Horbury, Highfield Road

Richard Bell’s Wild West Yorkshire nature diary, Wednesday, 1st October 2008

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IN THE MID 1950s when our family moved to Horbury, the building on the right was a semi-detached shop with Thompson’s butchers on the left side and Earnshaw’s greengrocers on the right. The redbrick building opposite was once an electrical shop of the type now long gone where you could take a kettle, a toaster or even a radio and they’d fix it.

I’ve got my mum to thank for giving me 15 minutes to do this drawing. Because of a mix-up over her appointment, I had to wait for her in the car at the end of Medlock Road for longer than expected.

I made colour notes:

Rf Grn grey, Wall warm, Tre syc, wall dirty stone, Window blue.

Which might not mean much to you but was enough to enable me to add the colour at lunchtime, while the scene was still fresh in my mind.

The wind has turned to the north: a contrast to the warmth of the weekend. We were checking out one of my walks on Sunday and came to a stubble field where a flock of crows had settled, probing the ground. An autumn scene in summer heat.

It feels more like autumn for real now and trees, shrubs and plants are beginning to turn colour.