Secret Walls

George Street, Wakefield: Wall-rue and Maidenhair Spleenwort on a brick wall which probably dates back to the days of the cattle market, and a mossy pool on the roots of an old flowering cherry. The ‘well kept secret’ herbs and spices are served at Kentucky Fried Chicken, Westgate Retail Park.

First Day of Spring

cumulus

It rained for much of today but by 4 o’clock the towering cumulus clouds had passed over and it was bright enough to encourage me to put on my 1970s black wellies and cross a soggy, mossy lawn to trim back the ivy by the shed.

The birds are already singing and showing interest in denser sections of the hawthorn hedge. Luckily I pruned the rowan, crab apple and the holly hedge at the end of the garden a month ago.

frogspawn

Barbara spotted some frog activity last week and today I noticed two clumps of spawn in the usual, sunniest, corner of the pond.

All Sorts of Walks

Liquorice lovers historical and legendary get walk-on partsintroducing my booklet ‘All Sorts of Walks in Liquorice Country’ (2010).

Drawn in Procreate Dreams on the iPad. Music: the folk song ‘Shepherd’s Hey’, transcribed using GarageBand.

Penguin Dance

I’ve often seen great-crested grebes go through their head-shaking, ritualised preening display, but at last this morning at RSPB St Aidan’s, we got to see the presentation of beakfuls of water-weed and the penguin dance where the male and female rise from the water, breast to breast, paddling furiously and swaying heads. They appeared to drop the weed as they started this routine. They then returned to head-bobbing display.

We’ve yet to see the ‘ghostly penguin’ and the ‘cat display’ which apparently start off the whole routine.

Were-Wolf Walking

My first experiments for part of a longer animation celebrating Baring-Gould’s Centenary, using Procreate and the new animation program, Procreate Dreams.

Flame, Flood and Were-Wolves

Baring-Gould in Horbury

In 2024, the Baring-Gould Centenary year, we’re celebrating – in artwork and animation – his work inspired by the time he spent as a young curate in Horbury: the hymn ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, his folklore study ’The Book of Were-Wolves’ and his semi-autobiographical novel, set in a thinly disguised version of Horbury, ’Through Flood and Flame’. Cue thwarted love, dramatic disasters and the villainous Richard Grover, man-monkey and firebrand preacher.

Special thanks to local historian Keith Lister, author of ‘Half My Life’, the Story of Sabine Baring-Gould and Grace, my main reference for this Redbox Gallery show.

Characters from the novel

3D cut-outs of Annis, the Nightwatchman, Richard Grover the ‘Man-Monkey’ and our hero, Hugh Arkwright, should make a dramatic centrepiece for my Baring-Gould Centenary display.

I was hoping to squeeze in a few were-wolves too but Baring-Gould’s lively research into folklore but they’ll be stars of the short animation that I’m starting work on today.

Hugh Arkwright, ‘Through Flood . . .’

Meet our hero, Hugh Arkwright of Arkwright’s Mill in Sabine Baring-Gould’s thinly disguised version of Horbury in his semi-autobiographical novel of 1868, Through Flood and Flame. I’ve gone for him encountering peril number one, the flood.

I based the action-hero pose on an Indiana Jones movie poster but as Indy is holding his trademark bullwhip and our hero Hugh was negotiating the flood walking along a garden wall clinging onto a clothes line to keep his balance, I’ve shown him in a later scene which involves a rescue by boat (although in that case Hugh is catching the lifeline rather than throwing it).

Hat, frock coat and necktie, along with the character himself, based on Timothée Chalamet’s version of Willy Wonka.