400th post! A horrid awakening but think of a happy place with lucky finds!

This is my 400th post I just noticed! Due to the joys of scheduled posting, you may not have realised but I have been away for 10 days! I have been completely incommunicado (well apart from a sneaky check of e-mails) so I had no idea about the absolute horror and chaos that has been going on. I returned home late yesterday and resolved to watch no TV, so the first I heard was when my sister phone me to beg me to stay inside and not go anywhere some hours ago.

As she phoned, the imbecilic and egregious idiots that have chosen to wreak chaos in East London, descended on my home town (I live in a suburb nearby) to attack a supermarket and police station. I am staggered to believe that such things can occur. The problem quite simply is they fear no one- not their parents, the police, the government, God. A relative had a brick thrown at his car and we are praying for him as he works that all will be safe. A friend who I phoned to warn of the nearby events was driving home and she saw youths walking towards the town centre carrying sticks with their hoods up and handkerchiefs round their faces. Cowards. If you are going to do such cowardly deeds, at least have the courage to show your face. Where will they be if they need the police, if they need to buy food, if they need help. There will be nothing left. I hope and pray that they will realise what fallacies there are in their actions and gain some compassion and that all those who have to work (police, fire, ambulance, bus drivers etc) will be safe from harm.

In a bid to take my mind off the real world which has so rudely interrupted my seclusion from technology, I decided to post some pictures from my holiday.
I was camping in Buckinghamshire, practising and performing music with a large group of friends. The place I went to holds many dear memories, I have been going there since I was a teenager.

CBC and I arrived late on Friday night and grappled with our large tent (to feature in another post). Saturday morning was a delight, singing a beautiful Mass by a composer called Victoria
(a man, some 400 years ago or so). Then in the afternoon, it was time to go down to the local village for their annual fete which we were providing a windband for. We walked down the steep hill, through cool shady woods, through parched fields and along a winding road lined with beautiful houses to reach the village green.

This is your typical quintessentially English country fayre, so there were plenty of exhibits to view- vegetables, cakes, flower arrangements, crafts and all that!
I arrived early so I went to look in the exhibits.
These sweet peas caught my eye:

as did these proud looking onions.

Of course, it isn't a fayre without bunting and bouncy castles....

... knocking down skittles against bales of hay...

There was an amazing display of vintage vehicles including this funky tanker...

A rather lovely car. Please excuse the mangled individual attempting to break in...

Our favourite was this bus/coach. CBC really suited it, especially after he purchased a rather fetching picnic hamper in the brickabrack...

Imagine riding a bus with this interior!!!! I love this shot of CBC. He looks so cute!

I desperately tried to avoid the double chin...

The walk to the village was charming...

Don't you wish you lived in an ivy covered cottage!

In addition to CBC's hamper, buoyed by intense jealousy at one of our fellow campers who won an amazing hamper last year, we plagued the tombola with our business. At first our fruits were few: 2 cans of Pepsi for me, a bottle of sherrry for CBC and a Chilli notebook. Then AHA, I struck gold and won a small hamper (below) lovely basket stuffed with oriental goods, nice couscous, coconut milk, French duck pate and other things! I was soooooo chuffed!

However, the place I was looking forward to most was the Brickabrack tent. Fuelled by an intense longing to find exciting articles such as Vintage Vixen regularly finds, I was one of the first to enter the tent! I managed to find one or two really pleasing articles.

First, I found this ingenious bracelet which was crafted out of an old silver dessert fork. Not bad for less than a pound! There were also 2 spoon ones but they weren't as groovy!

Several friends went back to the tent after I showed them in hope of buying the spoon ones but they had gone sadly. Am sure it will look lovely after I've attacked with with a silver cloth.

This grey pearl (unlikely to be real) necklace was also pleasing!

My favourite purchase was a pure silk cream ankle length kimono which cost £2
- which was perfect as I'd forgotten to bring a dressing gown (useful for tramping across the field in) Photos are just a closeup of the fabric as it is too creased (stuffed in my suitcase) to show!

Then I found these pretty pearly clip-on earrings which I could imagine with lots of dresses!

Also, I gained this pretty shell bangle...

And SUNGLASSES, perfect since I'd forgotten mine and the sun was beating down intensely!

Finally, I bought the board game TABOO which is great fun- you have to describe words without saying certain Taboo words in order to do this!

Once I had prised myself away from the Brickabrack, I went to go and screech away on the piccolo for the band (great fun except for the usual problem of music flying away!). We played such classics as Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, Edwardiana Waltz, The Banner of St George and other tunes that you'd recognise. Everyone was cheerful and the audience seemed to enjoy it. CBC had a delightful wander and we both ate delicious Beechdean ice-cream seperately and together, a South African barbecued sausage. As we delightedly regarded our haul we were suddenly aware that we had accumulated a rather large amount of luggage to lug up a very steep hill in boiling temperatures and that we must also try to stuff it into an already crammed car on the return journey....

More soon...