How the other half picnic….
We seem to be catching up on or posting quite a bit on news this weekend!
Last weekend we had another surprise package of a weekend. A trip up northwards (just a little bit) to attend the first concert that we’ve been to in ages. It wasn’t quite the sort of crowd or concert that we’ve been used to in the past. I can honestly say that this is the first concert where I’ve seen cut-crystal champagne glasses and silver cutlery arranged on a linen tablecloth, along with a 7 candle candelabra!
What concert? It was Jools Holland and guests playing in the grounds of Belvoir Castle (pronounced, apparently, “beaver castle” – go figure!). And very good they were too. Bravo (how very English of me)! But… the music for us was almost overshadowed by the fun of people watching. A hugely mixed crowd there, from family groups with young kids to family groups with older kids to groups of 20 somethings to groups of 40, 50 and 60 somethings. And everything in between. Including a hen’s night of about 20 women right next door to us.
The most entertaining bits of the night were pretty much at the beginning and the end. The beginning because we arrived to find a queue about 400m long of people all carrying tables, chairs, chilly bins etc. While us boys waited with all the gear, the girls duly trotted to the back to queue and mark a place for us. This was the strategy that most people arriving followed. So very English to have that many people queuing so nicely without any sort of stewards etc. around to tell people what to do (which would probably just have made things a complete disaster).
I did say “most people” didn’t I? One family arrived and the mother took one look at the queue and said something like “that’s a ridiculous queue. I’m not joining that.” in a fairly posh English accent, and marched herself and her family up to the front and just barged in. Then she somehow managed to find some way to completely ignore anyone who tried to politely point out that she might have, you know, jumped the queue just a little?… I still can’t quite believe they got away with it, and I’ve no idea what that taught her kids about how to behave.
Luckily the queue moved pretty quickly anyway and we managed to get in and settled well before anything demanding our attention was happening.
The end was equally entertaing as finding the car in the car park in the dark at the end of the concert was a bit of a mission, but once enough cars had cleared out of the way we managed to track it down. I assume the trip back was smooth. I was asleep for most of it!
And another highlight was Bec’s attempt at opening some Cava… She reckons she’s never opened a bottle of bubbly where the cork goes flying out. And we had no idea what direction it went flying in either. I just hope nobody ended up in A&E due to a cork in the eye!
It helped with the overall enjoyment that the weather was perfect for it too, although we seemed to have forgotten how much cooler the nights get in the countryside. We were very grateful for the rug to cover our knees…
On the way towards the train station on Sunday we called in on another local event. A raft race in “the Deepings” . Apparently this used to be a regular event, but after a couple of years off they seemed to have forgotten what was meant to happen for a while. Which meant that seemed to be running very late, so we saw very few rafts, and even less racing before we had to leave to catch the train back to London. But it didn’t matter.
The village was lovely to walk through, the air fresh, and the fish and chip lunch was probably one of the nicest we’ve had for ages.
There was even nice little fair type thing on the main st. I managed to actually hit some of the sweets with the cork air pistol thingee and knock them off so I could take them home. Twice!
Thanks, Liz & Dave, for a great weekend!