What an eventful month May has been so far, and we’re still only halfway through it.
I hope you enjoyed the extra leisure time over the Coronation weekend and the warm sunny day on the Big Lunch Sunday. Unexpectedly, the sun was so warm my chocolate sponge cake melted before we could all eat it.
As could be expected, townspeople turned out in droves to take part in the street party with friends and neighbours amidst colourful buntings and quirkily adorned bollards, railings, letterboxes newly adorned with their coverings of red, white and blue yarn – and the enormous fabric crown placed so strategically under the admonishing finger of Oliver Cromwell.
Strolling along the Waits today I spotted a clutch of workman digging up the patio by the museum to install the new Queen Elizabeth memorial bandstand which will provide an attractive welcome shelter for musicians, or audience, attending the summer programme of Music on the Waits.
The local bird life is recovering too. From my garden’s vantage point I can see two swans nesting at the tip of Holt Island, a new clutch of moorhen chicks emerging from grasses in the shallows of our river wall and a new pair of blue tits flitting back and forth to their brood.
This month’s public talk brings another change of scene, moving away Thicket Paths, Mayflower sailings and Garden Wildlife, on Friday 19th May we will hear from Alison Dickens, the director of Granta Heritage and cathedral archaeologist at St Edmondsbury, about some of the Findings under the Choir Stalls of Kings College, Cambridge. I am intrigued and I hope you will join us at the usual time of 7.30pm to give her a hearty St Ives welcome.
We are now taking names for the Mayflower study day, possibly in August but to be confirmed, at the very modest cost of £5 per person. Whilst we don’t have a final date yet, we’d like expressions of interest so we can gauge the level of interest so please sign up as you register your attendance on Friday if you’d like to attend.
And we’re still asking for suggestions from townspeople about sites they’d like to be conserved for the future be it droveways, footpaths, gates, railings, monuments, whatever you consider deserves to be retained and protected for the future. You’ll find a sign-up sheet for that too.
Christine
We look forward to seeing you at one of our events.
Civic Society of St Ives