Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
The wild garlic is at its most deliciously pungent this morning at the top, marshier end of Stoneycliffe Wood Yorkshire Wildlife Trust reserve.
Our neighbours have spotted deer in the valley recently so I was on the look-out for tracks. The size – about 2 inches, 5cm – fits roe deer, the species that is often seen in the area.
Which one of these Star Trek characters was played by a Huddersfield Town supporter?
Clue: One of them was a Spurs fan 😮
Clue 2: The actor in question recently wrote an autobiography Making it So, which opens with a vividly written evocation of life, amateur dramatics and local journalism in Mirfield and Dewsbury in the late 1940s and 1950s.
Happy birthday John and hope that Huddersfield continue to boldly go where no team has gone before.
How to Recognise Yorkshire Bird Calls. Happy birthday Olivia for yesterday.
Ice Age glaciers and longshore drift have contributed a variety of pebbles to the beach at the northern, landward, end of the spit at Spurn which stretches almost three miles out across the mouth of the Humber Estuary.
Despite previous attempts to protect the spit, high tides now wash over it in places.
Marram grass, Ammophila arenia, stabalises the shifting sands of the dunes.
I was surprised to see a single patch of bluebells, Hyacinthoides non-scripta, growing amongst the marram to the west of the track not far from the area known at The Warren.
Washed up on the beach, a velvet swimming crab, Necora puber, with blue markings on its pincers, legs and shell.
Hornwrack, Flustra foliacea, not a seaweed but a colonial animal. Individual ‘sea moss’ filter-feeding animals called zooids lived in tiny cells that you can see as the stippled surface texture of the fronds.
After 15 or 20 years the raised veg beds are beginning to come apart at the corners and rot through in places.
I like the L-shaped beds as they are but wheeling a barrow down the garden is a bit of an obstacle courses, especially steering past the greenhouse.
So our plan is to widen the central path – and perhaps the side paths to give better access to the beds. It’s a big job but we’re getting Earnshaw’s the local timber and fencing centre in to give us a quote for the doing the work.
Planting veg and covering it with netting or cloches to keep the pigeons off should then be a whole lot easier.
And then I can turn my attention to the rampant chicory that has, as always, taken over my patch of what should be a wild flower meadow.
Still a bit too early to put these in as we’re still having the occasional overnight frost.
Let’s celebrate Yorkshire’s Greatest Photographers . . .
Happy birthday John.
Other Great Yorkshire Photographers are available. Apologies to Paul, Robert, Jim . . .
My right thumb is doing well – I’d sprained it with a marathon session of snipping back the ivy and hawthorn – but I’m still keen to practice drawing with my non-dominant left hand. These chitted Maris Bard first early seed potatoes are ideal subjects for my wobbly pen.
More memories of Batley School of Art in the late 1960s. My thanks to the graphically gifted alumni who commented on my last post.
We were lucky to have experts in ceramics, textiles, graphic design, printmaking and painting and decorating at Batley but there was only one tutor who had worked – as I hoped to – as a freelance illustrator.
Peter Ludlam had started as a graphics tutor a few years before I started at Batley. My thanks to his daughter Danae for the photograph. He was part of the post war generation who were called up for National Service. Danae tells me:
You were called up to National Service at 18 but could defer it for 2 years if in full time education.
My father went to Leeds School of Art and then did his 2 year National Service.
A former student John Oldfield recalls when Peter started as a tutor at Batley:
I started at Batley in September 1963 Peter started one year later and was a fantastic breath of fresh air. Generous with his advice and highly motivating.
He had a small studio under his house which he let me use and even let me borrow his brand new Vauxhall Cresta to attend an interview! Great guy, many fond memories and much gratitude.
Nick Dormand started at Batley a decade later in 1973:
I loved the rigour of the foundation course and the way it was designed to introduce me to as many disciplines as possible in the year. I remember Peter Ludlum with fondness .. he suggested that I should study graphics but I wanted the freedom of a fine art course which I followed at Exeter . Looking back I don’t think I would have survived the free wheeling Fine Art course without the grounding Batley gave me! I am now retired but I spent pretty much the whole of my working life in Art Education which was so enjoyable. So I have much to thank Batley for!
There was once an exhibition of tutors’ work in the basement studio (below the locker room in my photo) at the back of the main building. I was interested to see some of Mr Ludlam’s illustrations for advertising. It was in the regular format for magazines of the day: main illustration, paragraph of copy and ‘pack shot’ in the bottom right corner. These might have been illustrations for Schweppes’ long-running ‘Schweppeshire’ series. They were something along those lines.
He once told he gave up on illustration because, in his opinion, the job always went to ‘young Nigel who does those lovely drawings’. i.e. there was an element of nepotism in choosing illustrators in the 1950s.
In 1969 British photographers were making an impact and it was sometimes assumed that illustration was old-fashioned and out-dated. Some illustration courses closed down.
One day when he was chatting to me in the graphics studio he spotted something with his illustrator’s eye that wasn’t immediately apparent at that time:
“Are you growing a beard?” he asked.
“Well, trying to!”
“Beardy Bell!”
Thank you Peter.
This month’s spread from the Dalesman. The morel growing from the foot of a wall just down the road was a new species for me.