As it turned out, The Hard is what Portsmouth calls the bit down by the Dockyard where the Gosport Ferry terminal , the Portsmouth Harbour Rail station and the Bus station sit right next to each other. I think it's called The Hard because it's a sort of concrete platform built out over the waves. It's not as picturesque as it sounds but it gets the job done.
There used to be a really good bacon butty stand down there - until it caught fire.
The reason I bring all this up is that at one end of The Hard there's a couple of things that fascinate me.
As the Portsmouth Harbour rail line heads off towards the city centre it runs over a solidly built bit of Victorian brickwork which has handy little rooms built under the arches. There's a cafe that I keep meaning to check out and a tattoo parlour that I'm too chicken to set foot in. It's what's next to them I'm looking at today.
The first thing you see is one of the many bits of wall-art I like about Pompey.
But if you move a wee bit to the left you get something that intrigues me for all the wrong reasons.
Right next door is a shop or lockup or whatever that has been abandoned and boarded up for donkey's years. Then one day somebody put the window in and that left this lovely, big hole in the wall with a lovely, big empty space on the other side.
Hundreds of people walk past this hole every single day. Hundreds of people clutching sandwiches, cans of Red Bull, newspapers, kebabs....
Can you guess what happens when they pass this lovely, inviting hole?
This happens.
You'll have to take my word about the smell. It's like three dustbins full of socks.
Just up the road from that was one more thing - now gone, sadly - that fascinated me for yet a third reason. If the feather is pleasing and the room is disgusting then this billboard just puzzled me.
Somebody spent a lot of money to put up this huge public message so you think there would be a contact address or something on it. Nope. Just a slogan that screams "Tinfoil hat" to me.
If anybody knows what the actual fuck this is all about, can you drop me a line?
That's all folks.
I totally want to meet the guy who made that sign and figure out what they thought it meant. Also, I'm glad there is at least one other person in the world who doesn't understand why people think they can just throw trash away anywhere except for a trash bin.
ReplyDeleteYou'd think that a sign that big and therefore pricey would include a little contact information. Nope.
DeleteI've seen at least 4 of these things around Pompey so somebody is investing a lot of money into this campaign.