Well, Readers, East Finchley Festival was a really lovely event – the temperature dropped a bit from Saturday’s high of over 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius for you new-fangled people), which was just as well – with the humidity it felt like being back in the rainforests of Cameroon. We hadn’t expected it to be windy (doh) so at first we were all hanging on the gazebo for grim death. I expected to be whizzed off over the rooftops like Mary Poppins, but fortunately some tent pegs were found, and we could get back into trying to sell raffle tickets.
We had lots of donated books and some seedbombs as prizes, along with three ‘mini-meadow’ window boxes. I got a selection of plants from Naturescape (an excellent company by the way) and they contained an interesting variety of plants, including harebell, self-heal, knapweed and betony, a new favourite. There were also a couple of native primroses, which were going over a bit, but would be ok for next year. It was lovely to see my ‘babies’ going off to new homes.
A new thing for this year was some Friends of Coldfall Wood business cards – these are impregnated with wildflower seeds, so (having carefully written down the details of course) you can pop the card into a flower pot, give it a water and Bob’s your proverbial uncle. Visitors to the stall were so delighted, and it’s great to be able to give people just a little thing to take home and to remember us by.
The Festival itself is very much a community affair: our friends from Friends of Cherry Tree Wood were on the stall next door and on the other side we had Muswell Hill Sustainability Group, so there was lots of green space/environmental stuff going on. But there was also food from all over the world, stalls selling all manner of handicrafts, and two stages – one for community choirs/dance groups/children’s groups, and one for ‘bands’. So it was all pretty busy, and frenetic, and full-on, but a lot of fun. And it’s true that East Finchley was voted ‘The Happiest Place in London’, even if it was ten years ago. It seems to me that nothing much has changed. I count myself very lucky indeed to live here.
The person that I felt sorriest for, though, was the person in the elephant costume, who led the parade that kicked off the Festival. Greater love hath no person than to be enclosed in a claustrophobic fur outfit on a hot summer’s day. Well done!
This sounds like a really fun day.
I was given one of those cards inpregnated with wildflower seeds on Saturday when I went to the opening of a new local heritage and horticulture centre (“Celebrating our landscape and stories”). That was a lovely event too.
The poor person sweating in the elephant costume reminded me of my husband telling me that when he worked at the Andover Advertiser many years ago, he and the other young reporters had to take it in turns to dress up as the paper’s mascot – the Advertiger!