CORONATION DAY MEMORIES
With the Jubilee coming up, my recollections go back instantly to our Coronation street party when I was a very small child. The usual wonderful display of food on trestle tables was one of the main attractions, but the other was the Fancy Dress Competition.
I wasn’t quite sure what my mum and her sisters were doing to me in the bathroom. I was being dissected – two on one side of me and two on the other.
The right-hand side pair were covering their half of me in cocoa water – the nearest thing we had to fake tan then – all over one leg, one arm, up my body and half of my face while the pair on the left side of me was covering the left half of me in a white gluey type paste.
Then the right-hand side put half of a hula skirt on, whilst the left side put winter wear up my legs, arms and so on. Half my face was summery, while the left side had snow goggles and a bobble hat. And so it went on until I was a completely split personality.
Then came the judging. Well, when I saw the other costumes, they were wonderful – Beefeaters, queens, guards, you name it. Queen Elizabeth in all her fine regalia was a deserving winner and won the first prize and there was lots of clapping and cheering for her. Then a gorgeous colourful detailed Beefeater came a well deserving second with more claps and cheering.
But there was still a third prize to come and to my surprise, I was pulled through the throng to the little stage and told I had won the third prize for originality of idea as a weather change, or weather cock, whatever term you use. I was quite shy, but felt very grand. It had cost very little in money terms or time, but with a creative mum and her sisters it had proven to be a winner, albeit third.
I’ll always remember that weather change as I drink cocoa with fond memories.
Christine Sims, Knutsford, Cheshire.
I was working on a farm with the largest Jersey dairy cattle herd of 200 cows and heifers where I was responsible for the milking herd in my position as Head Herdsman and A.I. Technician. We lived on the farm in a tied cottage.
The herd was in a nearby meadow and it was a bright sunny day at five am as I opened the yard gate and walked up and around the herd in order to drive them gently down to the milking sheds, where the men had collected their milking equipment. It was my job to supervise the milking and the Jersey cows were chosen as they gave higher than average butterfat in their milk. If there were any cows in season, I would assemble them and use the insemination kit.
After breakfast I gave directions to the men for the morning and afternoon activities including cleaning and washing down the sheds and arrangements for the next milking while the herd was out grazing in the meadow.
I must admit I took the rest of the day off so that my wife and I could watch our newly acquired small screen TV (in black and white, of course). We were impressed with the pageantry as well as with the spirituality of the actual Coronation in Westminster Abbey.
At the end of the afternoon I checked on the herd out in the meadow, and the cleanliness of the sheds. The milking machines had been washed and were being sterilised in the steam chest.
And so ended a quite wonderful and historic day – little thinking that we would celebrate that event 70 years later.
Roger Ferguson, Headcorn, Kent