FLAGS are out in Broadwindsor – and not just for the football.
England may play their first World Cup Game on the evening of Saturday June 12, but first there’s the annual village fun day and scarecrow festival to enjoy.
Bunting, Union Jacks and St George’s flags are lining the square and village green ahead of the big day, which this year has the theme of Merrie Olde England. Not an allusion to the average age of Mr Capello’s squad (28.7), but to the fact that it’s 350 years since the restoration of Charles II to the throne. The local link being that the fugitive king famously spent the night at Broadwindsor in 1651 as he fled through Dorset from the Battle of Worcester.
Anyway, the fun day starts at 9am with a Big Breakfast in the Comrades Hall until 10.30am.
BBC children's TV presenter Cerrie Burnell with BFG scarecrow in Broadwindsor, 2009.
Scarecrows will be out in force around the village from 10am and will be on show throughout the weekend, when maps will be available.
At 2.15pm there will be a parade around the village’s one-way system by local groups carrying decorated shields. They will be led by Sam Trott from the local Royal British Legion and the Babylon Morris dancers.
The whole shebang will be opened by Ruth Yarde and Jean Frampton, Broadwindsor’s ‘knights in shining armour’ who saved post office facilities in the village.
During the afternoon, there will be teas, a bar, barbecue, stalls including plate smashing, splat the rat, the stocks and entertainment from Stompin’ Dave, Punch and Judy and Mr Hocus Pocus the magic man.
After that it will be up to the England team to either crown a glorious Dorset day – or make people wish they’d kept the stocks out…
Life-like
I can really recommend visiting Broadwindsor to take a swift shufti at the scarecrows. They are amazingly life-like and many of them actually walk around the village and not just on one day of the year – they can be seen at any time! Anyway I’ve got to get on with barricading the doors, cancelling the newspapers and laying in stocks of the essentials of life. Sadly I will not be able to visit a watering hole for the next month or so. Why publicans have to convince themselves that the whole world is interested in watching a bunch of yobs kick a ball about a bit of grass, a parade of semi-literate Neanderthals discussing a bunch of yobs kicking a ball about a bit of grass or droning on about the prospects, in terms only slightly more sophisticated than barking, of any particular bunch of yobs kicking a ball about bit of grass successfully completely defeats me. Still life, of sorts, goes on and I shall just have to make the best of it.