Wurzel Gummidge was 'ere

This is a scene from the end of the day, at the Daisybank recreation ground fete. I went up there after we'd unpacked the car on returning from my own school fete. There was a DJ playing sets, a tea tent, a couple of children selling their own toys and books, a flower show/country fair tent, and a crowd of children playing in the fenced-off area for little children, the same place where my own nieces and nephews used to play. Mostly, though, because it was the end of the day, the children were having the best time ever throwing straw at each other. Several bales had been demolished, and everyone appeared to be having a fabulous time. I didn't see or hear one child crying!

The man in the left in this shot appears to be making himself a Wurzel Gummidge / Boris Johnson hairdo out of straw (Wurzel Gummidge is a scarecrow, immortalised in a children's book by Barbara Euphan Todd, and tv series. A mangel wurzel is a kind of turnip, so I'm guessing the the scarecrow had a turnip for a head).

As the music was very loud, I jumped at the chance to go with a friend I'd bumped into, on an informal tour of the Spider Lane allotments. It's another micro-world in there, of neat sheds, companion planting, and rampaging raspberries. I thoroughly enjoyed the tour, and left my friend to her raspberry-picking while I wandered home.

My own school fete, in the morning and early afternoon, was incredibly sedate by comparison. Some of the stalls were run by nuns. No one threw straw. Many of the children were in wheelchairs, because it's a special school. I did ask one of the visiting old-timers if she remembered my cousin, who had attended school there in the 1960s. She assured me that this person is now dead. I said that I didn't think she was. We wondered if there could have been two pupils with the same name. We agreed that it was a shame that the new-build is being built on the formerly magnificent back lawn. This is the most logical site for it, being close to the boarding house, but memories are being built over. We could not show people around the building, it's not finished yet because of the shortage of materials and lorry drivers caused by the perfect storm of Brexit and CoVid.

As we were all outside, we didn't have to wear masks, and the weather was near-perfect. I'd brought my gazebo, but only really needed it for shade. A shower started at about 3pm, but my friend had arrived by then, and she helped me pack up. Steve came and scooped up all our stuff in the car, tired because he'd been acting as a steward at the open day at the Chapel of Rest. It turns out the the figures for the day's trading were very good, as were Steve's card sales. I'd certainly enjoyed chatting to many people whom I hadn't seen for over a year, thanks to the pandemic. If all school fetes were as good as this, I'd do many more! I even won a cuddly tiger toy on the teddy tombola. At this point, my cup ran over.