Toad in the Hull

This is one of the toads from the Larkin Trail - like the Liverpool penguins, the Chester rhinos and other city animals, they were sold off at the end of the event and have found permanent homes. This one is outside the Hull History Centre, a really good modern building that houses the city and university archives. I spent a fruitful morning working through the University Library Committee Minutes - beautifully typed on pink paper and bound in leather volumes - gathering quotes to use in an article about Philip Larkin.

Why the toads? Well, Larkin wrote two poems about them, using the toad as a metaphor for work:

Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soils
WIth its sickening poison -
Just for paying a few bills!
That's out of proportion.

From Toads, 1954


Elsewhere, Larkin says that work "rather suits him" and it appears from the minutes that he did it very consciensciously. A man of many contradictions.