Month: October 2022

Trouble at t’Mill

angry Victorian
Victorian fist fight

The rebuilding of Coxley Mill in 1886 wasn’t without its problems. Contractor Edward Mercer and clerk of works Alfred Tate came to blows over the quality of mortar used and it seems that Tate threatened to ‘stop the engine’ – the mill had a steam-powered beam engine – which presumably would have brought work at the mill to a standstill.

Mr Tate ended up with head injuries including two black eyes and lost a tooth.

Assault at Coxley Mill, 8 October 1886, British Newspaper Archive, ©THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD

The Building News

Goings on at Horbury Junction

The online British Newspaper Archive, available through Find my Past, has just added The Building News to its collection. It reported Victorian progress in Horbury, such as road widening, commissioning pipework and building chapels but in 1855 it seems that an ‘incendiary’ – an arsonist – struck at Horbury Junction Station.

1 May 1855, The Building News, British Newspaper Archive, ©THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD

Better news from the Junction came 32 years later when work was started on a new Wesleyan chapel, right next to the station opposite St Mary’s Church on the other side of the bridge across the railway.

Junction chape; article
29 July 1887, The Building News, British Newspaper Archive, ©THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD

Halfway Plumage

Up on the balcony at the Boathouse café with a panorama of the lower end of the lake at Newmillerdam on a fine autumn morning with black-headed gulls swooshing by was like being on a mini cruise, especially when accompanied by a pumpkin latte (well, you’ve got to try it once at this time of year).

There were 25 tufted ducks in a scattered group, mostly just resting, although I did see one tackling a medium-sized freshwater mussel.

Many of the gulls were in halfway, teenage, plumage with a shallow inverted ‘V’ on each wing.

cygnets

The three cygnets of the resident mute swan family were at that halfway stage too, with bands of brown on wings and across the tail covets.

The lone great-crested grebe was probably one of this year’s young, or possibly an adult moulting into dull winter plumage.

conkers
Fruit of horse chestnut

The Plumbing Olympics

cartoon - plumbing olympics

We’ve all been there; searching for a birthday card for a body-building plumber.

cycling in France cartoon

Or for a cyclist who lives abroad. Actually Harry lives in the Isle of Man, not France, but I think that Google Translate would have struggled to come up with enough cycling expressions. Motorbikes, perhaps.

Onions

Drawing some of our onions with the new Manga vector mapping pen in Adobe Fresco, using an Apple Pencil, iPad Pro and a sketchboard pro drawing board.

onions

Growing through a dry summer and a heatwave, this year’s onions were smaller than the previous year’s – when we had a wetter summer – but they’ve kept better. One hazard last year was that the local foxes liked to pull up a few of the almost tennis ball-sized onions and stash them under the hedge. Thanks to damage by foxes and a wet spell before we lifted them, many of the onions went soft.

drawing onions
Drawing on the iPad Pro on the Sketchboard Pro drawing board
onions

Game of Scones

scones cartoon

Guardian critic Victor Lewis-Smith once slated the “Yorkshire Fat Rascal” as ‘an obese scone’, ‘a Yorkshire indelicacy’ and characterised the “Yorkshire rarebit with chopped fresh chives in Yorkshire Cobble bread” as ‘a self-aggrandising toastie’.* Ouch.

It’ll be all right on the night.

My favourite ‘Yorkshire indelicacy’ at Bettys’ is the Yorkshire Curd Tart. No one does a Yorkshire Curd Tart like Bettys. And it’s not just me who thinks that. Last time we were at RHS Harlow Carr we took our Latino Lattes out to a bench in the gardens and a robin hopped about around my our feet and beneath the bench, hoping we’d drop the odd crumb. Some hope.

But I did select one small, soft raisin and held it out at ground level. After some hesitation the robin darted forward and took it from my hand. It then went and perched in a bush behind us and burst into song.

*Guardian, 29 January 2005.

Clouds in my Coffee

cauliflower

“Who sings this one?”

“I can hardly hear it,” the waitress replies.

“You’re So Vain.”

“Oh … Carly Simon.”

“That’s it! Brilliant.”

“Shows my age.”

“I’m not surprised she knew,” chips in the other waitress, “She’s always singing. Every day is karaoke here.”

The date and apricot flapjack was good too. It had a hint of bonfire night about it, made with dark brown sugar and, I’m guessing, black treacle.

It’s the one with the line ‘I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee’, which is appropriate because I’m on to my second latté at the Thorncliffe Tasting Room, Emley, while Barbara does a round of the adjoining farm shop for a bag of shopping, including this cauliflower.

This was our first visit to the Tasting Room, although we’d often called at the farm shop but we’ll soon go back there. It’s only six miles from home but it’s another 150 metres in altitude. The panorama included Drax Power Station (currently burning wood pellets sourced from old growth forests in Canada according a recent BBC investigation).

Link

Thorncliffe Tasting Room

First Day, Royal College of Art, 1972

greenhouse rough
Rough for my Greenhouse Mural, an elaborate identification chart for tropical birds that my tutor John Norris Wood kept in the college greenhouse. Yes, that is the Royal Albert Hall in the background, the Greenhouse straddled two floors at the top of the College’s Kensington Gore building.

Saturday 30 September 1972

We set off at 8.30 or so and whisked down the M.1. to Linnie & Dave’s

house in Southall
My sister Linda and David’s first home in Southall

Where we had lunch before going and putting my things in my room at Evelyn Gardens.

Student accommodation
My room on the first floor at 14 Evelyn Gardens, London SW7

Then Shopping – Mother bought a bright Red Trouser Suit.

Continue reading First Day, Royal College of Art, 1972