The View from my Window

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233/365: Georgian Weekend re-enactors, Bewdley
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There's another post over on the addme community which lists under Dealbreakers "no centrists or Republicans". I will never get over this weird American habit of seeing "centrist" as a term of abuse. Actually, I find it a tad offensive if it's being used to mean "really right-winger but won't admit it" since in the UK at least that's gibberish – though I'm not certain in the relevant poster's context, and I'm not going to go and nag them about it. We wouldn't click anyway, based on the rest of their post.

To more everyday matters, then. The weather was enormously better today than yesterday: it was rather cool, but that was moderated by plenty of sunshine. This was good news for the second half of Bewdley's Georgian Weekend, which had been rather compromised by all the grotty weather yesterday. I didn't hang around to see things like the drinking chocolate demonstration, but I did spot this group of well-dressed ladies in High Street! Note authentic Georgian double yellow lines. ;)

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232/365: Dusk at Bewdley station
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It rained a hay of a lot today, mostly in the afternoon and early evening. As such, I didn't do much in the way of walking. Indeed, I spent most of the day indoors. However, there was one exception. A friend was visiting the SVR as I had done yesterday, and although we weren't coinciding on the trains we agreed to meet for a pub meal in the evening. I ended up going to Bewdley station to meet him, and despite some close calls with catching trains it worked out very nicely. The pub was busy without being unpleasant, still a few families around at tables close to ours near the bar at 7:30pm or whatever it was. The food and drink came quickly and was tasty, and by the time we left a bit over an hour later the rain had mostly stopped. For what it's worth, I had sausages, chips and baked beans for the first course and ice cream with cookie crumble for the second. I chose to stick to soft drinks, so I had a pint of Pepsi Max Cherry and then half a glass of water.

I barely took any photos all day, so today's 365 is a very basic phone photo taken in the gathering gloom of dusk at Bewdley station. That's Camelot, the same locomotive in my picture from yesterday and indeed the one my friend arrived on. :)

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231/365: 73082 Camelot, Kidderminster Town
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I spent today at the SVR's Autumn Steam Gala. By some miracle the weather was kind, dry and even slightly warm at times. I got to do pretty much everything I'd set out to do, and I did a lot of walking (just over 22,000 steps). I didn't actually realise I'd done that many until I got home! Anyway, here's one of the four visiting locomotives: BR Standard Class 5 no. 73082 Camelot. This engine was built at Derby Works in 1955 and withdrawn from British Railways service just over a decade later. It was eventually rescued and restored, and it first ran in preservation in 1995. The loco had never been to the SVR before, something that was true of all four visiting engines. This was one of the few occasions on which hazy sunshine broke through at -- in this case -- Kidderminster Town, the southern terminus of the 16-mile line.

That subject line? Canterlot is the capital city? of Equestria in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

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229/365: Front gate of The Coppins
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It was pretty dismal weather today. Nothing extreme, but plenty of light to moderate rain and basically no sun. Not especially warm for the middle of September, either. This is a month that can go either way, but 2025 seems to have decided it's going to plump for "early autumn" mode rather than "late summer" mode. At least I had a loyalty card voucher for a toffee fudge muffin in Greggs. Today's photo is pretty boring, just an admittedly quite nicely made front gate for a house on the Kidderminster/Bewdley border. I'm not absolutely certain which town it lands in postally, but it's not as if I mind very much either way!

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( Photo of book page under here - please read post before clicking through )

Note: I will be tagging all posts about this with "sandra peabody" only. If you don't want to read them, skip anything I write with that tag, as it's not a name I use in any other context.

This is only one part of the source material for my discomfort with Sandra Peabody's treatment on the set of The Last House on the Left in 1971.¹ This is a photo of a page from David A. Szulkin's book, Wes Craven's Last House on the Left: The Making of a Horror Classic (2nd edition: FAB Press, 2000), which is widely considered the most comprehensive book of its kind about the film, and is also notable in having the co-operation of virtually all the principal cast and crew. It is the only known time that Peabody's recollections about the movie have been published since the Seventies. Because it's 25 years old and long out of print, it's hard to obtain at a sensible price – but I very recently managed to do so.
¹ The film was released in 1972, but the shoot occurred in autumn 1971.

This part of the shoot was among the most difficult, since it covered the torture and rape of Mari (played by Peabody) by Krug (David Hess) the sadistic leader of a gang containing him, two other men and one woman. The scene was shot in the Connecticut woods, as Szulkin notes. I've deliberately avoided uploading a part of the book which contains any of the often quite unpleasant stills from this sequence, but the full text is pretty graphic about what happens in the story. As usual on my Dreamwidth, I don't use formal content warnings because everyone has different assessments of what needs them – but I would advise only reading the context if you can deal with this.

The personnel quoted here are as follows:

Wes Craven (director) says he liked Peabody, that she was "plucky" and that although she was less confident than Lucy (Grantham, who played Mari's friend and fellow gang victim, Phyllis) she "hung in there" even though she was "treated very roughly" and told Craven afterwards that she felt like the gang actors really hated her.
Sandra Cassell¹ (Mari) says, in toto, "No comment."
David Hess (Krug) talks about how he sets parameters for a scene like this, but adds "I think I frightened her a few times... I actually got pretty physical with her. She may have been a little intimidated, because she couldn't back off when the camera was running."
Yvonne Hannemann (assistant director) says it was "upsetting" and that "Sandra had to be consoled; it really got very rough." She adds that Hess was so frightening that "a lot of the acting was just method acting".
¹ Sandra Peabody. Listed as "Cassell" in the on-screen credits.

That's a summary; if you're able to deal with it, I do suggest reading the complete context in the page used for my uploaded photo, since the full nature of the scene is important when considering those reactions. But the sequence of comments about this particular scene is uncomfortable to me even as it stands, and not merely because of the on-screen events. When I dug a bit further into what was going on, it became even more so – and not just regarding this scene. As I said a few days ago, as and when I post more details this will be sourced as I go.

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226/365: River Severn in the rain
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A rather wet and miserable day today, which is a pity as it was Sunday and I didn't have anything much I needed to do. I forced myself out for a couple of walks, and the heavens only opened on one of them, which I suppose was some kind of a result! Here's the Severn, looking upstream from the edge of town. Not the nicest September day you'll ever encounter around here. Note the swans hunkering down on the steps of the rowing club on the far bank. Not much else to say, other than that I got a sandwich in Sainsbury's at 75% off because it was Use By today. Chicken and pork stuffing, from memory. Not bad, though I wouldn't have paid full whack for it.

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224/365: Mosaic step, Bewdley
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Okay, maybe not naughty. This is a preserved mosaic-style step on the front of a shop in Bewdley town centre. These days it's a beautician's called something totally different. I don't actually know what Thomas Owens sold, because he was certainly well before my time! The marble effect on the front is just taking things a step too far, really. Honestly, Mr Owens, have you never heard of subtlety? :P

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220/365: Bewdley from The Racks (taken 8/9)
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221/365: Mallard ducks, River Severn (taken 9/9)
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Why 730, you may ask? Easy. It's 365 times two! My lack of a photo post yesterday evening was a deliberate decision on my part: after the much longer and more serious post I'd made earlier that day,¹ I didn't really feel like doing something light and silly. That means you get two pictures today. Unfortunately for you, they're both really boring because I didn't have time to take any interesting photos. The first photo shows a view of some of Bewdley town centre from a path (called The Racks for reasons I don't know) just outside said centre. The second photo shows some Mallard ducks on the River Severn, also in Bewdley. I make absolutely no promises that my photos will get any more interesting from here!
¹ Since deleted.