Pomp and Circumstance in Salford!

You may or may not know that our lovely friend Glen plays for the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Well he very kindly gave us tickets to the Proms in the Park at Buile Hill Park in Salford yesterday evening. Tom was at a party and so the three of us joined Julia, Hannah and Annise in the audience. The evening began with a scrummy picnic of delights from M & S. The girls were in the mood and waving their union jacks even then:

The concert was amazing. One of its many highlights was the appearance of ACM from Last Choir Standing. For some reason, Peter was keen for me to use my super zoom lens and get some close-ups. Hmmm!

The soloist was Juliette Pochin, who delighted us by singing I could have danced all night from one of my most favourite films, My Fair Lady. (Peter bought me the video when we were dating, largely because he could relate to many of the sentiments of Henry Higgins such as "women are irrational, that's all there is to that.." and "straightening up their hair is all the ever do, why don't they straighten up the mess that's inside?")

Then the pièce de résistance was an appearance by Salford's own Russell Watson. It was pretty surreal to be back in Salford for all of this. This was the park where our demonic P.E. teacher used to make us do cross country running, the most dreadful of all sports next to rounders, for which I was often slapped across the face for missing the ball (I am incredibly short-sighted and only had a hope of catching a ball if the one in use was luminous.) It was also the park in which my brother Paul dragged me to Harold Riley's free Art classes for Salford kids, in the hope in might make an artist of me too.

The whole evening was enormous fun. It's always a good atomosphere, especially when they play the Hornpipe, Pomp and Circumstance and Jerusalem and everyone does a whole lot of flag waving.

Even if some of the flags got overused and broken!

Anni and Hannah were right into the groove.

So much so that a photographer from a local newspaper asked our permission to take their photographs when the fireworks began. We're looking forward to them being emailed to us. We had an absolutely fantastic evening, rounded off by an awesome firework display. Thanks a mill Glen & Julia xx