Going home...
Aug. 27th, 2007 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annwfynI went home to Lambourn yesterday, which I do far too rarely, and lo! It was good.
I somehow acquired a rosebush, an orange juicer and a casserole dish, and also managed to sort through the piles and piles of old clothes (dating back to my early teens) which were filling my bedroom at home. Four bin bags later (three to be recycled, one to be donated to Oxfam) I'm now down to two drawers full of clothes that I need to find a place for in London, and a bag of clothes brought back home with me today. I was a little alarmed to realise just how much weight I've put on since my teens - I was going through jeans, skirts and tops which were a size 10. My favourite smart skirt from my sixth form years (the skirt I wore to my Oxford interview, and for my driving test) didn't even fit my 5'1", size 10 sister. I swear to God - I just never ate when I was seventeen!
I had forgotten this whilst heading home, but it appears that the Lambourn Carnival was this weekend. It was actually a bit of a sad spectacle in some ways. I remember the Carnival being a big deal when I was little - people standing out on the pavement all the way along the route, a field full of lorries carrying the carnival floats assembling at the start of the parade, lots and lots of bright costumes, and my old riding school always used to have at least ten or so kids dressed up on horse back.
This year there were three floats, and about five or six groups on foot. The costumes were still lovely - well done, but standard cheap and cheerful village costume fare - but the whole thing just seemed so much smaller, and the reception much more muted. I stood outside our house, with my sisters and stepmother, and we threw coins into buckets enthusiastically, but I couldn't help but feel a little sad that the entire thing had faded so much.
Maybe it's Lambourn changing - house prices have gone up, a lot of the old families can't afford to live there anymore, the racing industry has moved out of the village to Upper Lambourn, and the farming industry is not that stable anymore. Maybe it's just that the times are changing and villages don't have their own little carnivals so much anymore. I don't know, but I think it's a real real shame.
I somehow acquired a rosebush, an orange juicer and a casserole dish, and also managed to sort through the piles and piles of old clothes (dating back to my early teens) which were filling my bedroom at home. Four bin bags later (three to be recycled, one to be donated to Oxfam) I'm now down to two drawers full of clothes that I need to find a place for in London, and a bag of clothes brought back home with me today. I was a little alarmed to realise just how much weight I've put on since my teens - I was going through jeans, skirts and tops which were a size 10. My favourite smart skirt from my sixth form years (the skirt I wore to my Oxford interview, and for my driving test) didn't even fit my 5'1", size 10 sister. I swear to God - I just never ate when I was seventeen!
I had forgotten this whilst heading home, but it appears that the Lambourn Carnival was this weekend. It was actually a bit of a sad spectacle in some ways. I remember the Carnival being a big deal when I was little - people standing out on the pavement all the way along the route, a field full of lorries carrying the carnival floats assembling at the start of the parade, lots and lots of bright costumes, and my old riding school always used to have at least ten or so kids dressed up on horse back.
This year there were three floats, and about five or six groups on foot. The costumes were still lovely - well done, but standard cheap and cheerful village costume fare - but the whole thing just seemed so much smaller, and the reception much more muted. I stood outside our house, with my sisters and stepmother, and we threw coins into buckets enthusiastically, but I couldn't help but feel a little sad that the entire thing had faded so much.
Maybe it's Lambourn changing - house prices have gone up, a lot of the old families can't afford to live there anymore, the racing industry has moved out of the village to Upper Lambourn, and the farming industry is not that stable anymore. Maybe it's just that the times are changing and villages don't have their own little carnivals so much anymore. I don't know, but I think it's a real real shame.
