POTFeast 2012

The annual Feast Post - hope to get a POTW done this week, too, as I didn't last week!  Click to open up any of the photos in Flickr.

Anyway; the forecast was absolutely dreadful for the Feast this year, but during the week it gradually improved, and this was the scene outside my bedroom window at 8:45 this morning: little train duly installed and people trying to hold down bits of awning in a stiff breeze...



There were two parades this year.  The 39 Engineer Regiment are moving to the north of Scotland soon as part of MOD reorganisation and the base is to be closed; so they had a separate march through the village...



... preceded by the Royal Engineers regimental band who were tremendous.





There was a lot of applause...



We'll miss them.  There have been a lot of jokes at the army's expense about the chip shop and Chinese takeaway closing; but there's more than a grain of truth!  When they're not deployed, they also provide great support at this sort of community event.

Their attitude to a coconut shy is obviously slightly different from the average civilian's, for example.



Between the parades, there was wood-roasted pizza, and then knitting; Jackie, Frances and I knitted along to Waterbeach Brass...  There's very little more civilised than knitting while listening to a good brass band on a mostly sunny summer afternoon.



So, then, for the second half of the parading festivities:  Majorettes!  In this case, the Soham Fenlander Majorettes, celebrating their 25th year.



The parade and stalls theme this year was Something beginning with F.  Whoever started that series was genius; they can just sit back for at least another 15 years, even if they need to combine some letters!

So we had France - no stereotypes there, obviously.



The child in the cardboard Eiffel Tower reminds me of Scout in To kill a mockingbird dressed as a ham for her school pageant.  Hopefully she had a happier end to the day.

Then we had Farms



Flowers



Fireworks - I was rooting for this one to win best float (it didn't)



more Flowers - and waves at friend Chris with little Robert on his shoulders!



Flags - any flags, although obviously with the JubiEuroLympic summer, there were a lot of Union flags around.



And then Family - the army families in particular.  Lots of them; many in T-shirts with their serving family member's name embroidered on them, which is a great alternative to scribbling your mobile no. on the back of your kid's festival wristband...



The lady with the sash was saying "Goodbye; thanks for having us"; the banner behind her just says "goodbye"...  the Feast procession is usually quite emotional, but this year particularly so.



However, to cheer us up, the local chapter of the Society for Creative Anachronism - I see these guys fighting on the Green on Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons sometimes...



Let's have another view; yes, the guy at the back is in a full metal breastplate on a summer afternoon.



And then finally; before Waterbeach Brass resumed their set, the Royal Engineers band was back to play us a selection of disco classics, including YMCA, Staying alive and How deep is your love.



As ever at the Feast, surreality, we haz it.  Things not depicted: synchronised beating-people-up the army PT  way, Jazzercise, belly-dancing and more majorettes (purple-clad, this time...)

And it didn't rain...

E is for... many things; and F is for Feast

Well, bizarrely enough, the theme for this year's Feast was "E is for..." So I'm combining two letters here... If I'd kept up with the programme, Saturday would have been J and I'd have gone for "Jolly", which would also have worked.

So, it all started: the view from outside my front door on Friday night at about 8pm... The Bug was unimpressed. [Quick Amelia update: vet was very pleased on Saturday morning, and she can now go out, which she's loving. I loved it slightly less yesterday afternoon when she came in, leapt up onto the table and plonked her wet self down on my inkjet-printed, rather complicated, knitting pattern...]

I am a veteran. I know this is the Thomas the Tank Engine Train, as ever; while I'd rather the commercial stalls were elsewhere on the Green because of the canned music, my nephew is a Thomas fanatic so these days, I think of him while they're unpacking it...

The next morning at 9:30am when I started over to find the stall I was volunteering on, the Es were in evidence. The English Country Gardenists were next to the school's Ecowarriors

We were unthemed, sadly; but as our main organiser was told to rest up about 10 days beforehand, getting a stand together was OK in and of itself...

Now. Nothing says "Feast" like "construction of temporary bridge". At least, it doesn't in our village. We have enough 39 Engineer Regiment at home, after Iraq and Afghanistan, to do this sort of thing. Here they are delivering the equipment.

And here's the guy who drew the short straw and had to guard it all over the afternoon...

He wasn't armed or anything, and I'd have loved to have seen the people who dared to steal several tons of military equipment in front of a thousand or so people including large numbers of Army personnel, but there was probably some sort of Elf and Safety ruling which meant that if someone tried to make off with the odd huge chunk of steel and dropped it on his/her foot... (I'm actually a big fan of people not being killed at work, having been a H&S rep in my previous job and a fire marshal in this one, but the risk assessment form does seem to have gone over the top this year!)

I don't have pictures of the bridge construction, or the children running up and down and all around it afterwards; I was helping to pack our stuff away at the time. But I've seen it all done once before, and I saw bits of it this time; and my God, they're good. I realised they're trained for it, and they're meant to be some of the best in the world; but about a dozen of them take all that stuff and make a working bridge which will carry a tank in almost exactly 10 minutes flat. It's astonishing.

This year, there were also Interesting Animals. (Not saying that the Dog Obedience in previous years was dull... well, yes, I am.) The library stand was right next to a little cage of meerkats. A couple of times, stroking of meerkats happened.

Snakes were also present. I couldn't quite believe the colour (and size) of this one. (Yes, it is real.)

Dragging us back into the Usual, Waterbeach Brass played, and I knitted... it was lovely. Lots of people commented on the knitting. I should have had a little placard for WWKIPD, but I didn't.

Then there was the parade... This year, instead of the Arco Iris Samba Band, we had a Cadets band - pipe and drum band. The uniforms were certainly impressive. There was a short embarrassing pause as this lot, followed by most of the children in the village, confronted the number 9 bus to March at the corner. (The number 9 bus lost.)

There were Rangers, being an Everest expedition. (I hope that if they ever do make the trip, someone points out that shorts might not be quite the thing, but some of them had an impressive number of badges.)

There were Explorers.
The big ones had plastic pith helmets. The little ones had fabulous wild animal costumes. They did their best not to skid on the huge slough of detergent "snow" left by the Everesters while they were standing in one place during the Great Bus Confrontation of 2011.

There were also Egyptians.

I love the way some people go for complete historical accuracy, and some go for 'I'm sure I have a bridesmaid's dress somewhere'... that's the spirit!

And here comes the school contingent and its Ecowarriors.

And, just because NO village procession around Cambridge is complete without a samba band - the Arco Iris conductor had evidently been working with the school...

... and it had developed its own.

There were also Elephants, but the pictures weren't great; but there was also Easter, and Eggs.

So sweet.

The weather, as you can see from these, was fine. Not as warm as it might have been, but the forecast had been astonishingly horrible; and in the end, the rain didn't fall until Sunday, which was dreadful; but as we're officially in drought, I probably shouldn't mind getting a little bit soaked going to a friend's for dinner last night...

I love the Feast. Cottenham/Rampton are having a Big Family Festival next month, with fanciness including Bob Flowerdew; but we're not so shabby; and I'm moved to tears by the parade every year because so many people put so much effort into it...

That time of year again (2)

So - this was Waterbeach Brass, in the middle of an enthusiastic rendition of Born Free. I don't think we got the film medley this year, although I think I might have heard Eye of the Tiger in the distance... I really don't mean to snark them because they play really well; but as an ex-trombonist, I'd like to opine that playing a little bit of good old fashioned brass band stuff, or a bit of classical, would also be lovely; and they do have a captive audience...

In previous years, I've put up pictures of the parade. However, members of my family who take photos have had difficulty with taking pictures of children in a church (baptism) setting in the last year or so, so although I'd just have shown you the usual pictures of children enjoying themselves by dressing up and walking around the village, I'm reluctant to do so now... So although I had some perfectly nice photos of Pocohantases, and Christmas trees, and other children who'd obviously put a lot of effort into their costumes... here are some adults.

Here are the Pirates of the Caribbean - sorry E-J, no Johnny Depps - we really don't have the budget even if he's only in France at the moment.... And sorry, WI; the Pirates are with the Young Wives this year...

I suspect the I.P. stood for something. But I loved the idea of a WIP ranch - we could all go there, corrall in our Works in Progress and do something about them...

This was where the man with the inflatable trousers would have been... unfortunately, sticking with the library stand for the rest of the afternoon was a bit too entertaining...

Now, was it just me, or would anyone else find these "prizes" a bit disturbing? Yes, those are cows, above the Scoobies.

Or this? (I am not a vegetarian, but Barnyard Amusements is possibly a bit spicy...)

Anyway, that's it for another year, sadly...

That time of year again

It's Feast Day here on the Green - and they're all set up. The Army-type stuff in the middle is for the final bit of the programme when we'll see a bridge being built... there's been a bit of a hiatus in Army involvement for the last few years for obvious reasons, but looks as if there are enough of them this year...

This is what it looks like down my end of the Green - slightly more commercial. I have Thomas the Tank Engine just outside...

And here's the action-packed programme for the afternoon - click to embiggen...

We have candy-floss, we have tombolas, we have frumenty, we have ABBA blasting away in the distance, we have the promise of exotic animals (normally that slot is taken up by Dog Obedience so it'll be interesting to see how exotic the animals actually are this year) and Waterbeach Brass doing their now-famous annual rendition of the themes from Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean, among other things. This year we have actual Caribbean Pirates - middle-aged men in Johnny Depp wigs - on the WI stall; also Cowboys, one with very strange inflatable hobby-horse trousers... That's as close as I can get to a description - I'll try and get photos...


The theme this year is Something beginning with C. (No idea why but it's as good as anything else... beats Global Economic Melt-Down or something equally topical.) We have seriously cheap plants grown locally... and we have a library bookstall with several thousand books - I'll be putting in a couple of hours there this afternoon. The pubs are open and the weather's brightening up...

What more could one village want...

The band are starting; better go...