Our Man in Westminster

Congratulations to everyone who held their Bank Holiday Event on Saturday or Sunday and deep commiserations to everyone who had planned something involving opening the front door on Monday.

The August Bank Holiday is a peculiar institution anyway, coming in the month most people take holidays, and never has it been more pointless than this week.

Anyway before the biblical storms struck I was lucky enough to attend two very different events which brought people together for good causes.

The first was the annual Appledore Flower Festival, which on Saturday morning looked more packed than I have ever seen it.

Rightly so, because in the church there were more than 30 different displays, appropriately under the theme “In Which We Serve” to mark the 100th anniversary of the First World War.

These displays covered teachers, police ambulance, litter pickers, the Queen, the military, and of course priests as well as many others.

The effort involved was extraordinary and deserved the crowds that came.

A different but even bigger crowd was gathered at the Kingsnorth Golf Club’s Charity Day raising money for two excellent organisations: Help for Heroes and Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.

Apart from the 80 or so who played in the competition, many others turned up to support, and it was great to see some of the Gurkhas who had served in the Army there to help present the prizes.

These included men who had been wounded in Afghanistan and one who had been awarded the Military Cross in 2007.

It was really moving to witness the standing ovation that came when they were introduced.

Altogether this shows how to use a Bank Holiday weekend both to have fun and to raise money for good causes. Apart from the rain, what could be more English than that?