Today was our annual village May Queen day. It's always held in June, no one seems to know why, but it is.
Every year girls from 11 to 16 can put their names forward to be the May Queen. The names are put into a hat and the winner is drawn, the rest become her attendants. The same thing happens with girls from 7 to 10 but they elect the Rosebud.
We have a parade of floats and bands through the village with the May Queen and her retinue on a lorry and the Rosebud and hers on another. Other floats are made up by various organisations and schools and they all end up on the May Queen field (a bit of land so far witheld from the developers) where we have a fete with stalls and roundabouts and various displays and the floats are judged for excellence and awarded a prize.
Every year my younger daughter (Brown Owl) enters a float with her Brownies and the little Rainbows, one of whom is my granddaughter. This year, for obvious reasons, they decided to do an England World Cup float with all the girls dressed in red and white and waving England flags. Decorating the lorry were flags, balloons, a net and my world cup, which I copied on yellow card, drew in the details with gold marker pen and stuck on a sheet of black card. We didn't win this year, though we did last year when our theme was scarecrows. The winner was a local hairdressers and their clients who did Coronation St, complete with a Rovers Return bar with a real brass beer pump. It was excellent.
Any way, this year we were informed at 2 days notice that we couldn't have any police presence so the route had to be shortened as we weren't allowed to parade on the main Warrington-Altrincham road without police there. Having helped with the last-minute tweaking I left the girls on the float and walked down to the centre of the village to watch the parade come down the hill, not twice as is usual but once as the Powers-That-Be had decreed. I settled myself on a bench next to a big notice saying that the parade would be going straight to the May Queen field and not twice through the village. As the floats went past I took my photos.
Being a burning hot day I wasn't going to the field so, to fortify myself for the uphill 1 mile walk home, I nipped into the village bakery's café for a cup of tea. I was just pouring the second cup from the pot when, through the windows, I saw our Town Cryer, who always leads the procession, coming down the hill for the second time. Behind him came the first band and then the floats - again! As the only way they could do the circuit was via the forbidden route I was gobsmacked. I rang my daughter, mobile to mobile, and asked her how they had managed to use the main road. She had no idea, she said they just - went.
I still don't know whose idea it was to contravene the orders and follow the normal route. I know Peter, the Town Cryer, and it wouldn't surprise me if he just decided to lead the procession that way anyway as he's not a man to be messed around with. I'm glad they did it, though. Our village has grown into a small town in the last 10 years, due to greedy development, and it's losing its village identity. This old tradition (it started over 150 years ago) is in danger of slipping away like so many other truly English ways. We have to keep them alive. Today, we did.
Oh, Brown Owl ended the day with a badly sunburned nose!
Every year girls from 11 to 16 can put their names forward to be the May Queen. The names are put into a hat and the winner is drawn, the rest become her attendants. The same thing happens with girls from 7 to 10 but they elect the Rosebud.
We have a parade of floats and bands through the village with the May Queen and her retinue on a lorry and the Rosebud and hers on another. Other floats are made up by various organisations and schools and they all end up on the May Queen field (a bit of land so far witheld from the developers) where we have a fete with stalls and roundabouts and various displays and the floats are judged for excellence and awarded a prize.
Every year my younger daughter (Brown Owl) enters a float with her Brownies and the little Rainbows, one of whom is my granddaughter. This year, for obvious reasons, they decided to do an England World Cup float with all the girls dressed in red and white and waving England flags. Decorating the lorry were flags, balloons, a net and my world cup, which I copied on yellow card, drew in the details with gold marker pen and stuck on a sheet of black card. We didn't win this year, though we did last year when our theme was scarecrows. The winner was a local hairdressers and their clients who did Coronation St, complete with a Rovers Return bar with a real brass beer pump. It was excellent.
Any way, this year we were informed at 2 days notice that we couldn't have any police presence so the route had to be shortened as we weren't allowed to parade on the main Warrington-Altrincham road without police there. Having helped with the last-minute tweaking I left the girls on the float and walked down to the centre of the village to watch the parade come down the hill, not twice as is usual but once as the Powers-That-Be had decreed. I settled myself on a bench next to a big notice saying that the parade would be going straight to the May Queen field and not twice through the village. As the floats went past I took my photos.
Being a burning hot day I wasn't going to the field so, to fortify myself for the uphill 1 mile walk home, I nipped into the village bakery's café for a cup of tea. I was just pouring the second cup from the pot when, through the windows, I saw our Town Cryer, who always leads the procession, coming down the hill for the second time. Behind him came the first band and then the floats - again! As the only way they could do the circuit was via the forbidden route I was gobsmacked. I rang my daughter, mobile to mobile, and asked her how they had managed to use the main road. She had no idea, she said they just - went.
I still don't know whose idea it was to contravene the orders and follow the normal route. I know Peter, the Town Cryer, and it wouldn't surprise me if he just decided to lead the procession that way anyway as he's not a man to be messed around with. I'm glad they did it, though. Our village has grown into a small town in the last 10 years, due to greedy development, and it's losing its village identity. This old tradition (it started over 150 years ago) is in danger of slipping away like so many other truly English ways. We have to keep them alive. Today, we did.
Oh, Brown Owl ended the day with a badly sunburned nose!
