Video: Tongues of Fire at the Horsham Festival

Jim and Jenny: re your comment on the Pied Piper post... Perhaps this is the next best thing? It's the best I can do for now, anyway!

Click here.

Things I love about England: #2

The random sights you see on highways...

Apparently pigeon racing is a national sport!

Farewells and fireworks!

Yesterday we went to a farewell lunch for Len and Theresa, who are flying home to Guyana (South America) on Tuesday after having lived, worked and studied over here for the past year. We'll miss them, but definitely hope to cross paths again! The party was hosted by Ian and Sharon, who live about 40 minutes away from us and have two young children – Len and Theresa are staying with them for their last few days here.

There were about 40 people there, including some we hadn't met before. Sharon had asked us to bring wombok salad like we took to the other Sharon's marquee party – it seems to be quite a hit, and we keep being asked to explain what's in it!! There were lots of other delicious dishes too, including Guyanese curry and chilli – and, for dessert, an illustrated farewell cake with maps of South America and the UK, and an absolutely scrumptious looking (and tasting) chocolate cake! (By the way, Sharon's a chef!) The chocolate cake was for Theresa's birthday since that's just after they get home! And we also sang happy birthday to Ben. :)

Most of the guests trying to assemble themselves for a group photo...

Afterwards, we stayed around and went to a Bonfire Night in nearby Lewes with Ian, Sharon, their children, and Len and Theresa. It was held by the children's firework society in the lead-up to the “real thing”: the famous Lewes Bonfire Night I mentioned in an earlier blog entry, which we hope to go to on 5 November. This one was still very spectacular, with a procession of flaming torches and burning barrels, an enormous bonfire, exploding tableaus, and a REALLY spectacular display of fireworks, but I'll save my photos and detailed explanations for after we've been to the HUUUGE one next week! Ian is Lewes born and bred, and his cousin actually builds a lot of the fireworks displays, so it was fantastic to have him there explaining everything to us... the history and politics, the seven different firework society's membership criteria, uniforms, badges etc... But I'll save that for next time! Bye for now!

Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.

Just a quick note relevant to those of you who contact us by phone...

Daylight saving ends here tonight, so from now on we will be 10 hours behind you instead of 9!

Following the Pied Piper's fiery tongue to the hungry fish...

Hello one and all! Since writing about Ireland is going to take a substantial amount of time and I just have a little window of writing time tonight, I am going to tell you about what we did tonight instead. Our Irish adventures can wait until another day. And I promise that the title of this post will make sense by the end of this!...

Tonight we went to the Horsham Town Centre Festival. This is an annual three-day festival that I found out about when looking on the net for upcoming events a few weeks ago. Horsham is about 15 minutes south-west of Crawley, and it's also where we go for meetings.

We got to Horsham a little after 7pm and found a carpark in the middle of town. (Thankfully a nice couple came up and told us we didn't need to pay for parking after 6pm, just in time to stop us blindly shoving our pennies into the “pay and display” machine!)

We then followed the music and people to a street corner where a lively band was playing up a storm. They were excellent!! Tongues of Fire, which we later learnt their name to be, is an eight-piece stand-up male jazz ensemble consisting of a baritone sax, alto sax, two trumpets, trombone, tuba, snare drum, and a bass drum. The bass drum was actually more like a mobile drumkit hanging from the drummer's neck, as it had cymbals and a woodblock attached to the top of it! The group had red and green Christmas lights entwined around most of the instruments, and the baritone sax player also doubled as the conductor, frequently abandoning his playing to walk back and forth in front of the other seven and wave his arms enthusiastically. Anyway, they were absolutely brilliant!!

After a while, the band suddenly began to walk, still playing their infectious music, and, like children following the Pied Piper, the crowd followed them a short distance through the streets of Horsham until we reached an area known as “the Forum”. There, they wove amongst the crowd, still playing relentlessly and following the long-haired, long-jacketed Head Piper with the barry sax, until they ended up on a small stage and finished with a magnificent display of rhythmic talent by the two drummers.

Tongues of Fire then disappeared and “Feeding the Fish” took to the stage! This was, as described by the festival website and read out by the radio guy who introduced them: “a high-energy stage-show where juggling and movement are performed in partial light with illuminated clubs and balls, changing brightness and strobing, emitting a spectrum of colours in perfect synchronization to a dramatic soundtrack”! This was absolutely fantastic – a choreographed performance by a man and woman with unbelievable juggling skills. Instead of balls, they used clubs that constantly changed colour and light sticks that made shapes as they were twirled around in the darkness (due to the programming of the strobing lights inside the sticks) – flowers, fish, stars, hearts, etc! They even juggled with the woman standing on the man's shoulders. Brilliant!!! (Bruce and Curtis, getting any ideas?)

Afterwards, we had tea at a nearby restaurant where the friendly man who carried our meals out stayed and told us lots of places “off the tourist trap” that we should visit whilst over here. He wants to go to Australia someday and travel from Sydney to Cairns, so he hopes someone in Australia will be kind enough to give him similar inside advice. So, Aussie friends and rellies, make sure you look out for him! :)

We then walked back to our car for the drive home, passing en route a merry-go-round, tea-cup ride, ferris wheel, and a number of show-type stalls such as hula hoop tossing and tin duck shooting. All in all, it was a thoroughly pleasant evening and a very enjoyable first-English-small-town-festival experience. Goodnight!

Coming soon...

...What happened when the Bords went to Ireland...


We'll keep you post-it... sorry, posted!