While rummaging through boxes of old negatives in search of a certain damaged negative I am wondering if I might resurrect, I happened upon a handful of photos from my brief, obscured* career as a television extra. The series was Seaforth, filmed in Leeds, and a member of the choir I was in was organist at the church chosen to film a memorial service for the war dead after which the military police showed up to arrest the hero. They needed a choir. So I took a day off work, and went back to the 1940s. All the mens’ hair was too long, so they got haircuts, and all the womens’ was too short, so we got wigs, though the hairdresser was vexed that the wigs had too posh a hairstyle for our class. She teased and tugged and restyled. It was mid afternoon before the hairstyling and the dressing and the makeup and the standing around progressed to filming, which consisted of standing in the choir stall watching the hero squeeze into a row, take a hymnbook and start conspicuously singing. Over and over again. *Alas, when the series aired, in the single long shot down the aisle, I was hidden behind the bishop. My gutteral pronunciation of Earth, though, is audible on the sound-track rendition of “Abide with Me.”

The view from the choir stalls.