Diamond Jubilee

This weekend was finally the Queen’s Jubilee Celebration, which has been in the works for months and months. Sometime last year, when the date was set for the celebration and the days for public holidays were chosen, the Queen’s request was for everyone to lunch together in their communities. Actually, I don’t know if she literally used the word “lunch” or if it was something more refined like “dine” or less specific like “gather”, but anyway the interpretation was that all of the neighbourhoods in the UK were supposed to get together and eat.

In our neighbourhood, this turned out to be a grand picnic at the village Recreation Ground. Actually it was an entire weekend of festivities, but we only attended the Sunday afternoon Jubilee Picnic. In the brochure that was sent to all the houses in the village, it was advertised that there would be prizes for Best Fancy Dress, Best Looking Cake and Best Laid Table. Well, the competition was on! My friend Macha was keen to get involved, and it didn’t take much to twist my rubber arm into a little competition. We gathered our families together on a sunny Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks ago to start our project.

Painting and cutting and preparing the castle walls in late May

Our idea was to have a Windsor Castle replica that would stand a few feet tall above the ground and encircle our dining/picnic area.  So, on Sunday morning we packed up a picnic and got dressed into our best duds, then headed over to the Recreation Ground to set up. There was a giant marquee tent with tables and chairs inside, but we really needed to be outside so we could take up a good-sized footprint and not feel too crowded. The forecast was very grim, but we were committed. We set up with a tarp on the ground and our Windsor Castle walls around it, then laid picnic blankets inside and set up a throne and a food table behind the tarp. It looked amazing! 

View of our real estate outside the marquee.

In fact, Helene really put her heart into this project and had several late nights spent drawing, painting and cutting out the Castle Guards, each one having his own expression and personality. The whole project was so lovingly worked on by her and the detail was truly incredible as you can see from the photos!

 

Here are most of our 3 families: us, Macha's family, and Danni/ Bryn's family

Leonie on the throne

Macha and me looking regal

Inside the castle walls, mid-cucumber sandwich

Tryfan and his homemade crown and showing me a little cake he wanted to eat

As we were eating, the rain started to really pour down in buckets so we quickly set up a 2^nd tarp as a little roof over at least part of the castle so that some of us could sit underneath and eat without getting too wet. Other Jubilee picnickers were not so lucky! 

 

The cardboard castle didn't like the rain :-(

I love how people just put their umbrellas up and kept picnicking!

I took this video and share it here because it is just so British to be committed to seeing something like a community picnic through despite pouring rain. Although having lived here 2 years now, I’m sure that it was at least partially so that they could complain about the event later....

Anyway, it was a very memorable event and around 3pm we packed up and left to drive up to Wales for a few days...