all became too much the Memsahib's brand-new flat was ready: Bliss!
Up until my move to Hull, my only exposure to anything remotely Yorkshire-like had been a part in a school play Thunder, which first surfaced at the Ilkley Lit Fest and Edinburgh festival in 1973. I played the Parson Patrick Brontë, the Brontë sisters' thundery father. Some of the dialogue mentioned place names like Cleckheaton and Heckmondwyke:
"4 villager: T'whole congregation quit service -
1 villager: -wi' clatterin' and clumpin' o' clogs!"
Quite unintelligible to a schoolboy in Harrow!
The first thing to strike me was that these Hull people were like no other. Yes, it was in 'Humberside', whatever that was, but there was clearly a distance thing from the rest of the world. There were a lot of red-haired folk -a remnant from happy Viking days? The Housemartins had just made it big time and were keen on still popping back for a bit of local kudos. London 0 Hull 4 had just come out and everyone was humming along to Happy Hour and the video on Top of the Pops was essential viewing. Hull had, and still has, it's own telephone system with white phone boxes and local calls that cost 5p for all day. It snowed a lot (being a bit closer to Scandinavia) and there was not much to do unless you had a bob or two for a beer (which we didn't). When we did go out it was to the local student union bar, The Oasis (pronounced "o-wear-sis") and seemed to get trolleyed for about £2. Local people had a sense of humour that took me a little while to get used to and then adopt: It seems to revolve around personal insults and ridicule.
Hull's most famous son, William Wilberforce, the abolitionist, is the reason I am writing all this Hull-based tosh. At work I am showing the recently-made film of his life, Amazing Grace, with the growling Ioan Gruffudd as lead, to year 8 students. This is all part of an attempt to inculcate the kids that religion is something not all that bad, citing the religious Wilberforce as a positive agent of change. Peering out over the entire city of Hull from the rooftop library at the Hull College of Further Education I was not to know that Wilberforce on his magnificent columned statue in front of the massive and decaying, wind-beaten 1960s building would later feature in my career.
Which brings me to my point: did William Wilberforce have a "Hull" accent?
hello, i have just read you article citing your journey and thoughts to hull, i must say that your expressing the people from hull to be like no other, my partner is a Hullite, i a beverlonian, the difference between word expression and pronunciation is as your experience only the area, distance you traveled from to arrive in Hull was much greater than that of my 8 miles distance between Beverley and Hull, Strange isn't it, I do say though that i enjoyed your story immensely. They do talk funny too.
Posted by: Musky4eva | Wednesday, 12 October 2011 at 07:53 PM