The Queen's Speech

Going Gently has been somewhat downbeat recently.
and again the news today has been somewhat distressing.
It feels as though damaged, mentally fragile people around the world have been pushed into acts of violence by the atmosphere of fear and publicity of hate.
We all need some good news.
A bit of lightness.

Now, I feel it's time for another novelty vegetable photograph but I think I have received most of the entries I am ever going to. We have almost fifty of them so far which is a wonderful achievement! So if there is any outstanding can you send them in asap! Closing date for entries is Monday 1st August.
Here is one I have been sent but cannot enter because it was not the work of the person involved.....sweet eh?

Anyhow, like I said it's time for good news.
I hope this will set a few smiles back on a few faces.

As the secretary ( and  the Chairman) of the Flower Show it is my responsibility to find an opener for the day. The job of the opener is pretty easy. You come to the show, sit on your own dainty table with tea and cakes and give a speech extolling the virtues of showing your best knitted cardi or prize winning marrow.
The Prof gave a stirring address last year and before that the vicar did his bit, and over the years we have had the Chair of the community council, leader of the conservation group and local double barrelled county council representative to do the honours, but the one person who really deserved to open the show has always eluded us.

Auntie Glad, the committee member who has been with the show 44 years, would never want to make a speech in front of the village she has spent her whole life serving. She is , quite simply , not the sort, but over the past few months, as Gladys has faded and become more frail, I have spent a little time talking to her around her kitchen table, making notes about what she would say if it ever was to happen .

Of course Gladys would never make that speech herself. Her natural modesty, her deafness and now her blindness would never allow her to take such a role on.
" The job should go to someone important in the village" she said at last year's committee meeting
The irony of such a remark lost on her

A few days ago, I spoke to Gladys' daughter, who has the incredibly hard job of trying to support a frail old lady who possesses the fiercest streak of independence since Boadicea rode her chariot. I accepted that we understood that Gladys may not be well enough to attend the Show but I wanted her daughter to know that Gladys ( or more specifically her words) will indeed open the show she has helped run for going on half a century.

I will read out Gladys' opening speech this year., and I shall be incredibly proud to be doing so

It will be her memories that will will be shared.
It will be her thanks that will be given
And for once, in public, it will her that will be given the limelight, in what we perhaps expect will be her last show.