Gloucester Day, mock mayor's parade

The city of Gloucester celebrates every year in n September, commemorating the city's historical role in the Siege of Gloucester during the Civil Wars. Without Gloucester, which was besieged, the monarchy would not have fallen. Gloucester was for Parliament, most of the surrounding towns and villages supported the King.

Every year a Mock Mayor of Barton (a district of the city) is chosen and feted. The historical reasons for this tradition elude me. There is a raggle taggle parade made up of representatives of local community groups, eg the St James' farm and their goats on leads; the Royal British Legion riders featuring blipper DJRose, no less; the Jamaican community; the Polish community; some choirs; Water Aid, and so forth. And some civil war re-enactors, of course! Re-enacting is big in Gloucester.

It was extraordinarily hard to get any good shots. I saw a BBC-lanyarded girl standing on a bench, so when she got down, I took her place, but other people came and sat down at the other end of the bench! Not ideal.

I went and spoke to the Polish people, and they told me about the conversation classes in Gloucester every Saturday. Could be fun! I don't know if we'll have any Polish-speaking children in nursery next year. They offered me some Polish sweets. The chocolate had melted in the hot sun...

I bustled around Gloucester for a few hours, enjoying the buzz and the stalls and the charity shops. Don't know what is going on in front of the Cathedral, though: the tarmac has been ripped up and I'm not sure how to access the cathedral itself anymore. We have no visitors due right now, so I need not worry about disappointment on the cathedral front. The docks are the trendy place to go right now, with modern outlet shopping centre, outdoor market area, cafe's, and boats. Most, if not all, of the regeneration money went there rather than to the city centre. I didn't visit the docks today.

In case you had not guessed, this elder is from the Jamaican community of Gloucester. My nephews and niece are half Jamaican and still go to Preston carnival every year, despite now living in the West Highlands.

I had a rather sad conversation in a shopping centre, with a guy selling mobile phone accessories. He commented on my purse; I told him it was Sri Lankan; he told me that all is not well in his country, even with the new- ish government; that he has not been able to revisit for eight years (money is the problem, I think); how he misses his mother but doesn't think he could bring her over to live here now because of immigration laws; how the recent terrorist attacks worldwide have caused even some Buddhists in Sri Lanka to speak out against Islam; how he would love to go back to his homeland to start an organic chicken farm, but chickens are so expensive ..


Wow, an indoor shopping centre in Gloucester is a long long way from an organic chicken farm in Sri Lanka! As Captain Sensible (and others before him) once said, 'You gotta have a dream, if you don't have a dream, how you gonna make your dream come true?'