As I walk into Briery Bank two hundred yards from my house parked cars line the road and families throng the pavements - we are still nearly a kilometre from the action down on the front. At the junction of Briery Bank and Silverdale Road a huge tanker, nothing to do with the event, and totally out of place here, probably due to erroneous use of sat. nav. cannot make the turn because of cars parked on both sides of the two roads - gridlock. I march on past parked cars and jostling pedestrians chattering excitedly eager for the action.
As I turn the corner onto the front the Albion pub is packed inside and out. From my slightly elevated position I am looking over a sea of heads stretching across the whole of the front as far as I can see.
Granddaughter Katie is helping on a sweet stall outside Arnside House Gift shop and I find Mum amongst the crowds with a collecting bucket and we have a chat then I get back to Katie and her friend Lily outside the shop. We watch the impressive display, the first half for the onlookers here, and the second half for the benefit of a special train that parks on the Arnside railway viaduct running across to Grange-over-Sands. Unfortunately the second half is partly obscured by a huge blanket of smoke that emanates from the first half, but it is still a pretty good display - whether the people on the train saw it I know not, but we had a jolly event here to cheer us after the dismal rugby result earlier.
PLEASE CLICK FIRST PHOTO TO SEE ALL AS SLIDESHOW
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| Katie at the sweet stall |
What a night! All run by local volunteers in the village. We raised over £4000! My teacher's voice came in handy for the bucket rattling!
ReplyDeleteHH - That must be a record collection?
ReplyDelete(HH is Katie's mum and my daughter)
Commiserations on the rugby result Conrad. Unlike a small minority of my fellow Scots, I did hope that England could pull it off.
ReplyDeleteThat looks like a wonderful fireworks display.
afoot - I am not a fanatical rugby follower but do take an interest with the international events. I often wonder why in RU they do all that kicking up field which immediately gives possession to the other side. In Rugby League they barge or speed their way upfield retaining possession for much longer periods, or at least to the end of the five tackle rule, when often a small kick ahead gives them a chance of retrieving possession. On this occasion England seemed to consistently give-away possession almost immediately after achieving it.
ReplyDeleteI am far from a serious fan or for that matter very knowledgeable about the game, but do try to watch the Six Nations. One thing I was sure about: Scotland wasn’t in the running.
Deleteit's very impressive the way you manage to catch the mid-air explosions at their maximum impact - is there a special setting for that on your camera ? my 'few and far between' attempts always come out fuzzy and that second or two too late to make a worthwhile picture.
ReplyDeletegimmer - I used a setting called "Hand held niight scene" in "Scene" on my Panasonic TZ 80
ReplyDeletethanks - i'll try that
ReplyDeletetalking about Guy Fawkes night (aka Bonfire night) - do you recall that all such things were banned in Leathley, as it was both a Catholic village and the ancestral manor and home of one of the chief conspirators (GF himself): I've been to several other places where they don't 'do' these things, all being strongly Catholic areas.
I wonder if the celebrations on leaving the EU - bonfires of various personages, red, white and blue fireworks, lots of good strong ale in pint pots (in Yorkshire, to wash down the sticky parkin, of course) - will be banned in Remain majority areas for such a time. I cannot imagine its being forgotten, the angst and fury its advent is causing - on both sides - and the middle as well.
As 4th July is commemorated the more widely and exuberantly as the years pass, perhaps our 'upcoming' equivalent will still be a national holiday full of rejoicing and gaiety - until - 'the end of life as we know it' , perhaps !
Gimmer - as far as I know we don't celebrate Cromwell's defeat of the Royalists, another epic that divided the nation.
ReplyDeleteI should think not - nasty narrow-minded zealots who got their kicks from banning all forms of enjoyment and entertainment, both public and private - but anyway, that was a long drawn out affair, not a single final moment - not even the murder of the King ended it - and anyway was so deeply unpopular with the common people that they had to fill London with their troops, crowding Whitehall and lining ten deep around the scaffold to prevent an uprising spoiling their party. The Restoration was indeed celebrated widely and joyously and some groups still commemorate the death of the King with a sort of solemn wake - much like the Jacobites still raise a toast to the King over the Water ! It is not hard to see why we don't celebrate the imposition of military rule and do the ending of it. Just as we are celebrating the thirty years since the collapse of Communism and the fall of the Wall.
ReplyDeleteSo I think that there is a good chance we will have a national holiday and then, 'ere long, see it made a Bank Holiday, with compulsory jollity. Maybe bonfires too - as on VE Day ! All adds to the gaiety of nations.
gimmer - dom't count your chickens yet.
ReplyDelete