Speed signs

Not so long ago one of those signs appeared at the side of Weston Road that tells you how fast you're going.  Originally they put it up in the middle of some trees so it was really hard to see your speed let alone feel prompted to slow down if you were going too fast.  Recently tho, someone has turned it around so that it faces the other way and is not obscured by the trees.  I find it very useful; when I went past on my bike the other day it told me I was going 10mph, and when I walked past it, it told me I was going 3 miles an hour.  

It is much better than the one they have in Shardlow.  I drive past that one, speedometer dead on 30, and it flashes 30 at me like I'm going too fast.  Considering that most car speedometers are set 3mph too fast to help avoid speeding, I think this sign must be set wrongly.  The fact that when I go through Aston at dead on 30, the sign says I'm doing 27 seems to back this up.  So in other words they want people to drive at 25mph through Shardlow despite it having a 30mph limit.

Well dressing

I walked around the village with the children and we looked at the well dressings and pointed out the bits we had done on each one. I wish I'd got a photo of the Charles Dickens one too, as that was really good.

The post office were giving away free ice tea, which was very kind of them.





We saw the black pig morris dancers outside the white hart.  They are morris dancers who do the traditional dances in non-traditional clothes.  The costumes were fantastic.  The photo doesn't really do it justice.  It was the attention to detail with the costumes that I was particularly impressed with, things like the flowers and feathers in the hats, the pig in the baby carrier and the bag with the vote monster raving loony party rosette sewn to it.  I overheard a young woman saying she wanted to be a morris dancer after watching a performance and that's not something you hear very often from anyone under 50.

Some youth workers had been working on a well dressing with the youth in the area and at the same time working out what the youth in the are need.  They heard a lot of complaints from locals about them hanging around in the lych gate so they have plans in place for this amazing pod thing that they can sit in.  Apparently it has a handle they can wind up and it generates power for some lights.  Also it's blue tooth compatible so they can play music from their phone in there.  It sounds great but the only problem I can foresee its that it will be on the rec which is right on the edge of Aston and maybe some people won't be bothered to walk there and still hang around the lych gate.  I guess time will tell.


The weather managed to stay mostly dry apart from a few quick downpours towards the afternoon.  We sheltered in a phone box and it's a credit to Aston that it didn't smell of wee, as most phone boxes do.

There were loads of other things happening, but that's enough writing for one day.

Build up to the well dressing

The well dressing is probably the biggest event on Aston's calendar and it starts tomorrow.  People come from all over Derbyshire to see it.  It seems a bit bizarre that Aston would have a well dressing when it doesn't even have a well and more bizarre that it isn't something that has been happening for years and years which started when there was a well, but was revived in the late 1990s (I think).  Anyway not that I'm complaining, as it's a great event and fun for all the family.  There are several stalls and also shows from magicians, pinxton puppets, black pig border morris dancers as well as well dressings made by several local organisations.  There are many local organisations and in fact it's a standing joke in the village that if you see 2 people talking in the street, they're probably talking about forming a committee.

The bunting went up a couple of weeks ago and the all the groups in the area have been working on them this week.  They have to be made completely from natural materials, so there's no leisurely making them over a long period of time, they're worked on intensively the week before or else stuff will go off.  Any flower petals used are put in a day or 2 before the event.  It never ceases to amaze me the variety of things people use to make a well dressing, anything from leaves to coconut to curry powder to berries, wool and stones.  The church has also been decorated by various groups doing little displays all around it.  The whole village has been a buzz with preparation and I'm sure many people will be up early in the morning to set things up.

Lets just hope the weather is ok and there's no rain left in the clouds after we had a whole months worth of rain in one day today.

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.