Street Parties New And Old

I'm afraid the coronation was before my time, although for Charles and Di's wedding our road (a cul de sac), decided to hold a 'street party'.

For weeks 'they' were talking about it, people kept holding meetings and it was decided to apply to have the road closed for the event, then, since no-one except residents came into our cul-de-sac that seemed a bit OTT, so they made their own 'Street party in progress' signs. By the time they got around to thinking about bunting, the shops had all sold out so there then followed a steady stream of people knocking on the door asking if we had any or failing that, bits of red, white and/or blue fabric with which to make it, or better still, would you actually make it. For days they sewed, going out every few hours to see if it was long enough yet - it never quite seemed to be!

After that there were pleas to cook or make a food contribution, oh and did we have a pasting table and or chairs they could borrow, as well as table cloths, cutlery and crockery and so it went on.

Come 'the big day' and those who were heavily into it (as the saying goes), were out there at the crack of dawn. Pasting tables were set up - and rocked alarmingly; chairs were placed - all of differing heights; tablecloths were spread - and promptly blew off; cutlery was placed - and got covered in dust; balloons were blown up - and promptly burst or blew away. 'Men' went up ladders, tying long lengths of string onto the ends of bunting still too short to reach across the 'turning circle' at the end of the road

With the wedding over, figures began to appear bringing and arranging food. Two 'ghetto blasters' were strategically placed either side of the road, both running the same tape although despite much concentrated fiddling, it proved impossible to get them to run in-synch with one another and, at length, the children were allowed out. All 11 of them! I have a couple of photos I took from an upstairs window, it shows 11 very bored looking children and 32 very excited adults, all rushing round taking photos and trying to get the children interested. After 20 minutes it was all over, everyone disappeared back inside and that was pretty much that .... except by next morning one of the knots holding the bunting in place had come undone, it wrapped itself around some of the highest branches in the trees and stayed there, looking very bedraggled, for several months until it too, finally disappeared.

I doubt very much if our current road will have a street party - they're nearly all retired and their idea of 'excitment' is to have a second glass of sherry (but only at Christmas!).

 

I can't imagine it will be quite the same these days. The UK has changed so that not so many people know their neighbours anymore, and I just can't imagine the same sort of atmosphere being achieved :-(

Let's hope I'm wrong.