Cakes, smiles and a grand Picnic

 Buxton Pride Picnic 

20th July 2024

This year,

We're looking for hats,

We’re looking for books,

We’re looking for stray boas, a floaty scarf or two, a fan to flutter,

We’re hoping for cakes, and laughter, good conversation and wild speculations….

 

Buxton Pride Picnic will soon be upon us and we are sure our regular picnickers will already be testing their cucumber sandwiches and Victoria sponges, exercising their hula-hips and practising their “lying around in the sun looking elegant” postures! 

We are part of the Buxton Festival Fringe so pick up a programme or drop in on their website and go and catch some of their delicious shows!

 

Practical stuff first:

Date: Saturday 20th July 2024

Times: 1pm – 4.30pm

Location: the lawns in front of the Swimming Pool, Pavilion Gardens, Buxton, SK17 6BE

Parking: free on Burlington Road, pay and display in the Gardens (Burlington Rd entrance)

Buses: stops on St John’s Rd, West Road and Buxton Market Place are all within a few minutes’ walk

Train: we're about 10 minutes' walk from Buxton Train Station

 

Booking? Not needed!

Tickets? Who cares! We welcome those who come with happy intentions and an inclusive attitude. Pack your own picnic, stagger along with that huge hamper and settle on the lawns of Pavilion Gardens for an afternoon of chatting and good cheer, lawn games and facepainting, maybe some singing…who knows. Our Picnic is always a very relaxed and friendly event with lots of families coming along and a wonderful range of ages (our youngest so far was just days old and the oldest in their 80s) and species (lots of pampered pooches and the Garden's enthusiastic ducks)

one of the HPCA flags

Thanks to all those folks who are helping by putting up posters, by making banners (High Peak Community Arts!) and a special thanks to Morrisons Stores for their continuing support

 

Books

We have a book-swap table and invite people to bring their well-thumbed copies of Oranges are not the only fruit or the copy of Maurice that you never read or the edition of the Ladybird Book of Polari* that gathers dust in your closet. You don’t have to bring a book. You’re very welcome to have a rummage and take away something to read, anyway. We’re looking for books relating to LGBTQ+ people: fiction, non-fiction, self-help, trouble and tease might all work. I argue that the whole Mister Men and Little Miss Something series should be acceptable but am often out-voted….

have you read any good LGBTQ+ books lately?

 

Hats, Caps, Scarves and Flappers

There is also a dressing-up box for those who feel they need a bit of extra glamour to match the wonder of the other picnickers. We have a selection of hats, wigs and goodness only knows what but are always ready to welcome more – clean, please!

And when you are throughly glammed up there will be several picture frames and photo booths to pose for so your Spectacular Self can be preserved for eternity (or can go into our Blackmail Later files)

 

And then there are cakes

As before, we are inviting entries for the Buxton’s Big Gay Bake Off…

 

Yes, we’re looking for cakes but what they look like……we are expecting to judge as much on the wonder of their names as on their taste and appearance….is as important as their taste. We are hoping there might be some:

• Gay Gateaux
• or Bi-forest Gateaux
• or Trans Flans
• or Lesbian Tarts
• or Camp Croissants
• or Polari Muffins
• Seductive Scones?
• Risque rock-cakes
• or just a flutter of Fairy Cakes
• Who knows…..

Just to be clear:

Buxton's Big Gay Bake Off:

a)   This isn’t a very serious competition

b)   Entries can be brought along when you come to the Picnic but they must all be registered by 2.30pm

c)   The only prize is everyone else’s delight and acclaim. There might be a rosette or two and the chance to taste someone else’s cake

d)  The Fabulous Judge’s Fabulous Decisions are Final

e)   Make sure your cake is edible – no cheating with glue and plaster please

f)   You are responsible for your own cake so please make sure you take any of it that is left away with you when you leave the Picnic

  

And as if that isn’t enough!

Guests

This year we will be joined by representatives of Blythe House, Ashgate Hospice and the Derbyshire Sexual Health Promotion Team who will be on hand for conversations, cake sampling, and even more dressing up

And then, there is more….

If you cope with/survive/overeat during the picnic itself, we are hoping folks may join us for some stronger restorative refreshment at the Picnic Afterparty at the Cellar Bar of the Buxton Brewery Tap House (Old Court House, Buxton, S17 6AY)

 

* no, calm down, I know they didn't really do one but it's absence left such a gap in my childhood I've never stopped hoping it would just appear....

Fluttering by: Nairn BAF 2024

 

A flutter of wings

schools workshops, 

Nairn Arts Festival 2024

Environmental prediction: 

in the first week of September, 

there will be an explosion of unlikely invertebrates 

in the schools of Nairn
 

Bats and badgers,

gnats and gadflies,

waterboat men,

Wake up for the greatest day of all.

Ants and dormice

open your eyes

mobilize now!

get yourselves together for the feast and for the ball

"Get Ready", from The Butterfly Ball by Roger Glover

Nairn Book and Arts Festival

Festival dates: 31st August - 8th September 2024

School workshops: 2 - 6th September

Celebration: Sunday 8th September

 

Celebrating the diversity, vibrancy, importance and simple wonder of the smaller inhabitants of the area, schoolchildren will be talking about, thinking about, composing poems about and making butterflies, beetles and bugs, ladybirds, moths and earthworms. I am anticipating spiders and centipedes and possibly rainbow snails.

 

ants' nest hat

We can't be sure just what will appear as while I bring ideas and techniques, stories to hear, models to look at and pictures to work from, the final appearance of what we make will be up to our groups. There will be crowns (butterfly? bumblebee queens?). There may be ants' nests built on people's heads. There may be masks to give us beetle children or spider siblings

 

butterfly crown details

What we can be sure of is the sheer enthusiasm of those Nairn schoolchildren and the imagination and dexterity that goes into their work

 

And all in a moment, the Millbank Tree changed,

Growing apples instead of cakes,

Spreading shade instead of danger

Becoming a friend instead of a foe.

Now, The Millbank Tree grows in the school garden

And gives its apples for sunshine, raindrops and smiles

Millbank Primary School, tree poem, 2022

 

All of this then contributes to a parade on the final day of the festival where our swarm of assorted creatures will creep, crawl, flutter, slither and, most of all, dance behind a samba band while following stilt-walking Insect Monarchs from Fly Agaric Arts. We might manage a full-scale Butterfly Ball but we'll certainly have an Invertebrate Party! The parade will end with an afternoon of stories, activities and bee-friendly garden information
 

Insect mask

VOLUNTEERS WANTED

If you would like to help, I am hoping to gather a few volunteers who might help on one or more of the school days  (2 - 6th September 2024) and/or at the final parade (8th September)

 

While I lead activities, it is always good to have extra hands to help with twiddly bits and with extra knowledge about wildlife, or conservation, or wriggling like a millipede!

 

Ideally you will have a Disclosure Scotland basic certificate

 

If you'd like to be involved, drop me an email and we'll sort something out!

Email: creepingtoad@btinternet.com