Mrs Queen's Birthday

The weather was iffey - it poured down for part of the day - but the village party to celebrate the Queen's 90th was a roaring success.

It's amazing what you can achieve in a small community when you all pull together. The entrance to the field we were using as a car park was a quagmire following the Friday afternoon deluge. Someone knew someone with some scalpings, while someone else knew someone with a tipper tractor. A contingent was despatched as 20 minutes later we were shoveling scalpings over the mud. It still wasn't enough though. Another bright spark remembered one of the local businesses had ramps and another contingent were sent to obtain them - problem solved.

From 8am the marquees were erected, the stage tent was inflated, the skittle alley was mowed (and you should never mow wet grass).

12 o'clock duly arrived and villagers started to trickle in - by 2pm we'd exceeded all expectations. I was directing cars into the field in the best Hitler tradition and Hay (who doesn't really like kids) was manning the craft stall and assisting kids in making crowns.

Given the face-painting stall was a little short on custom, I decided to have my face painted as a badger (I looked more like a panda or a dog), which then kicked off a craze for other blokes to have their faces painted. There were more bloke than kids there for a while. I got half price due to the beard half completing the project.

At 5pm it was raining steadily and the event closed, with everyone either going home for a quick shower, or repaired straight away to The Dog for the an evening of hog roast and England v Russia football on TV. By 8pm is was almost impossible to get to the bar, but, perversely, it was easy getting a drink if you went to the TV end of the bar, as it was filled with men staring at the TV and not ordering drinks - so no queue.

The inter-street tug of war brought about a few frayed tempers, especially when one team had 9 members against 7, but the less said about that the better (but I believe it was the Badminton Road team).

Here's a short 10 minute video of the event:

Today is the clear-up, but to be honest there's not much to clear up. Everyone placed their litter in the bins, dismantled their personal marquees and didn't leave any mess; a few of us assisted in dismantling the communal marquees and there's really only the big army surplus mess tend to dismantle, but we need a sunny spell to do that.

An exemplary display of community spirit. Well done Old Sodbury!