|
hen I fire this cannon the Red Arrows will
appear," Flight Lieutenant John Walker assured a crowd of young
enthusiasts. On the dot of 5pm he fired the cannon at the end of the Sugar
Tong and at the same moment the Red Arrows appeared on the horizon, to the
amazed cheers of the children.
Egremont’s own far travelled airman and mariner admits that he was cheating.
He had inside knowledge of just how precisely the flight of elite aircraft
must be, and, though there had been serious doubt about whether the flight
from Lincolnshire would be possible at all through some of the most
disastrous weather in living memory, nothing was going to stop the Red
Arrows from getting to Whitehaven.
Perhaps we take our district capital for granted or even resent its status
as an unfairly favoured rival to Egremont. "Why couldn’t they have the
Festival here?" one Little Egremont loyalist complained to us, quite
seriously. But for the air crew of Red Arrows who love the uncluttered air
space around Whitehaven, the crew of USS *, and dozens of ex-Cumbrians
returning to their homeland from Australia and New Zealand especially for
the Festival, the transformation in their home district was miraculous. They
marvelled that a town so far from large centres of population should have
such a magnificent working harbour, crowded with boats and ready to welcome
300,000 visitors to its truly international festival.
For the US crew, about to set up a consulate in Whitehaven, the links
between Copeland and their nation were thrilling. All the rivalry that
stemmed from John Paul Jones’s botched raid forgotten, they embraced John as
a friend.
Grainne Jakobson, who offers practical guidance in cookery in her own
kitchen in Woodend, shared the stage at the Cookery Theatre with celebrtity
chefs Keith Floyd, Jean Christophe Novelli, Mike Beattie, Nick Martin and
Annette Gibbons. Our photograph shows her preparing a three course meal in
twenty minutes with Nick Martin. She showed how much better the taste is
when you get your ingredients from local sources, by using ham cured ham and
a rack of lamb from Country Cuts, in Santon Bridge, new potatoes from St
Bees and cream from Mawson’s Dairies in Seascale. |
