Kitten von Mew at Art Couture Painswick

The morning started out rainy, but, as promised, it brightened up in time to give us a glorious afternoon in the graveyard for the fifth annual Art Couture Painswick (ACP) festival

Painswick is a very pretty ye-olde-Cotteswolde village of the sort favoured by biscuit-tin designers, just up the road from here. It has the reputation for being rather staid. So I was surprised to hear reports, in recent years, of a 'Wearable Art festival" being held among the gravestones in the iconic graveyard with its 99 topiarised yew trees. This year I decided to check it out. The fact that Hattie Briggs, of Stroud, winner of a recent folk singing award, was performing, and that a Dakota plane was going to do a flyover, influenced my decision.

I got there by bus, in time to see Hattie AND the Dakota, though could not get a decent shot of the latter! The costumes and body art (which is basically painting almost-nude models' bodies) were frankly amazing, but in order to see the main stage, it was necessary to climb on to an elaborate tomb or monument, several feet above the ground. There were then more audience-members' hats in the viewfinder than I'd have liked! It was a mixture of Glynebourne meets St Martin's final year fashion shot, but held in a churchyard! Families were picnicking on rugs or deckchairs, with bottles of wine and Irish wolfhounds/poodles lounging close by; children were hula hooping among the tombstones; an old gaffer was loudly complaining 'the trouble with the British is that they don't know the meaning of the word entertainment'; and on the stage, models and musicians strutted and performed to an enthusiastic crowd with loud applause and very, very long lenses!

At some point early on, after I'd eaten a falafel salad on a rather-too-pointy monument, I bumped into my friend Kitty and her daughter. We chummed around together, eventually bumping into CleanSteve's friend Andrew, and then, miracle of miracles, CleanSteve himself! I hadn't checked my phone, so did not know he was coming along after his morning meeting. We stayed until the final prizes had been awarded, and wended our weary way home. Thank goodness for refreshments, especially the tea stall!

I've gone with this portrait of the singer Kitten Von Mew, who was dressed as a WWII forces sweetheart, singing Cheek to Cheek. She wasn't the most extraordinary thing or person I saw all day, but she has the advantage of being in focus! Her act was very polished, though the whole nostalgia-theme for WWI and now II still has me baffled. Do we really want to go back to the blitz, the blackout, trench foot, and the dreaded telegram?