The Festival this year was the first for eight or nine years, and represented something of a fresh start after a considerable break The theme was ‘Remembering’. Members of the congregation, the village and further afield were invited to bring their own flowers and to make their own arrangements, accompanied by photographs and other items of sentimental significance. Each display was given a label with the name of the loved one, friend, or family remembered. The response was amazing, both from those who answered the invitation, and the many visitors who came to see the displays. Many people found these very personal and moving.
We all worked together on the previous Friday to put the displays in place, and had a lot of fun (and a lot of coffee and a lot of gossip!).
Every window space in the church was filled with flowers, and there were arrangements on the font, on the piscina steps in the chancel, and pedestals in the nave and the porch. Flowers came from cottage gardens, supermarkets and florists, and arrangements were formal and informal. The smell of all the flowers was wonderful and the whole effect an absolute knockout!
On the Saturday afternoon we served strawberry teas in the nearby village hall, which proved very popular despite the rain; the deluge could easily have put a damper on the weekend, but happily did not seem to deter visitors. On Sunday we held our annual Festival Mass celebrating the Birth of St. John the Baptist, to whom our church is dedicated.
Immense thanks to everyone who helped to make this weekend such a resounding success; those who worked on the publicity, the flower arrangers, those who organised and served the teas (which by all reports were first class), those who manned the church throughout the weekend, and also of course, all our visitors, who made it all worthwhile.
