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I live right beside the main car park to Muncaster Castle. You need to know this to understand what I’m about to say.
My driveway is, in effect, a turn off the entrance to the car park across a wide pavement. The easiest way to get to it from the direction of the Centre is to drive into the Castle car park, execute a 360° turn, head back towards the entrance/exit and then turn sharp left across the pavement and up my driveway.
I did this yesterday evening, as the visitors (all 1,800 of them) were leaving the Festival of Fools. Cars were queuing to get onto the main road, but there was plenty of room for me to get past them, so – I did, indicating a left turn.
Then this pompous little man, with a mousey woman in tow, starts gesticulating at me from the pavement. I point towards my gateway, smiling amiably, and he carries on mouthing at me … so I wind my window down – and the short conversation goes something like this:
Me: Pardon?
Him: Get to the back of the queue!
Me: Get off my driveway.
Him: Oh …
It was exactly like sticking a pin in an inner tube …
I was sitting at my computer this morning, minding my own business, wondering how long it was before I could go home (about 8 hours …) when I saw two very large ducks sitting on the lawn outside the window.
On closer inspection, they turned out to be geese. Greylag geese, to be precise. What’s more when one of them got up ….
Well – see for yourself. 
I hope they didn’t head for the A595. I haven’t heard any squealing brakes this morning …
LATER: They’re still around, still all present and correct, and heading inland, away from the road:
I’ve spent most of today setting up the raffle that’s going to be drawn on the 22nd of August … and even though I say so myself, we’ve rounded up some of our most spectacular prizes ever …
If you’d like some tickets (at £1.00 per ticket), send me an email at:
Admin at cccare dot org
Just tell me how many books you’d like, and where you’d like them sent, and I’ll bung them in the post to you. You can return your payment with the counterfoils in due course.
Prizes:
- An original portrait of the subject of your choice by local artist Maggie Messenger.
- Unique 33-piece ‘Muncaster’ pattern tea service made by Dave Aspden of the
now-defunct Waberthwaite pottery.
- Autographed copy of Rosie Swale’s latest book ,“Just a Little Run Around the World” , which is, of course, about her five year, round-the-world-run for charity.
- Double DVD set – Series 1 and 2 of the BAFTA-award winning Harry and Paul autographed by Harry Enfield.
- DVD set of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1980’s production of Nicholas Nickleby, autographed by Edward Petherbridge (who played Newman Noggs), plus an as-yet unspecified ‘little trophy’ being kindly donated him.
- DVD set of Series 5 of Foyle’s War, autographed by Jay Benedict (who played US Army Captain John Kieffer in the episodes ‘Invasion’ and ‘All Clear’).
- Prestige 18-piece table mat set by Royal Doulton.
- Bottle of Chivas Regal Premium Scotch whisky.
Good, eh? 
Better late than never, that’s what my granny would always have said, if she’d been given to saying such things, which she wasn’t, so she didn’t:
—o—
Fooling Around: It’s coming up to Festival of Fools time at Muncaster Castle again and – as ever – they’re letting us loose on the sideshows. When you consider that the sideshows consist almost entirely of things you throw and hit, you have to wonder about the advisability of it, but – hey, who are we to argue?
The Festival runs from Sunday the 24th to Thursday the 28th of May inclusive, so we’ll need quite a lot of help – both during the day running the shows, and with the setting up and putting away. Any volunteers will be greeted with open arms.
Garden: Exciting things are afoot in the garden … which anyone who is on the Centre’s mailing list will know about by now (because they’ll have had our Newsletter). We’ve gone into partnership with Shepley Engineering (who are – among other things – the brains and brawn behind the magnificent refurbishment of St Pancras Station). Shepley are running a pilot project here with their apprentices, aimed at both developing their technical skills and their social awareness, through learning about the Centre and working with our volunteers. They are already at work on wheelchair access to the garden, refurbishing the path which leads from the front drive up through the arch into the sunken garden and replacing the current rickety old wooden hop arch (yep … it’s an arch that has hops growing over it) with a brand new iron one.
Great 20 & 10 Birthday Party:
Right. Since the last Parish News, we’re a bit forwarder with the arrangements for this. To the general festivities, you can add:
11.00am: Short service of Thanksgiving, led by the Right Reverend George Hacker, former Bishop of Penrith.
An early show of hands suggests that an awful lot of people are going to come to this event … which is pleasing, but also a little worrying. I mean – where are we going to put all the CARS? Whimper …
We also suddenly realized that we’ve been sitting on a gem of a raffle prize ever since it was given to us several years ago. It’s a complete tea service from local potter Dave Aspden … formerly of Bootle, I believe, and last heard of somewhere in the Burnley area, living on a houseboat. We’d no sooner realized we had THAT, than someone brought in many boxes of jumble, one of which contained an unopened bottle of Chivas Regal whisky. Now that’s what I call CLASSY jumble.
A friend just told me not to try looking something up in the new Wolfram search engine on account of how it would do my head in.
So, of course, I did.
It considered my search terms for a moment, then told me this:
A search engine riddled with doubt and uncertainty? 
It’s like Google with existential angst.
The Festival of Fools (over at our Landlords’ place …) is almost upon us again:
… and once more we’re fielding a team of happy volunteers to run the sideshows.
Curiously enough, I seem to have omitted to put my name down on the list. How very, very remiss of me …
The Red Cross have decreed that I’m safe to be let loose on the public again. Mind you, you’d have to be positively lethal before they refused to renew your certificate, so I’m not getting too smug about it.
I wasn’t partnered with a 20 stone welder this time, but 5′10″, 9 stone machinist-come-stick insect. With the welder, I was wondering how I could make the triangular bandage go all the way around. With the machinist, I was wondering what to do with all the surplus …
When it came to turning him into the recovery position … that was just plain embarrassing. You see, you have to check their pockets to make sure there isn’t anything in them that could dig in and hurt when you roll them over. So, there I am, patting the recumbent machinist down (as one does) and I feel something hard and sharp in his jeans pocket. So, I shove my hand in and – to my surprise – discover that the pocket is empty. BUT there’s still something hard in there … (and this is NOT going where you think it is … you mucky-minded lot). It took me a few seconds to realize that I was fondling his hip bone. I mean, I haven’t even SEEN my own hip bone in the last decade …
The surreal part came when I discovered that a friend was a model in the new First Aid Handbook (published just this month). Take it from me, it’s very, VERY difficult to concentrate on absorbing information when confronted with someone you know making an excellent job of pretending to be a stroke victim …
Laughing hysterically is NOT considered an appropriate response.
He tells me he did it as a favour to a friend for £50 and a free lunch.
Turns out it was actually £50, a free lunch and a cheap laugh at my expense when I told him what an exhibition I’d made of myself.
Oh – and he owes me for the scalding hot cappuccino I dropped. In my lap.
Off to Workington (Fun Spot of the North) for two days tomorrow, to renew my Red Cross First Aid at Work certificate.
Oh good. Two days of pounding good old Resusci-Annie and tying bandages around the 20 stone welders I always seem to get partnered with to practice on.
Last time round (three years ago) I had this man-mountain attempting to put a sling on me – but he was mortally embarrassed about going anywhere near my vital statistics.
I assured him it was perfectly okay, and I wouldn’t sue him for sexual harassment … but he just sort of squirmed and said,
“I don’t want to …. just in case …”.
Periodically, when I can’t sleep, I lie in bed in the small hours of the morning and wonder to myself:
Just in case of WHAT … ?
Rose Swale Pope is back in town. Friday afternoon, just before I was due to pack up and go home for the Bank Holiday, the telephone rang …
Talking to Rosie is like trying to cling to a bolting pony. When you hang up you feel slightly concussed, in the nicest possible way.
She’s giving the first talk about her round-the-world run at the Keswick Mountain Festival on the 13th of this month – and bless her heart, she’s talked them into running a raffle on our behalf …
I’d better ring them and find out what, if anything they need from us.
