I’m approaching two years of daily blogging. One consequence of this, as Wendy will tell you, is that I’m prone to whip out my phone and photograph any public artwork or memorial I happen across.

This one, in Hartlepool, struck me as one of the better artworks I’ve seen this year… but it’s been on my list of things to post for longer than usual, as I’ve struggled to find out anything about it.

But now, I’ve cracked the mystery. It is the output of a competition from the 7-9 year olds at the nearby Ward Jackson Primary, 18 years ago. The kids were asked to design an artwork to replace frequently-vandalised lamppost. This winning design belonged to Jessica Draper.

An interview with the artist at the time revealed her motivations: “Most people like the sun and say it makes them feel better, so I thought I would include it in my design.”

Honestly, I think that may also be one of the best justifications for a bit of civic art that I’ve read this year as well.

As someone who has occasionally been a little grumpy about children’s art, even I think this example is worth celebrating.

This is an ex-RAF Jet Provost which looms over the car park of the Hartlepool College of Further Education. It’s there because the college specialises in aerospace courses, among other things.

I’ve driven and walked past it many times, but most recently thought about it when I was in Stockholm earlier this year, and saw this Bell 206 helicopter on a stick:

Built in Hartlepool, the PS Wingfield Castle served as a Hull Estuary ferry from 1934 to 1974, just a few years before the Humber Bridge opened.

She was left to rot in London for a few years after that. In one of those mind-bending yet sound bits of maritime logic, concrete was poured into her bilges to prevent her from sinking due to leaks. In the early 1980s, Whitbread bought her intending to site a floating pub in Swansea, but had to abandon the idea when it became clear that she was too wide to fit through the marina’s gates.

In 1986, she returned to Hartlepool, where she has been lovingly restored, and is now exhibited at the National Museum of the Royal Navy.

Hartlepool’s Middleton Grange Shopping Centre used to be home to a Co-op department store, but the shop closed in October last year. However, in a somewhat bizarre state of affairs, the coffee shop it contained remains open. To access the coffee shop, one must walk through the empty department store.

This surely makes Eugene’s one of the strangest coffee shops in Hartlepool, if not the UK. As coffee shop locations go, the back of an empty department store is hardly the most obvious or everyday choice! Despite this, it did appear to be pulling in customers – certainly far more so than the almost deserted Esquires in a more conventional mall spot!

Quite what will happen to Eugene’s when the Co-op store is ultimately let to new tenants remains to be seen.

Tomorrow is local election day, and politicians seem to like nothing more than talking about “broken Britain”. So, here’s a square metre or so of Britain that’s truly broken.

Not only has this bus stop sign fallen over, it’s also in the middle of nowhere: closer stops exist to both the local town and the industrial sites in the background. The road it’s beside has a speed limit of 60mph, and has a single lane in each direction: any stopped bus would cause quite the obstruction. There’s no pavement on which passengers can wait, nor anywhere for a disembarking passenger to walk. In summary, this is a broken bus stop in the middle of nowhere, with nowhere for the bus to stop, and nowhere for the passengers to wait.

So, really: what’s the point?

I took a slight detour from my usual commute today to rubber-neck at the Hartlepool nuclear power station. The plant crops up from time-to-time in my everyday work, especially (as well you might imagine) when discussing emergency planning.

Hartlepool’s plant produces about 3% of the UK’s electricity, and is already 3 years or so past the end of its designed lifespan. It’s been given permission to operate until 2019, by which time it’ll be a decade “out of date”. Permission has been given for it to be replaced by a more modern variant, but with the Government’s nuclear policy looking a little confused at the moment, goodness knows whether that will actually happen.

This station is especially interesting as it’s one of the world’s nearest nuclear plants to a residential area: Seaton Carew, the small but attractive seaside town where John “canoe-man” Darwin faked his own death, is little more than a mile away.

The Beeb has some interesting photos from inside the power station; or, if Teesside industry is your thing, you might want to see my photo from yesterday.