Category: People

Home Movie Moments

movie moments birthday card
home movie actors

My latest homemade birthday card is for my great nephew Zach. It celebrates the home movies that my brother, sister and I made in the days of Standard 8 cine. As you can see, Bill took the action roles, often at risk to life and limb, with my sister guest starring as the ‘Hostile Alien’, ‘The Thing’ and, no doubt hoping to break out of being typecast, a World Security agent scanning the skies for invaders from outer space.

Our friends were regularly in the cast, launching flying machines and hatching dastardly plots for world domination. Mostly we filmed in our garden; the rhubarb patch made a suitably lush jungle but for a more dramatic setting we headed for the local quarry.

But we did consider health and safety. I remember us discussing the possibility that our flying machine might overshoot and end up crashing down onto the railway line. In the event it plummeted vertically downwards when we launched it from the top of Horbury Quarry although I stood well back when filming, just in case.

birthday greeting

John Lennon in Wakefield

It would have been John Lennon’s 80th birthday this week, on the 9th, so I’ve dug out this four-second snippet, filmed in very shaky Standard 8 cine from our black-and-white television, when John and Yoko were appearing on a chat show, probably The Eamonn Andrews Show in the spring of 1969.

I was surprised when my friend Hilary told me that in the early 1960s she’d been at the Saturday morning ABC Minors’ matinee at the ABC Regal cinema in Wakefield when The Beatles made an appearance. About twenty years ago I met a woman who had worked at the Regal at the time and who remembered telling off John when, after the performance, he offered her young daughter a cigarette.

My painter friend Jill told me that one of her tutors at art college (this would have been Manchester, 1969-1972) had previously been a tutor at Liverpool and had caught the young Lennon urinating down the lift shaft.

Finally, as a teenager, my brother’s daughter Hannah learnt the drums from at musician who’d been on the northern circuit in the early 1960s. His group had appeared on the same bill as The Beatles (possibly in Doncaster?), so after the show he’d approached John to say how much he liked their music.

“I especially like Yesterday“, he enthused.

“One of McCartney’s.” said John, and turned away.

Laurel & Hardy in Wakefield

Almost a decade before The Beatles performed at the Regal, Laurel & Hardy made a brief appearance, again at a children’s matinee. My friend Richard Knowles was taken by his uncle and remembers two elderly men coming onto the stage and waving at everyone, although at the time he didn’t know who they were.

Remembering Karen

Naturalists
Wakefield Naturalists’ September field trip to St Aidans.

We’ve been saddened to hear of the untimely death of a member of Wakefield Naturalists’ Society, Karen Nicklin, who also – as in my cartoon – volunteered at the RSPB St Aidan’s reserve.

“As a really keen walker and hiker, Karen spent time planning and undertaking walks that combined nature and the landscape and I remember well the talk she gave recently at our members’ evening when she wowed us with views of the spectacular scenery and wild flowers from a recent trek in the Austrian Alps.”

John Gardner, President, Wakefield Naturalists’ Society, wakefieldnaturalists.org

It’s just three weeks ago that we last saw her on that pre-‘Rule of Six’ Naturalists’ field trip to St Aidan’s. As she served me a socially-distanced shade-grown coffee (shade-grown saves trees) afterwards, I asked her what the news was from the Loch Garten ospreys. She replied that, because of Covid, she’d missed out on volunteering there for the first time since 2004. She told me that she hadn’t even managed to add an osprey on her year list. She was obviously missing them, and we’ll miss her.

Mr Moore, General Science, Ossett Grammar School

Mr and Mrs Moore

“Carbon dioxide turns limewater milky, excess turns it clear again.”

“I put my teeth in my back pocket one day and they bit me!”

“You’ll end up in the ‘B’ form with all the other Charlies!”

Mr Moore, General Science teacher, Ossett Grammar School, c. 1963

Mr Moore’s lessons at Ossett Grammar School in the 1960s were a mixture of science, musical hall jokes and outrageous opinions, hence his nickname ‘Loony’. He had a particular fondness for the Isle of Man, where I assume he grew up.

Most memorable incident: phosphorous igniting during one of his demonstrations . . . which then set fire to the rest of the phosphorous as he attempted to put it back in the jar.

His wife taught science at Highfield School, Horbury. I remember that she always wore her hair coming down across one side of her face and I’m told that this was because she had been badly scarred in a laboratory accident while carrying out research during World War II. I’m told that, of the two of them, she was more highly qualified. I knew her to say hello to but the little that I’ve heard about her background comes to me secondhand.

Ossett Grammar School, 1962-67

Ossett teachers

Having drawn all my form teachers from infant and junior school, how could I not continue and include my teachers from Ossett Grammar School, from 1962 to 1967.
Miss Eves had her classroom at the right-hand end of the prefabricated classrooms, opposite the school dinners kitchen. Her specialist subject was religious education.
Mr Foster’s classroom was down the slope from Park House, the oldest part of the school, in a recently-built block of single-story classrooms. He was a mathematics teacher.

Teachers

Mr McGrady, the music teacher, was based, as you might guess, as far out of earshot of the rest of the school as possible, in the music room in the other, smaller, block of ‘temporary’ prefabricated classrooms overlooking the school playing field.
Mr Mason’s classroom was in the brick-built block of the school, towards the art room end. I can’t remember what his specialisation was. English perhaps. At the end of summer term he left the school and went to teach in Africa.
Mr Beaumont was the woodwork teacher. Again his classroom was in the brick-built block, this time at the gymnasium end.

I didn’t stay on into the sixth form. I was ready and eager to start at art college.

No Room at the Inn, 1948

No Room at the Inn

It’s one of those dimly remembered but vivid movie scenes. Sometime back around 1958, so perhaps when I was seven years old, I caught the last few minutes of a film on our black and white Bush 24-inch 405 line television. It must have made quite an impression on me but how accurate are my memories from 60 years ago.

I never knew the name of the film but scanning today’s listing for the Talking Pictures channel I’m sure that No Room at the Inn, 1948, about evacuees billeted with the ‘savagely nasty’ Mrs Voray. That’s got to be the one.

I’ve drawn my memories of the scene so that I can compare them with the actual film.

Remembering VE Day

Bill Ellis
Barbara’s dad, William Ellis in 1940.

On this day, 7th May, in 1995, we invited my mum, Gladys Joan Bell, and Barbara’s mum and dad, Bill and Betty Ellis, to reminisce about VE Day for the 50th anniversary. My mum was a primary school teacher in Sheffield who, in the early stages of the war, took evacuees to stay in rural Derbyshire to escape the bombing. In the Sheffield Blitz my grandad’s house was bombed but my mum, grandma and grandad were safe in the Anderson Shelter in the back garden. My great grandma next door wasn’t so lucky. She didn’t like the shelter, so she hunkered down in the cellar but the Luftwaffe scored a direct hit and demolished her house. Luckily great grandma and her pet bird in a cage were rescued via the coal shoot.

What the three of them reminisced about 25 years ago, I can’t tell you as we no longer have a cassette player in the house. My mum celebrated in Sheffield, Barbara’s mum was in Horbury but I’ve forgotten now whether Bill and my dad, Douglas, were on leave at the time.

When the lockdown is over, I’ll get the cassette transferred to digital.

My mum, Gladys Joan Swift, as she was before her marriage at the end of the war, somewhere in the Peak District, c.1946.

Grandma’s Cupboard

Robert and Jane Bell at Vine Cottage, Sutton-cum-Lound in the 1950s. Colour added at colourise.sg. In real life the bricks and pantiles were terra cotta red, the paintwork green and creamy white.

My grandma, Jane Bagshaw, met my grandad Robert Bell at a celebration of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, on Tuesday June 15th 1897 at 3 o’clock at Serlby Park, Nottinghamshire. He was then aged 19, working as second coachman to the Galways at Serlby. Jane, a domestic servant was 14.

Vine Cottage

After living in Sheffield, the couple retired to Vine Cottage, Sutton-cum-Lound, near Retford, Nottinghamshire in the 1950s.

As you might guess from the photograph of them, standing amongst the hollyhocks in front of the cottage, they were the kind of grandparents that you might encounter in a children’s story.

The ‘Grandma’s Cupboard’ prompt in my writer’s notebook.

Taking my cue from a prompt on the Start Writing Fiction course that I took this autumn, I’ve recalled some of the features of Vine Cottage, as I remember them from my childhood, from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, when they left the cottage and moved to a bungalow at the other end of the village.

Grandma’s Cupboard

shelf edging

The prompt on the fiction course was to write about ‘Grandma’s Cupboard’, so let’s start with the shelves in the narrow scullery at the back of the cottage.

Grandma lined the shelves with newspaper, cutting a decorative zig-zag on its trailing edge. My father saved copies of The Times for her. At that time it was a broadsheet consisting almost entirely of text so it gave the shelves a more uniform effect than her own Weekly News, a popular tabloid. She always saved The Weekly News for me because I liked the cartoons in it. And they would sometimes also pass on a copy of the Salvation Army’s newsletter, which featured a comic strip of The Adventures of Black Bob, featuring a hill shepherd and his faithful border collie.

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Sainsburys Shoppers

shoppers

The silhouette of the woman in headscarf and long coat made a welcome contrast to the men in jacket & jeans and anorak & cords that I’d just drawn. A woman walked briskly by, clutching a cake box, mug and a potted artificial succulent, adding a touch of drama in comparison with most of the shoppers who went for the easier options of a trolley or a basket.

I drew in pen, making brief notes about colour, which I added later when we stopped for a cup of coffee and a Debenhams’ orange and cranberry scone.

Twenty Twenty

WordPress themes ‘Twenty Nineteen’ and ‘Twenty Twenty’.

I’ve just updated my blog to the latest version of WordPress and couldn’t resist trying out their latest theme, Twenty Twenty. It’s a contrast to all the themes that I’ve tried previously as it’s got a tinted background – a neutral creamy shade – instead of the pure white that I’ve always used, but I like the way this sets off the watercolour in my drawings.

It’s easy to read too. I like the variable typeface Inter, designed by Rasmus Andersson.

The drawback of the Twenty Twenty theme for me is that by default it shows a reduced version of images, so I’ve soon gone back to the Twenty Nineteen theme.

Postcard Portraits

Richard 1976
Self portrait, pencil and watercolour, May 1979
As I was drawing my self portrait, this fly settled on the page.

If portraits were postcard size, you’d be able to fit the shortlist of the BP Portrait Award into Horbury’s telephone box art gallery. This self portrait, from forty years ago, is from one of the ‘Bushey’ 7 x 4½ inch landscape sketchbooks that I used in the late 1970s, as are all but one of the fourteen sketches in this post.

The red pullover was knitted for me by my old friend John Blackburn’s mum, Barbara. Mrs Blackburn was a thrifty knitter and, when you’d grown out of a jumper, she could unravel the wool and use it again. In this way, a batch of wool could be recycled through several generations of jumpers.

In the background, you can see my home-made bookshelves in the alcove. When I drew the portrait, I sat at my work bench on a utility Windsor kitchen chair, which is why I look as if I’m leaning on a gate.

My room
My room in a shared flat. I assembled my work bench – complete with vice – in the room so when I moved out a few years later I had to saw through my built-to-last mortice and tenon joints in order to bring it down the stairs! Now in a cut-down version, it is hinged to our garage wall.
Continue reading Postcard Portraits