This weekend we experienced an extremely enjoyable, albeit somewhat surrealistic at times, couple of days in Wiltshire. The primary reason for the visit being the (shhhh 50th!) Birthday Party of Sheila (who for confidentiality reasons we shall use the surname of "Savoy").
Prior to the party we had visited the picturesque village of Cranford, as seen in the recent TV documentary. It was clear that they were about to use the village for either a film or TV drama, as everybody was wandering around in costumes a million miles from those worn by Miss Matty Jenkyns and others, and had quaintly re-named the village "Lacock", so that people wouldn't know exactly where it was.
Upon visiting one of the local shops, which I'm not now sure whether it was real or part of the film set, I saw a sign on top of a stack of shopping baskets which read: -"Please use a basket to help you select your shopping"
Being a compliant soul, I picked up a basket and held onto it for a few minutes but it proved to be useless in helping me to select anything, so I just had to put it down and leave.
It appeared as though "Lacock" was being "made" to appear in the film as though it was an island as they seemed to be flooding the surrounding area whilst we were still there, and rather than risk being trapped in the middle of the film set for some time we made a sharp exit back to Chippenham to prepare ourselves for the party (well relatively sharp, in that we had to have a quick drink in one of the film set's local "pubs" - which we thought would be a bit like drinking in the "Queen Vic", or "Rovers Return", but no actors were to be seen!).
Now, it must be said that there were a few reasons for me thinking that as we had entered Chippenham earlier in the day we had actually passed through some strange space-time continuum/"portal", that took us back at least 20 years in time. (Actually due to combination of a wrongly programmed SatNav, and the town's one-way system, we may actually have gone through the "portal" a number of times!).
At the party, most of the adults - especially "birthday-girl" Sheila Savoy - looked just as they had done when we last lived in the area 13 years ago. Sheila, in fact looked no different to when we had celebrated her 30th birthday with an impromptu party in our cul-de-sac, in 1988.
It's not as though I don't have proof - the following picture evidences how time has stood still in this area - which has become known locally as the 'Tropenell Triangle'. One thing that has improved over the years however is the standard of the catering. This weekend the food and drink was in plentiful supply, however it appears that in 1988, we had: -
- A birthday cake
- A bottle of port
- A bottle of gin
- A bottle of wine
- A can of beer, and
- a bottle of Ribena - presumably for the kids
which wasn't exactly a lot for 50 people. (Apparently, experiments had been undertaken with some water, barley loaves, and some fishes in the preceding days but these had been largely unsuccessful.)
Now what made this weekend somewhat strange was that whilst the majority of the adults had retained their youthful looks, their offspring had grown up into mature, intelligent, (as evidenced by their numerous university degrees) friendly, (what can only be described as) "adults". Thus appearing to narrow the gap between their own age and that of their parents - weird!
The evening was one of catching up with (not) old (looking) friends, with excellent entertainment, the aforementioned good food, and a few drinks...some dancing....and then a few more drinks....and then etc.
Debs & Steve (that name doesn't ring a bell!), Nigel (Five Sheds) & Sue, Paul & Sandra, Bev & Rob, Sue, John & Marie and many others who we knew were there all enjoying themselves - dancing (to the partial embarrassment of the "yoofs" present) - drinking , chatting and generally having great fun.
In fact the only person who I thought looked slightly older than he used to was Paul, Sheila's husband - until I realised that it wasn't Paul that I was speaking to, but Paul's father!
No comments:
Post a Comment