Saturday 9 August 2008

Only in Britain.....

......would you find 10,000 people, sitting in a field on a sunday evening, in the rain AND they've paid to do it (some people at a cost of £75 each from my watchings on ebay!). But then with stars of Lesley Garrett and Michael Ball its not too suprising really!
But you know what? I would have missed it for the world. Maybe if i had actually got wet then i might be coming at this from a different angle, however where we had arrived earlier in order to set up our chairs and rugs in a specific spot, we were able to set up before the rain set in. It also meant we got to see them rehearsing a lot of their songs from the musicals that they were performing and also a practise flyover by the spitfire which was actually cancelled during the concert itself due to bad weather.

The longest period of rain, which was not torrential at any point but was still heavy, set in at about 6.30pm - we'd been there since about 4pm. Before half 6 there had been showers on and off but we had managed to get our chairs up and large umbrellas out ready so that when the rain did set in we were able to simply cover ourselves and our chairs so that everything stayed dry. At 6pm mum decided to lay the picnic out. I didn't want to be pessimistic but i wasn't sure the rain clouds had finished doing their thing, despite the forecast saying the rain was supposed to be over by 7pm. It seems my fears came true as by half 6 the ground sheet was folded back over the top of the picnic food with the crease at the bottom of my feet.
By almost half 7 mum decided that the rain wasn't going to cease in the near future it seemed, so with a bit of help from D, I went foraging under the ground sheet with a spoon and dished up a spoonfull of everything (potato salad, pasta salad, coleslaw, salad, a scotch egg, ham, bread and some crisps) on a plate for mum and then the same again for D. I had pack myself finger food mainly, to keep me occupied for a while, so eating my olives from a little tub and my big bag of veggies (carrot sticks, sugar snaps, runner beans, pepper sticks, cherry tomatoes) was fine, and even my little tub of homemade coleslaw and cubes of beetroot were managable with a spoon.
At the interval there was a brief break in the rain too, so the decision was made to take the cool bag back to the car, but not after i had retrieved a punnet of blueberries to keep me going. After a bit more drizzle on and off the rain finally ceased just around the time that all of the patriotic Last Night of the Proms stuff began. Everyone's spirits lifted and the flag waving began. Then with the customary spectacular firework that the concert always provides, made the whole evening of feel damp but not wet worthwhile.


The only problem then was getting the car out of the car park (field) which took us 50 minutes, however from D speaking to a work collegue it seems we did well - it took her 2 hours!


The only thing i didn't get to see which i wish i could have walked down the the stage in the dry to see was Lesley Garrett's dresses. The most i could see from under my umbrella was that one was purple, one was silver and the final one was red with Union Jacks attached like wings under each arm for the final part!




Like i say though - i wouldn't have missed it!

2 comments:

Jenny said...

Wow!! I love fireworks - how did you get such great photos? Mine are always blurry and never at quite the right moment... but then ALL your pics are better than mine! :) x

Jenny said...

Thank you. there's a seting on my camera for automatic shutter speed that i used. would have been better with a tripod tho. these were the few decent ones which i touched up slightly in photoscape with colour contrasting.