Coming home from Leeds on the 116. Colour added later.
The Leeds Bus
Month: July 2023
Hostile Aliens
Hard to believe that I didn’t become Yorkshire’s answer to Steven Spielberg when you look at these 1965 production stills from our ambitious science fiction home movie Hostile Aliens. Thanks to Adobe Photoshop, I’ve been able to print this hopelessly badly developed negative for the first time. Richard Ryan’s stand-in dummy is about to be incinerated by the Alien’s heat ray. Alien played by my sister Linda in my dad’s oilskin and waders (plus papiere mache mask when the camera was rolling.
Linda also played the World Security observer responsible for monitoring outer space for alien invaders. In real life the emergency telephone put you through to the telephone exchange at the top end of Wensley Street.
For a stop action shot of the World Security armoured personnel carrier trundling towards the alien landing site, Lin pressed the cable release while I moved the model inch by inch across our garden rubbish heap.
A Bend on the Beck
Wearing wellies, I painted these hawthorns on a bend of Coxley Beck in April 1996. They were overhanging the deeper outside bank and since then the beck has undercut them and they ended up in the stream.
Humboldt’s Penguins
We’d missed their feeding time at Sewerby Hall Zoo and this moulting Humboldt Penguin was lolling by the pool, soaking up the afternoon sun.
Over on the other side of the pool there was more action with one penguin seeing off a rival then duetting – braying loudly, bills pointed skyward – with its partner.
Jenny
Jenny, natural history illustrator, drawing by our pond. She recently completed a commission to illustrate an information board about the wildlife at a pond on a nature reserve in West Sussex.
She started on John Norris Wood’s natural history illustration course at the Royal College of Art a year after I left, in 1976 and graduated in 1979, focussing on the Chelsea Physic Garden, it’s history and plants.
Mosey Downgate
Mosey Downgate, RSPB Bempton Cliffs, 12.30 pm, Thursday 6 July, 69℉ 24℃: Most of the kittiwake chicks now have conspicuous black stripes along their forewings, although there are some downy chicks still around. One birdwatcher tells me that he was here a month ago and he estimates there are now three times as many nesting.
The warden suggests that this impression might be because a month ago many of the pairs were nest building and spending more time away from the cliffs. Kittiwake numbers are stable at Bempton but nationally the bird is in decline, so the wardens are keeping a close watch on numbers.
Squabs
Two young wood pigeons looking relaxed in our golden hornet crab apple.
The Old Gang
One last snapshot from our 16 July 1965 third form trip to Swaledale. Sorting through the old gang (‘gangue’ = waste) near Hurst, Swaledale are my two school friends Derek Stefaniw examining a chunk of mineral – perhaps fluorite or galena? – alongside cool dude Paul Copley.
Snack Safari
Happy birthday to Iris.
“How old is Iris?’ asked Barbara as she read my caption about ‘hyper-parabolic, pan dimensional alien visitors.”
“Old enough to understand ‘hyper-parabolic aliens’,” I reassured her.
Triumph Herald Coupé
Amongst my 1965 negatives, the shots that I took to start or finish off a film are often everyday scenes from home life that wouldn’t normally get recorded. This shot, which comes just before the Richmond Castle photographs, is my mum’s car, a Triumph Herald Coupé taken in our back yard.
We did once fit our family of five into mum’s coupé, even though there were no seats in the back. More comfortable was dad’s Standard Vanguard Estate, registration RHL 777, which he bought from our friend Jack Buckle’s garage.