My Letts School-Boys Diary, Monday, 5th April, 1965: ‘Cross country – Stef and Fred running on intermediate. Got photos of them (3 in all).’
Other than rather poor contract prints, I haven’t been able to get any images from my 127 negatives until now, using my scanner. Once again, I’ve coloured them in Photoshop.
Lucky me, I’d got out of running, perhaps because I’d been off with tonsillitis a week earlier or, more likely, because the school houses, Marsden, Pickard, Haig and Bentley were entering more energetic runners, such as my friends ‘Stef’ (above) and ‘Fred’ (below).
With the start of the Easter Holidays, this was a busy week for me, finishing off an astronomical telescope kit and planning our next home movie, a science fiction epic:
Bill and I also had our club magazine to print, featuring an article on a ‘whirlwind’ at Painthorpe, reported by ‘Stef’ and a fire at school:
FIRE AT OSSETT GRAMMAR SCHOOL
Smoke poured out of a workman’s hut at O.G.S.
Workmen fled in terror. 5 yds away stood a tank of petrol. It took 2 fire engines 10 minutes to get the blaze under control. Thanks to Ossett Fire Brigade no one was hurt.
R.A.B., HJNC News, no.4, April, 1965
Hostile Aliens
The big news though was our alien invaders movie going into production:
All sorts of special effects, tricks and camera angles were used. In filming one scene in which a soldier, R. Ryan, was burnt I, the camera man , was engulfed in flames. The most effective scene was one in which a model vehicle moved towards the alien’s rocket.
The best angle short showed soldiers running off the top of the picture.
As yet the film is not complete the second half will be filmed soon.
R.A.B., HJNC News, no. 5
Rather like the young Steven Spielberg character in The Fabelmans, I persuaded my sister to guest star as the ‘Hostile Alien’, complete with papier-mâché head which I shaped around an old bucket that my dad used to force rhubarb. My brother Bill meanwhile drafted in friends to play the ill-fated World Security Patrol, joined, as in most of our films, by my friend John as an action hero.
At that time there were always a few wartime helmets still kicking around. For the final scene involving an ‘Atomic Cannon’, we had to wait until autumn, when fireworks became available.