Posh Frocks and Medals

Garden Party at Plantation House
It was an honour to be invited to the Garden Party held in honour of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s birthday.
It was an afternoon of elegance. Dress: lounge suit or uniform, medals and decorations. Hats may be worn. So looking around the marquee where around 150 people mingled, it was full of style and class, everyone dressed perfectly for this grand event.
Photos courtesy of South Atlantic Media Services

Governor Mark Capes gave a short address honouring achievements by local people, followed by a toast to the Queen (who sadly was not present) Afternoon tea followed and all in all it was a lovely event to be invited too and a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon making new acquaintances with a fantastic backdrop of Plantation House on one side and Jonathan, the world’s oldest living creature on the other! Jonathan is now 182 years old!
A quick trip across the Island back to Longwood was now required in order to get changed, feed the dogs and prepare for the next party!
It’s probably hard to argue that it’s not Party Central here, given my recent posts! Since the middle of March we have had Andy Crowe’s ‘Piccolobury’ followed by Deanna Woosey’s 18th and our Silver Wedding celebrations. I think we had a week off somewhere before Rachel Armstrong’s 25th birthday bash at Bertram’s Cottage. We’ve been out to dinner several times too at the Sunflower café and with friends at Martin and Julie David’s for a great BBQ to name but a few. The final event to round April off was Tim Troman’s 50th birthday celebrations at Guinea Grass after the Garden Party.
So we headed back across the Island with neighbours Hazel and David Woosey for the birthday bash. We had a great evening and pretty much on form, we danced the evening away and were some of the last to leave!
Arriving home at Piccolo Hill, the house was in darkness – strange seeing as we had left the outside light on (its pitch black without it!) So we approached the house cautiously to find the doors all locked up and lights off. Suddenly the lights came on! Henry had gone into town with his friends and had beaten us home. He had assumed that his 'elderly' parents would be tucked up in bed asleep and had locked up! Luckily we arrived back before he had gone to bed.
We were up early on Sunday morning and took the opportunity to go for a morning walk through Plantation Forest with Smudge and Pippy. It was lovely and peaceful. Fortunately we had chosen to go in the morning as the afternoon turned out to be quite wet. We had a lazy afternoon and a beautiful Roast Pork dinner to finish off the weekend in style.

Our neighbour Mr Andy Crowe painted this wonderful picture of St Helena Island, which will be used to decorate the rooms where victims of crime are counselled - Fab Andy :-)