This weekend I went to Hull. Everyone I mentioned it to beforehand reacted in more or less the same way: "Oh I've never been to Hull, isn't it meant to be..." They would trail off and I don't think they were going to say "the winner of Britain in Bloom?" Sadly the media seem to have painted a very negative picture of the city, so folk who have never been assume it to be true. It isn't, it's a really characterful city with lots of grand architecture from a range of eras. Hull was the most bombed city outside of London during World War Two so there has been a lot of filling in where buildings were destroyed which makes for a pretty intriguing cityscape. Hull reminded me of several places; it's a bit like Liverpool, the city anchoring the other end of the M62, before the City of Culture inertia, which is strange as Hull is shortlisted for 2017. It made me think of Antwerp too as there is quite a Flemish flavour to some of the...