The Scarecrow Trail

I love the scarecrow trail.  Unfortunately I only found out when it was on a month before the actual weekend and by then I had already booked the weekend away, which was a real shame and I would have loved to have made a scarecrow and everything.  As it was, all I saw of it was when we drove through the village as we went away and returned.  I noticed they had the usual policeman scarecrow with speed camera at one end of the village, which they have every year, but they didn't have the other policeman at the other end of the village.  I wonder what happened to him.  I have noticed that scarecrow trails have been popping up all over the country and I wonder if they got the idea from Weston or vice versa?  I don't see so many scarecrows in farmers fields tho, and when I do it's usually earlier on in the year when seeds have just been planted and they are usually a bin bag on a stick and if they've really made the effort there might be a tin can on top.  Quite a contrast to this, for example:-

Here someone has obviously but a lot of time and effort into making the scarecrow into a deep sea diver.  And just from what I've seen from the main road through Weston, other people have made a similar effort.  In my opinion, farmers should follow the example set by scarecrow trails and make more interesting scarecrows.  If the don't have time, they could perhaps borrow them from the scarecrow trail.  After all, what do people do with these things after the scarecrow trail is finished?

Beacon

Across the country, beacons have been lit in honour of the Queen's diamond jubilee.  Here's the one on Aston church:-

Not the best photo I know, what with it being a bit dark.  Quite a lot of people turned out to see it.  They had some music accompanying it.  Very atmospheric it was too.

Jubilee

I have not been to any of the Aston jubilee events so far, not because there aren't any; there are events running over all four days.  More than we have had visitors or been doing other things.  Nice to see lots of bunting up all around the village.  My daughter made bunting by drawing on paper and threading string through it.  Unfortunately it absolutely chucked it down with rain...

We did go to church on Sunday morning.  The vicar was a real royalist, the Queen was very much in the prayers and at the end we had the national anthem.  In the press I have heard a lot about street parties and how there's loads of them happening all over the country.  I haven't seen any tho.  I want to go to a street party.  Still, there's two days left so you never know.

Rainbow over Aston

Been very changeable weather over the last couple of days but I managed to get a picture of yesterday's rainbow.

If you look really closely you can see that it was a double rainbow.

Weston walk

Sometimes I wonder if my posts are a bit critical, but maybe I think too much and over-analyse things sometimes.  This is not always good as it can lead to depression as A (an intelligent person, who writes a deep and meaningful, well-thought out blog, which I would definitely encourage anyone to read),  points out in his blog.  One thing that can help against depression is a good walk on a sunny day.

The Weston walk was a 4 and half mile walk along the footpaths of Weston.  It's purpose was to promote awareness of them, increase the use of them, check that all was well with them and of course to have fun.  It was also a practice, as they are hoping that next year the walk will be part of the Charnwood Forest festival of walking week.  It was a guided walk led by a bloke called Alan who told us a bit of the history or the area as we went round.  For instance the Coopers Arms was used in the civil war to look after the horses.  Apparently, it was never finished and it was meant to be E shaped, as was very fashionable at the time it was built.

When we got to the first footpath off the road, one of the walkers got pulled over by a dog and knocked over the footpath sign.  It was an accident waiting to happen tho as the bottom of the post was rotten and it was held onto the fence with a plastic tie.

We walked in between the new houses and down more footpaths, then across a field of long grass ( which was apparently a footpath although you couldn't see where the actual path went).  This was quite hard going.  We got to the old ferry point where people used to ring the bell for the ferry.  History tells us that the woman running the ferry was a bit grumpy and that if she was having a cup of tea or didn't feel like it, she wouldn't bother to answer the bell and leave the passengers waiting for sometimes a couple of hours before taking them across the river.

On the way back up to the canal we saw the noise monitor for the race track in the field.  Weston is a lovely village, but the one thing that stops it from being absolutely idyllic is the noise from the race track in Castle Donnington, which is on the other side of the river.  The residents really hate it and there is a lot of organised protests in the village.  The noise can be heard in Aston too, but not so loudly.  Anyway, this noise monitor wasn't very well placed as to start with it was slightly outside the village, and also it was tucked away in a field where the noise wasn't so loud.  When we walked up the slope to Weston Lock, the noise was a lot louder.  They should have put it there, it would give a better representation of the level of noise the residents hear.

The walk continued along the canal then past the church back to the village hall for a well earned cup of tea and slice of homemade cake.  All in all it was an enjoyable walk and there is another one next week.  This one will be around Aston.

Writers Block

I've been having a bit of writers block lately and, although there have been things to write about I haven't been motivated or able to think of an interesting slant on it.  But as living things die if you don't feed them, blogs die if you don't write in them, so I'm going to write something and hope it flows.

Today was the May Fayre in the Memorial Hall.  It was run by the church.  They had several stalls, the usual village fair type things, plants, bric a brac, homemade cakes, tombola etc.  I picked up a few bits which I was pleased about and a carrot cake which was very tasty.  They did a ploughmans lunch, which consisted of some salad, but the diet went out of the window when you saw what went with it.  There was a choice of some large wedges of pork pie, huge hunks of cheese or massive slices of pizza, (and from what I could tell you could have more than one of those choices too) followed by a choice of puddings with cream.  No-one could say the folks at the church aren't generous.  The hall was full of people and there was a good atmosphere.  Hopefully they made lots of money.

Spring into Jazz

On Saturday evening it was Spring into Jazz at the Memorial Hall.  This was a jazz band who played music and talked about the history of jazz in between.  They were a 5 piece band which consisted of a banjo player who did most of the talking, a trumpet/cornet player, a clarinet /saxophone player, a keyboard player and a guy who appeared to have a thing about playing really huge musical instruments.  The first thing I noticed as I walked in the hall was the massive white sousaphone which was apparently made with 3 miles of pipes.  He also played a double bass.  I don't really know a lot about jazz and didn't recognise many of the tunes but I still really enjoyed it. Jazz has a seedy background.  In the early days jazz was played in brothels.  They man telling the stories was very considerate of the fact I'd brought my 11 year old son with me.  At the beginning he called them brothels and then changed to saying house of pleasure or unmentionable places.  It's roots were in the recently freed black slaves in New Orleans starting roughly around 1890 and getting really big in the 1920s. They told colourful tales of the jazz musicians. Louis Armstrong was born to a 14 year old mother and never knew his father.  His life changed when he got put into an orphanage at 13 where he learn to play the cornet in their band.  There was a guy called Sydney (I forget his last name, but bear in mind I had never even heard of most of these people before Saturday night) who discovered the alto sax when visiting London, then he got deported for brawling.  King Oliver (he wasn't really a king, he just called himself that) had a band with lots of the big names in jazz, but they all left his band when they realised he was ripping them off.  There were lots of tales of musicians being ripped off by record companies, and many more stories of musicians turning to alcoholism.  There was a big blues singer called Bessie Smith who, when the Klu Klux Klan came along with torches to burn down their blues tent, she went out to challenge then to a fist fight and they all backed away quietly.  My personal favourite was the tale of Mr Moore whose act was to dress as a frog and was shut in a box which he had to escape from and the tune that went with it.  Anyway I'm not doing these tales justice.  The guy from the band told them a lot better.

As well as telling good stores they were very good musicians.  We heard many good sax, clarinet and cornet solos as well as maple leaf rag on the keyboard.  The whole evening inspired an interest in jazz I never knew I had and left me wanting to know more about the musicians and what was happening in the world of jazz in that era, and most importantly I wanted to hear more of the music.