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.
Snack Safari
Category: Art
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.
The Covenanters
Happy birthday to Dave, who recently found himself at the sharp end of a charge by the Covenanters. Admittedly they were armed only with traditional muskets and pikes but still a formidable fighting force if they’re hurtling towards you.
Lunch by the Swale
My Letts School-Boys Diary, Friday, 16th July 1965:
Trip. Wore jeans and pullover. Set off 9.10 got to Richmond at 10.45. Had lunch over looking Swale. Went round castle. Guide (1/-) got postcard of Richard III. Trip in Dales made 3 miles longer (?) because of road blockage. Developed film
Perhaps after such a long day I should have left developing the film until later but despite the botched job, I’m pleased 58 years later, to have rescued some images from the negatives.
I haven’t visited the castle since, so I think that it’s time to re-read the guidebook and take another look.
My friend Stefaniw appears, slightly solarised, in one of the photographs. We were in the third form and my diary records that the previous day our O-level subjects were decided:
Am taking Art and Physics with Chemistry. I did seascape in art. Read Beowulf. Gave in Maths and Eng. books.
Stef persuaded Mr Axford to let him take all three sciences.
Did Triffids.
Watched Matterhorn Anniversary Climb, M. from U.N.C.L.E
Thursday 15th July 1965
Richmond Castle
On our Ossett Grammar School school trip in the summer of 1965 we visited Richmond Castle. This is the same film as the Reeth photographs that I posted yesterday and, as you can see (left), the negatives are equally badly scratched, spotted and, in places, solarised.
I think that this works well for the Norman arch (above) but as a change from the daguerreotype effect that I went for yesterday, I decided the clean up the remaining images using the spot healing brush in Photoshop.
I soon realised that using the mouse on my iMac was impractical so, after boosting the contrast in the desktop version of Photoshop, I transferred the photographs to the iPad.
Touching up the images using an Apple Pencil in the iPad version of Photoshop makes it so much easier.
I air-dropped the image back to the desktop version to colourise it, using the Photoshop Neural Filters.
A Walk in Swaledale, 1965
My thanks to James Alderson and Farming Lass on Instagram for identifying yesterday’s lime lorry incident from summer 1965 as being on the Hurst road at the Reeth end of Swaledale. I’m guessing that the cottages and lead smelting chimney are at Hurst or nearby.
I’ve gone with the daguerreotype vibe for this gallery of colourised photographs from our walk, which include my friend Stef making friends with a Dales pony.
In addition to the scratches and blobs my inept film development has also resulted in some solarisation. The shot of our party negotiating an area of mining spoil (possibly above Langthwaite?) would have made a good cover for an Alan Garner novel.
Swaledale Lime Lorry, 1965
Summer 1965 and there’s been a delay in a delivery of lime in Swaledale. Perhaps you recognise the delivery man or the guys he’s talking to – the local farmer perhaps?
This colourised image is from one of my badly developed black and white negatives from 1965. There are dozens from a school trip of Richmond Castle, which Iooks pretty much the same today, so it’s the few which feature vehicles that particularly interest me.
A Thank you to the Hospice
From the Prince of Wales Hospice website, pwh.org.uk:
Local illustrator gives a bespoke new design to our thank you cards
Thursday, 22 June 2023
We first came across Richard Bell’s artistic talent when he sent in a hand drawn illustrated card, thanking staff for the care provided to his brother in law, John. The card was an illustration about some of the hospice team Richard and his wife, Barbara met when they visited John in our Hospice. The card also included a drawing about one of John’s great moments in the Hospice, when he was visited by two star players of Featherstone Rovers on the ward.
Richard wrote: “Thank you for all that you did for John and all that you did to make us feel welcome – we’re so grateful.”
We were blown away by the level of detail Richard had used in his illustrations and we asked Richard if he wanted to design our new thank you cards. Fortunately, he kindly agreed to illustrate them for us and what a fantastic job he has done!
One of the new designs show a roundup of hospice staff, Richard explained: “I was aiming for a fairly generic version of the hospice staff but inevitably the individual characters keep asserting themselves.” The other thank you card design shows beautifully the Hospice building, gardens and surrounding area.
Emma Dunnill, Legacy and In Memory Fundraiser said: “Richard’s attention to detail is fantastic and we think our supporters will love the bespoke designs. We can’t wait to start sending out these well-deserved thank you cards.”
You can see more of Richard’s work on his website http://wildyorkshire.blog/ where he has also shared illustrations of the Hospice gardens from his visits.
Link
The Prince of Wales Hospice, Pontefract
John meets Featherstone Rovers: my original thank you card to the Hospice
The View from the Car Park
My favourite view from Wakefield’s Riding Centre multistorey?
- To the south, to what Lawrence Butler called the ‘upturned pudding-basin’ of Sandal Castle motte?
- To the south-west to the Emley Moor transmitter on the edge of the South Pennines?
- Or looking back across the precinct towards the peregrine eyrie on the tower of Wakefield Cathedral?
Since the Hannah Starkey show at the Hepworth, the view that I always park facing is the one of the flats on Kirkgate.
In Starkey’s thoughtfully stage-managed take on this scene, she gives Wakefield an aura of Indie movie sophistication (which it has, especially on a morning like today’s). One of her characters leans on the parapet, like a split-hair-dyed Rapunzel, looking out over the cloud-capped towers of Wakefield.
Poppy, Honey Lily, Chives and Cornflower
Seedheads from the garden: Opium Poppy, Eastern Mediterranean; Sicilian Honey Lily, Mediterranean, Turkey and Black Sea; Chives, Temperate Europe, Asia and North America and Perennial Cornflower from the subalpine meadows and open woods of Europe.