8.35 a.m.: Two male blackbirds have decided that the border between their territories runs along the narrow gap between a yellow grit hopper and a red recycling bin at the top end of the Health Centre car park.
First one hops forward, head held high, breast puffed out in ritualised belligerence, then it crosses the invisible line and its rival retaliates, driving it back.
This continues for a minute with the cut-and-thrust rhythm of a closely fought tennis tournament until they meet head-to-head at the half-way point and the contest erupts vertically into the air, the blackbirds lashing out with their feet like a pair of heraldic beasts.
This morning, in the short time I had available, I decided to write rather than draw, so my drawing of the rival blackbirds is from a sketchbook from March 1999, which I wrote up, using pretty much the same phrases as I did today, in my Wild West Yorkshire nature diary, www.wildyorkshire.co.uk
The rival blackbirds sketch appeared in my published sketchbook/nature journal Rough Patch, a sketchbook from the wilder side of the garden, published in 2005 (and still available, see link below!).
Hogweed is now in full flower alongside the car park at Newmillerdam. When I first got into botany, hogweed and cow parsley were in the Umbelliferae along with their garden relatives, carrot, celery and parsley. The preferred family name today is Apiaceae, after Apium, the name that Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder used for celery-like plants.
Scanning from my sketchbook: I tried the built in ‘Restore colors’ filter in my scanner program, Vue Scan. The filter makes the background of the page white, which is what I’m after, but it makes the greens too vivid, adding yellow.
WordPress tells me that today I’ve posted 365 days in a row, and suggests that I should keep up the good work.
John Haller (1909-1983) once told me that humorist Patrick Campbell (1913-1980) had produced a play The Vigil for our local drama group, the Horbury Pageant Players.
Patrick Campbell is probably best remembered today as Frank Muir’s opponent on BBC’s Call my Bluff but he was also well known as a journalist and drama producer.
In October 1955 John Haller succeeded Campbell, former head of B.B.C. northern drama programmes, as Chairman of the West Riding branch of the British Drama League, when Campbell accepted a post with the I.T.A., the Independent Television Authority, which had been created in the previous year.
The Vigil is a courtroom drama by Ladislas Fodor in which the gardener from the Garden of Gethsemane is accused by the Romans of stealing the body of Jesus.
It seems that the Pageants were disappointed that they hadn’t had more support from Horbury’s churches and chapels.
As it’s the Platinum Jubilee weekend I’ve dipped into a box of magazines that my mum saved. Eric Frazer drew the heraldic cover for the Radio Times Coronation Number.
Cecil Walter Bacon goes for a freer style for The Coronation Route map on the centre spread.
Twenty-eight years later I was lucky enough to work briefly right at the centre of this area when Collins the publishers were based at St James Place, tucked away behind The Ritz near the Piccadilly corner of Green Park. It’s there on C.W.B.’s illustration.
Equally impressive is Barbara Mary Campbell’s guide to the Coronation Procession in Picture Post. She’s included her signature ‘CAM, 1953’ on the cart that the street sweepers are trundling along at the tail end of the procession.
Cross-Stitch
If you didn’t want to have Eric Frazer’s artwork on display in your living room, this Clarice Cliff inspired (or perhaps even designed by her?) cross-stitch kit was available from Penelope (kit no. 3528). I don’t remember us using this but my mum was keen on embroidery, so I guess that this is her work.
Cross-Patch
I would have been just two years old at the time of the Coronation, so I don’t remember it but my sister has memories of it being the most boring of days. My parents had bought a 12 inch Bush television to watch the event and invited the neighbours round but the children had to play in the hall.
Worst of all, although there was a Dinky model of the Coronation Coach (I’m guessing that belonged to David next door) it was for admiring only and they were strictly forbidden from playing with it.
So my sister was very much in the situation of Betty and her friend Valerie in this Horlicks advertisement from the 6th June 1953 Coronation Souvenir Number of Picture Post.
So what could Betty’s cross-patch mum, Mrs Forbes, do about her ‘nerves, her brain and her whole personality’? She needed ‘complete relaxation’. Luckily this was in the early days of the National Health Service and her doctor had the answer:
Your rest should really reach down to your subconscious. Only then can you wake truly refreshed . . . my recommendation is Horlicks at bedtime.”
I remember my mum complaining of similar problems. If only we’d known about Horlicks at the time.
What does your child drink?
But supposing your children were getting ‘disappointing results in school-work’ caused by ‘poor concentration and lack of alertness’. Horlicks would be out of the question, inducing, as it does, ‘complete relaxtion’ right ‘down to your subconscious’. Luckily there’s Ovaltine: ‘in many homes the regular breakfast beverage for children’. A ‘wise choice’ because of its ‘nutritive properties, including vitamins’ needed for ‘satisfactory development’.
Sole Stories
So, completely rested, right down to her subconscious, and with children developing in a satisfactory way, how did the 1950s woman stay so smart? I associate Phillips ‘Stick-A-Soles’ with a strong smell of adhesive because occasionally my dad or mum would fit soles and heels to shoes. For more ambitious repairs, we’d take shoes to Mr Whitehead, the cobbler who had a lock-up hut on Cooperative Street, Horbury. Like most cobblers, he had a 12 inch tall bust of the wise old Phillips cobbler in his window.
Dads of the 1950s
But I know what you’re thinking: surely the dads of the 1950s, who sat around drinking tea (or was it Ovaltine?), pipe-smoking and reading the newspaper weren’t so good looking, with Brylcreemed hair and neat moustache. Well yes, and to prove it here’s my dad, Robert Douglas Bell relaxing (no tie) on the beach at Filey.
Sausages Milanaise
If you were snoozing after all those malty beverages, here’s a suggestion if you want to go Italian and wake up your appetite to the spicy taste of ‘prize, plump tomatoes, ripened in Mediterranean sunshine’.
I’d go for flat-leafed parsley rather than the curled variety, to give it that authentic Milanese vibe.
Mr Clunes
In an article on ‘The New Elizabethans’ in the Queen’s Birthday issue of Picture Post, 19 April 1952, I spotted a familiar face. But, no, it’s not Martin Clunes, this is his actor director father Alec: ‘mercurial yet stocky, mellow voiced yet passionate, a traditionalist and a bold experimenter . . . a gift for the gods’. So very like his son Martin (who we were once surprised to see running a used car business at Flamborough lighthouse. We never tracked down what he was filming for that day).
One of my favourite drawings is this Ronald Searle cartoon of humorist Patrick Campbell from an advertisement for Lilliput magazine in the April 1952 Picture Post.
Campbell once came to Horbury and produced a play. The Vigil, for the Pageant Players.
Three approaches to foraging on the herb bed this afternoon: the small double ochre-striped ones tackle the thyme on fast forward, the larger all-ochre thorax bumblebee makes a more thorough job of the chives flowers while the small red-tailed bumblebee – possibly a drone – seems to be settling down for the night on its chive flower.
My small patch of plants for pollinators now looks a bit more like my idea of a wild flower meadow since we cut back the grasses and chicory and dug out their creeping rhizomes.
The chicory used to swamp everything else but now we’ve got creeping buttercup and dog daisy plus a few flowerheads of red clove, with teasel, foxglove and marjoram yet to come into flower. False oat and cocksfoot grass are so far the tallest plants but they’ll soon be overtaken by the teasels.
Prominent moths have tufts emerging from between the wings and there’s also a tail tuft, just visible in my drawing. This moth, caught in the moth trap a couple of nights ago (and released the next day) didn’t have feathery antennae so it’s most likely to be a female.
So far I haven’t narrowed it down to a particular species. To me it’s closest to the iron prominent.
