May Festival

After many months of agonising over whether to start a blog, last week I finally extracted the digit and promptly had the most busy weekend ever, thwarting my attempts to post at every turn. Short of posting at half past stupid in the morning (not a good idea, my typing errors are legendary if rushed!), my new baby just had to wait.

What I wanted to start with was the fabulous May Festival we went to the previous weekend.

Kingsbury May Festival was a totally unexpected find. My youngest daughter (the Mad One) is rather fond (understatement of the year) of the
3 Daft Monkeys and so we picked the nearest gig and bought tickets. This happened to be in a lovely village called Kingsbury Episcopi on the Somerset levels. Well, a lovely time was had by all, even Scary Daughter coming out of the coffin and dancing, and it transpired that this was part of a May Festival continuing on the Monday. So after a jolly good bop on the Saturday, off we went up the A303 on an unexpected jaunt.

Well, I suppose I expected something along the lines of a glorified summer fete but the event was much more extensive. What really impressed me was the way the whole community seemed to be working together. Having had some experience with finding volunteers to man events (School PTA) I can appreciate the enormity of the task. Scouts (or cadets) were staffing the parking fields, the local school PTA had a baked potato stall and a separate ice cream stand. More local volunteers were doing ploughman lunches in the hall, refreshments in the church and even walking about with baskets of pasties. Many more local businesses and services were represented, so many in fact I wondered where all the thousands of people came from that attended!

My absolute favourite thing to watch at this time of year is Maypole Dancing and I was not disappointed! Unfortunately we seemed to be wedged behind a very tall, fidgety man and a woman in a rather large and floriferous hat! My daughter did manage to get a picture of the lovely pattern made by the ribbons though.

After the procession, all the May withy garlands were put in the churchyard and they looked so pretty fluttering in the breeze.
















Also in the church there were recitals and an art exhibition.

Several fields were given over to games and pursuits of various kinds and all the way up through the main street were craft stalls. So many, I really wish I had taken more money! As it was I resisted as much as possible, but still came home with these -
















The green bag was only £3.20!

The cactus is knitted!

The card has a beautiful beaded heart on the front that can be removed to hang in a window.

The two little boxes at the front are pill boxes and the photo really does not do them justice.

Plus a 'green man' single bed cover, which I will show you another time (I have plans for it!)

Banana tea bread just out of the oven and spaghetti to cook for five hungry children and My Marathon Runner! See you soon.