I went down to the An Gof Celebrations the other week and it was some ’ansome night. Plenty of people there all enjoying the speeches and the entertainment in the village hall later. It was a real community event and lots of people from the village joined in to put on a real show.
Cornish communities are good when it comes to putting on shows for others. It’s often when paid officials get involved to run events that things fall short of expectations.
I used to like our Methodist Sunday school harvest festival where we’d practice for what seemed like months to stage a little play based on a parable. I once had the part of playing the man who was robbed on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho in The Good Samaritan. I spent most of the time lying on the floor and my only lines were ‘help me’ and ‘thank you, kind sir’.
More fun was when I won first prize at Breage Carnival dressed up as a poacher with my lurcher in tow. Father had caught a few rabbits the night before and so these made a good prop. Thing was, after a few trips around the village in the parade, the rabbits were beginning to weigh me down a bit so I was more than pleased when a man on the side of the road offered me £1 for all three rabbits. I had to give father 75p though, as he caught them; I was just a middle man, he said (or middle boy, I suppose).
Parades form a big part of Cornish events all over the world; many villages used to have their feast parades led by the local band. I like to think that this magazine is a kind of parade, led by the people who read it, and I would like to thank you for your guidance and if you have any pictures of the Cornish on parade then please send them in.
In the meantime, keep marching and organising.
Speak to you ’gain soon.
Sowena, Nigel Pengelly, editor@cornishworldmagazine.co.uk
Picture of a couple of free range pigs over at Bosavern Farm by Simon Cook.
1 comments:
Welcome to the blogosphere Nigel.
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