Brighton Festival

The entire month of May is devoted to the arts in Brighton-- and to expanding the tourist season! There are countless productions, exhibits, displays, concerts, and activities to see. We only participated in a tiny smattering of what was on offer, but we throughly enjoyed it. The first event we attended was the children's parade. All the schools in Brighton get to be in the parade and unlike America, there are no cars allowed in the parade! It is all on foot. There were amazingly creative floats and costumes. The theme was Inventions. I know we posted a bit about it before, so I'll just put a photo or two up.

This school had the Heinz ketchup squeeze bottle as their invention. I though that was really hard, but they were great. Don't you just love the tomatos?

And this school had SCUBA as their invention. I thought the air tanks were really clever-- they're made of 2 liter bottles.
Iain was in a very grouchy mood that morning! I have no idea why, but he really didn't appreciate the parade very much, as you can see.
Later in the month, we went on a tour of what used to be the village of Preston, but has now been swallowed up by Brighton. Our church is in the Preston area and my favorite park in Brighton is Preston Park, so I was quite interested in the tour. We learned that the park used to be farmland and was purchased and landscaped by the city of Brighton in 1883. You can still see some of the poplar and elm trees planted at that time. We also climbed around the rockery, saw some old cottages and an old church, and the grave of the victim of one of Brighton's most notorious murders. Man never changes, does he? We were told not to photos during the tour, so I didn't. As we were heading home, I did take a picture of this beautiful tree in the park.
We went on another tour of Brighton's Back Passages. We saw lots of dumpsters and rubbish, but also lots of beautiful little homes tucked away in odd corners. After that tour we stopped for lunch in the Lanes.

Brian and Iain spent the morning together another weekend checking out the old WW2 air raid shelter at the primary school in the nearby village of Whitehawk. It was built by concerned parents in 1939-- construction on it began several months before war was actually declared. Lots of thought and care went into building the shelter in the thirties, and much thought and care has been given to restoring it as well. One elderly employee of the school thought it should be made into a museum and made it happen. This gentleman led the tour that Brian was on, which he enjoyed very much. Many schools still have these shelters, but most are closed up and deemed unsafe for public access, so it is really great that Whitehawk is preserving this piece of history.

Here is a photo of children actually using a similar shelter at a neighboring school.
Here is the interior. There was a wooden bench along the wall, which is gone now, and there are brick partitions to protect the children from flying shrapnel. I shudder to think of it.

The last thing we did was....

the circus! Iain LOVED it. Our friend Sophie was holding him and he was almost jumping off her lap he was so excited. He grinned and clapped and bounced for the first twenty minutes, then lost interest. He eventually fell asleep! He had a great time, and so did I. There was some filler, but some of the acrobatic acts were awesome!

Here is the crew before the show. Sophie, Darren, Lizzie, and Rowena.

And here we are with our tired man after the show!

There's still lots going on in town, but for us the Brighton Festival is over because we're going to SPAIN on Saturday! I'm absolutely thrilled to have the chance to go and we will certainly post pictures and memories on ye old blog when we return! Adios!