Diamond Jubilee Weekend - Village Party

Monday 4^th June 2012

 

The REAL Jubilee party day! 

 The children are on half term holiday, the scarecrows are looking a little bedraggled and at 4pm the party began! Music by Mike Reed (R&R), Tony King on the bagpipes, St Andrews Singers & 'High Water Mark', donkey rides, free hog roast to village residents, tea and cupcakes from the WI, cash bar, face painting by the Playgroup, games like ‘tip & run’ cricket run by Chelmondiston Primary School, Target Bowls by the Bowls club, the Rowing Machine challenge - altogether made a wonderful community spirited time.

The hog was on the roast from early morning, the marquees were successfully erected (once the instructions had been found), bunting was tied, chairs were put ready and the wooden table and chair sets (permanent school property) were cleared of all (gigantic) pigeon poo, but only after many papers, hands and bums had already had a sticky close encounter!

The weather was dry! And as the community started streaming through the gate at 4pm, the sun shone! Sorry about the Thames Pageant people yesterday, but today’s village party was dry, sunny, pleasant and fun!

“Are you a village resident?” Residents got a ticket for a free hog-roast (i.e. roll and freshly cut hog meat!), visitors were asked to pay £1.50.  This party was not a fund-raising event, it was a celebration of the Queen’s 60 years on the throne.  The community put more than their pennyworth in; donations in cash, cupcakes, milk for the teas etc. all made it very much a village party. Rolls had to be constantly sourced as the party grew, and the beer tent sold all their wares!

Village children under 16 got a free ice-cream, and (pre-arranged) received a jubilee mug.  The entire afternoon was a family occasion.

Taking my turn on distributing free hog-roast & ice-cream tickets meant I met more new people, but it was most fascinating to hear long-time residents marvel at the number of people they didn’t know mingling on the school playing field! The longest residence time I heard was a man who had been in the village for 70 years! Others gave their age away with their "48 years!", "27 years!" etc!

The bowls club tried to get more members while running their ‘target bowls’ competition and the local ‘thespian leader’ didn’t miss opportunities of touting for more men and women for the stage!

As the sun set, and most of the party goers had taken their children home, the stragglers helped dismantle tents, pick up plastic cups and return chairs. Everyone agreed the Village Party had been a huge success. The sun shone and everyone had fun! 

(Not a photo event unless you were 'media' so all these photos are google sourced except the sunset - a genuine sunset a few months ago, and the ones below)

Diamond Jubilee Weekend - Sunday

Sunday 3^rd June 2012

I suggested, aware that she who gets the vision gets the job, that together with the traditional combined church service (Anglican, Methodist, Baptist), we have a Sunday Brunch! Brunch from 10.30 and the service at 12noon. However, I am very grateful to the long-standing community members who actually carried out the Sunday Brunch and combined Jubilee Sunday service! They planned the brunch, the cooking facilities, the buying, the serving and even the washing up! Thank you! They were the ones who knew the people to contact, knew where to buy, how much to buy, who to ask to help, and the seating and tables!  The ministers of the three churches did their thing and representatives from each played their part with the Jubilee liturgy, the hymns, readings, sermon, prayers, and the national anthem. Thank you to everyone who planned, worked, and cleaned up afterwards!

‘The Plan’ was that Sunday 3^rd June would be a beautiful sunny summer’s day like it had been for the past week. However, come the weekend, (and if you watched anything of the Jubilee Thames Pageant you would have seen) the clouds ganged up, threw down raindrops and blew a lot of cold air over more than our little village!  So the marquee that was planned to serve the brunch, was not needed. The envisaged scenes of people standing out on the soft green grass of the parish church eating bacon rolls, drinking coffee, fruit juices and eating pain chocolat while shielding their eyes from the pleasant Sunday morning sun, were replaced with chatting villagers laughing and sharing stories in the church school room and spilling over into the church itself.  Everyone was relaxed and unphased by the change of plan.

Inside St Andrews

‘The Planned’ open air combined service became an inside service of thanksgiving to God for giving our Queen the wisdom and strength to rule over us for sixty years.  The Anglican church’s usual congregation was more than tripled and not just with regulars from the other two churches, but with ‘non-regulars’ as well.

Like the Open Gardens, this became a time to meet new people.

The clouds, wind and rain were not going to stop the good British people from having a colourful pageant on the River Thames with over 1000 boats of various kinds and sizes joining Her Majesty’s Barge as it sailed from Battersea Bridge to Tower Bridge. From the comfort of our dry homes, many of us watched as red, white and blue bunting, Union Jacks, huge umbrellas, and lots of wet happy people waved and cheered along the banks!

Diamond Jubilee Sunday over with Monday still to come!

Diamond Jubilee Weekend

Saturday 2^nd June 2012

Today the Village showed off 10 Open Gardens and the scarecrow trail is underway!  Having a Village event like this is an excellent way to meet new people!  We aimed for the gardens of friends first and then branched out to some of the others, meeting the same people in different gardens! The gardens were lovely although some said this was the wrong time of year – very in-between with the Spring flowers finished and the Summer flowers not yet in full bloom.  But that didn’t stop people looking at the unusual, the well-known, the vege gardens, the orchards, the neat formal rose gardens and the nicely cut lawns! No pics I’m afraid (the English are a private lot and don’t like people taking photos of them or their things!) so that’s why I’ve included some pics of what’s come up in our garden!

I love poppies; their hairy stems and bowed buds! And this Apricot colour is lovely!

Foxgloves

Irises in the pond

Strawberries?

We have left our garden pretty much as it was when we moved here just eight months ago, to see what is going to come up each season – it’s a nice excuse anyway! We’ve had some lovely surprises! To my delight I’ve found red field poppies popping up, but unfortunately their delicate petals just don’t last long in the wind.  The dainty white, purple and pink ‘weeds’ (I think!) taking over huge tracts of garden space are so pretty. Someone said that weeds are all the plants you just don’t want in your garden! Blue irises growing in the pond (now devoid of fish probably due to a heron or cormorant’s hunger pangs) and lots of greenery of various shades make up a country garden look, for a while, until it starts to look untidy and frazzled at the edges!

Miniature rose in the front garden

Another kind of poppy! Nice & bright.

The humble buttercup!

A pink 'weed'?!

It was getting a little nippy by the 5pm closing time as we left our neighbours little garden but we met a couple we’d seen at other gardens obviously looking for our neighbours Open Garden sign. As we already knew they’d shut shop for the day and were preparing to traipse around hunting scarecrows, we invited 'new friends' in to ours for a cup of tea instead!  That’s how to meet new people!

An interestingly shaped pink flower!

A variety of Lavender!

One thing I now know I do want in my garden – Carnations. I used to grow Carnations in my Cape Town garden but discovered they were not easy to grow in KwaZulu Natal, so to find them growing in English gardens – no greenhouse necessary – is good. Now to find someone who’ll give me a cutting, and to decide where to put them!

As for the scarecrows (sorry, again no photos), there was a chimney sweep scarecrow at the chimney sweep’s house, a “Hamish Willie-uhhms” complete with bagpipes at the Scottish lady’s house, a traditional potato farmer at the potato farmer's house, and I believe the winning scarecrow was “Liz and her Corgies!” which we might get round to seeing tomorrow. And of course an assortment of others at gates and on street corners!

Three months of village life

It’s been three months and village life is still good!  So what is different from city or town living?

       Oh, just little things like making sure you get to the post office in the morning ‘cos it’s closed in the afternoon, or remembering that the butcher has Wednesday half-day closing. Timing bus trips into town (Ipswich) because the bus only runs every 90 minutes, and remembering the petrol station is 5 miles away!

       Little things like less than a 5 minute walk takes us to beautiful open farmland, golden barley swaying in the breeze, sunrises over the river, sunsets over the farmer’s fields, and silver sparkly stars on a clear crisp night! 

(Photo by http://nutmegphotographyexplorations.blogspot.com/)

(Sunset over Felixtowe from Shotley Gate)

       It's the wind in your hair and face while watching the sun set over the River Orwell.

  

       It’s little things like buying sausages from the butcher who has freshly killed pheasants hanging outside his shop! Or donning wellies and walking the dog through the muddy paths and puddles to the farm shop, filling a bring-your-own egg box and leaving the cash on the table!

       It’s the little things like getting involved with the community planning for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, volunteering at the village primary school and a families support charity.

       It’s smiling and greeting people in the street and having time to stop and chat about the dog, the weather, the past!

Village life is good!