Fiery Fred Trueman Statue - Detail

This picture shows a detail from the statue of Yorkshire cricketer Fred Trueman unveiled this week in Skipton, Yorkshire.

Fred Trueman - A Yorkshire Cricketer Unveiled

This picture shows the unveiling in Skipton yesterday of a bronze statue of Yorkshire and England cricketer Fred Truman by his widow Veronica.

In the photograph can be seen Veronica Trueman, Dickie Bird former Yorkshire teammate, Graham Ibbeson the sculptor and Steve Butcher, deputy managing director of Northern Rail.

Fiery Fred as he was known was a true Yorkshire icon and a sporting great. Frederick Sewards Trueman OBE (6 February 1931 – 1 July 2006) was regarded as one of the greatest fast bowlers in history, he was first man to take 300 Test wickets.

The bronze statue showing Fred larger than life in full flow at the sport in which he excelled can be seen at the canal basin in Skipton, Yorkshire. The £90,000 Fred Trueman sculpture was funded by the Fred Trueman Appeal which was set up by Northern Rail and Craven District Council in 2007.

I was pleased to have a few words with Yorkshire born sculptor Graham Ibbeson, I think his statue of Leeds airman Arthur Aaron VC that stands at one end of Eastgate, Leeds is thought provoking and well done.

I also caught up with Look North's (BBC) very own Crista Ackroyd, but I will save that for another day.

Scotsman's Arms - Kirkgate

This picture of a figurehead above a doorway on Kirkgate in Leeds city centre is the head of a Scotsman.

This building at 106 Kirkgate, Leeds was once a Public House called the Scotsman's Arms and all I know of it is that in 1881 it was run by Waller & Sons. Today the building has seen better days and it is home to an amusement arcade.

There are several pubs in Leeds with these carved heads over the doorway, I will try to visit them all and photograph them.

Vera Leigh - SOE Secret Agent

My photo today shows a Rose Valois brown wool felt hat with feather and wood ornament trims, c. 1940. Parisian millinery Rose Valois founded in 1927 had as a designer Vera Leigh who when the Germans invaded France in 1940 joined the resistance.

Vera Leigh was (born Vera Glass) here in Leeds on this day the 17th March 1903, abandoned by her parents as a baby she was adopted by American Eugene Leigh who trained horses in France. After training in the fashion industry Vera worked as a designer at Rose Valois.

After helping allied servicemen escape from France, in 1942 Vera too escaped and found her way to England. Vera volunteered her services to the war effort and I guess because she spoke French like and native and had lived and worked in France she was recruited by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) for dangerous work in France.

Given the codename Simone, Vera was flown back to France on 13 May 1943 as a courier and was arrested by the Gestapo in October the same year in Paris. Secret agents like Vera Leigh were subject to the Nacht und Nebel (German for "Night and Fog") order that effectively meant that captured agents would disappear.

Along with fellow SOE agents Diana Rowden, Andrée Borrel and Sonya Olschanezky, Vera was taken to the Concentration Camp at Natzweiler on 6th July 1944. Later that same day (one month after the D Day landings in Normandy) the four women were injected with phenol and pushed into the furnace.

Vera Leigh was 41 years old at the time of her death in the only concentration camp run by the Germans in France (the French ran one at Drancy). Vera was nominated for the George Cross for her work in occupied France, but after the war the powers that be wanted to forget all about SOE so nothing came of it.

In France the SOE Memorial is a monument to the members of the Special Operations Executive F Section who lost their lives for the liberation of France. The memorial was unveiled in the town of Valençay in the Indre département of France on May 6, 1991. The memorial lists the names of the 91 men and 13 women members of the SOE who gave their lives for France's freedom.

Vera Eugenie Leigh was one of 39 women agents sent to France from F section of SOE and you do not have to be good at maths to work out the odds. On this her birthday I thought it would be nice to dedicate this little post to Vera, a brave and resourceful woman.

This photograph is courtesy of Jonathan Walford at Kickshaw Productions and the Fashion History Museum.

Anyone wishing to know more of the women of SOE, I can recommend the following:

A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Lost Agents of SOE written by Sarah Helm, I have almost finished reading this book and it is well written and full of detail.

Les femmes de l'ombre (2008) AKA Female Agents, available on DVD, I saw this at the cinema and also have the DVD. Lest we forget says it all, this film is not for the squemish and like the book I think this film is well worth watching.

Teasel at Meanwood Valley Urban Farm

This picture is of the seed heads of a teasel plant, a wildflower that has become popular with some gardeners.

I spotted this teasel plant at the Meanwood Valley Urban Farm and with blue sky in the background I could not resist getting my camera out. I had gone to this city farm to look around and to get some photographs for my Leeds Daily Photo.

I think the teasel is quite an attractive plant and because it attracts butterflies when in flower and finches like the seeds later in the summer I would be pleased to have this in any garden I might have. I can see though that some might not want this weed that can grow to 2m in height in their flower beds.

Dipsacus fullonum, syn. Dipsacus sylvestris, is a species of flowering plant known by the common names Fuller's teasel and wild teasel. The teasel was formerly widely used in textile processing, providing a natural comb for cleaning, aligning and raising the nap on fabrics, particularly wool. Yorkshire formerly had a lot of textile mills so I guess that may be why this plant is quite common here.

Rooster Meanwood Urban Farm

I am not sure what breed of chicken this rooster is, he was in the hen house when I photographed the eggs a few days ago at Meanwood Valley Urban Farm here in Leeds.

Sheep at Meanwood Valley Urban Farm

This photo shows another of the larger farm animals that can be seen at Meanwood Valley Urban Farm, a sheep.

I think that this sheep is a breed called White Faced Woodland sheep also known as a Penistone sheep from the Yorkshire town. The White Faced Woodland is one of the largest of the hill breeds of sheep.

Since I started my Leeds Daily Photo I have photographed quite a few farm animals and I now have a better idea of the various breeds of pig, cattle, chicken and sheep but I am no expert and usually check with the farmer just to make sure.

Dexter Cow at Meanwood Valley Urban Farm

This picture of a Dexter Cow at the Meanwood Valley Urban Farm shows the largest of the various animals that can be seen on the farm.

The Dexter is the smallest breed of cattle here in Britain, they are mostly black like this cow but can also be red or dun in colour.

I grew up in the countryside and had neighbours that farmed so I have a pretty good idea of farms and the various livestock that might be found there. I think it is a really good idea that children from the city of Leeds have this great resource here in Meanwood at this urban farm and that they can see and perhaps feed a real farm animal.

Meanwood Valley Urban Farm

This picture shows the front view of the main building, the EpiCentre at the Meanwood Valley Urban Farm site. The EpiCentre opened in 1999 and provides classrooms, exhibition space, a library and meeting facilities as well as office space.

Opened in 1980 Meanwood Valley Urban Farm is part of the City Farm movement and it is a registered charity. Covering a 16.5 acre site the farm offers educational programmes to schools and is also a leisure resource open to visitors daily, the cafe is closed on Mondays.

The Meanwood Valley Urban Farm is located on land originally granted to the monks of Kirkstall Abbey in 1240.

Theme Day - The Tenin Technique

Today my picture is of a wall at the Royal Armouries museum here in Leeds.

This is the first CDP Theme Day that I have joined in, this one I really wanted to join. Today is the 5th Anniversary Tribute to Eric of the Paris Daily Photo, so today my photo is a rather poor attempt at viewing the subject through an unusual angle, as used by Eric with such verve.

Back in 2005 Eric Tenin started a daily photo blog of his home city Paris. I doubt that he knew that 5 years later there would be hundreds of daily photo blogs around the globe following his simple concept. I was a late comer to the City Daily Photo community and Paris Daily Photo was one of the first that I noticed and followed.

I am pleased to congratulate Eric on this anniversary. Well Done!

You can see thumbnails from the many Daily Photo blogs that celebrate this day by clicking this link.

Thank You Google - The Search Engine

Few large industry dominant companies can perhaps be as well thought of by their millions of users and customers as Google the Internet search engine firm.

This picture is a photograph of an office PC user faced with the Google front page.

All of us and especially those under the age of around 25 take Google for granted. Google started life in the garage of Susan Wojcicki, now Vice President of Product Management at Google. Ten years ago Google had 40 employees, today there are around 20,000 and in the meantime Google is the beginning of most peoples daily web experience.

I like Google (the search engine), it is so simple to use and also I think very good at what it does. My Leeds Daily Photo is now 15 months old and my photography is looked at by people from all over the world, partly due to Google. When I was a young man this would have been very unlikely.

Today people from around the globe and especially the English speaking world can find my photography and short articles about life here in Leeds and Yorkshire just a few clicks away.

More than 90% of current visitors to the Leeds Daily Photo arrive through a Google search and the remainder come from some well known search engines like Yahoo and Webcrawler also some pretty obscure ones too.

Yorkshire Lambs - Meanwood

These two lambs shown in this picture are, I think, White Faced Woodland Sheep and I photographed them at the Meanwood Valley Urban Farm here in Leeds this weekend.

There are several new born lambs on the farm, but they were sleeping in the hay and so I took the twins photo and they are about 2 weeks old. This is something that can be seen on farms that keep sheep all over Yorkshire, I like to see the new lambs in the fields sunning themselves in the bright spring sunshine.

Where Do Eggs Come From?

Where do eggs come from? My little sister, not so little now, taught in a school in North London and many of the children thought eggs came from Tesco. My sister used to take the kids out of school to an urban farm and show these city dwellers where the food they ate came from.

Here in Leeds not far from the city centre is Meanwood Valley Urban Farm and today I was driving and saw the sign to the farm and called in. I have, despite living and working in Leeds from many years, never been to the Meanwood Valley Urban Farm so I called in to look around and get some pictures for the Leeds daily photo.

This picture is a couple of hens eggs in amongst straw in a hen house at the farm, the rooster looked quite put out when I put my head in to get this photo.

I shall be posting more pictures and information about this urban farm over the next few days.

Experiment With Photography

This picture is a photograph taken last night in my lounge with me playing with my camera and a sparkler firework.

This is something I have never done before, but after a few attempts I quite like the result, it does show my name. One thing I did learn, it would have been simpler and easier with someone to help. I do not smoke so it took me a while to get the lighter to work, I bought it with this in mind a while back. I gave someone some indoor fireworks for her birthday and thats what gave me the idea of playng with the light generated.

Photography for me has been a journey and whilst I have learnt quite a lot on the road there is still much to learn.