Leslie Bale

After a short illness, Leslie Bale passed away peacefully on May 9th 1998 aged 81 years.

He will be remembered as a kindly spoken, polite, well dressed elderly gentleman but there was a good deal more to him than the unassuming character that he portrayed. His quiet dignity belied his intellect and the work he had been involved in as an architect before moving to Coll with his wife Bunty some ten years ago.

In and around Liverpool and across Wales the colleges, schools, churches and missions that he worked on stand as visible monuments to his skill and thoroughness.

His skills as an artist too were much in evidence from the landscapes he painted for pleasure when not employed at the drawing board.

During his lifetime he had many interests, particularly of a scientific nature, astronomy, medicine and technology. In fact he once admitted that he had he not pursued architecture he would have loved to have been a scientist.

Some of these interests took a firm hold of his thoughts and imagination and there were many humorous aspects to his projects of the past.

Evenings spent constructing radio sets upon the kitchen table surrounded by valves, bits of wire and soldering iron, then being scolded by Bunty when she discovered bits of wire in the bread bin!

The time he almost poisoned himself when the old pantry was turned into a dark room during his photography phase. His cigarette had been absent-mindedly placed to rest on a spilt drop of developing fluid when, moments later, he was reunited with the same cigarette he almost passed out. Realising he must remove the substance he had swallowed by drinking vast quantities of salt water, he was very economic with the truth when Bunty asked why he was visiting the bathroom so often that night!

Then there was the year of the garden, when it rose like a phoenix from the ashes (the garden was scattered with cinders from the steam trains that passed by). Soil tests were taken, seeds sown and the transformation began. The garden was a riot of colour that year with a newly created fish-stocked pond, which satisfied any hunger pangs the cat had from time to time.

We hope that he is chuckling away to himself at these fond memories, as he did so often when he was still with us.

C. Evans