Happy St George's Day.
By some miracle, this year Gravesend Borough Council decided to spend some of our council tax to mark St George's Day and judging by the amount of people in town today it was money well spent.
This is like a breath of fresh air after more than a decade of New Labour rule when I often felt it was fine to be proudly Scottish, Welsh or Irish but you practically had to apologise for being English.
Anyway rant out of the way, we were treated to street musicians and performers from the Big Fish Arts group re-enacting the story of George and the Dragon in their own inimitable style...
First some music to get everyone in the mood for some serious dragon slaying.
Now enter the dragon.
Son, please don't feed the dragon!
Bring on brave St George to dispatch the evil dragon. 
The dragon is quickly dispatched.
The dragon defeated. Now it's the turn of the saracen....
The performance lasted about half an hour and was much appreciated by the large crowd gathered in the sunshine.Apart from the show in the street, the Council had arranged free arts and crafts for the children at the Tourist Information Centre adjacent to the aptly named St George's church pictured at the top of this post.
Here is my son's masterpiece.
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Excellent stuff, if Gravesend can do it so can the rest of England :) Not sure if anything happened in Bognor, I didn't hear about it :(
ReplyDeleteI guess a bbq was a good celebration?!
Lovely photos and I'm glad to see English pride and community spirit. I have to wonder about the killing of the Saracen though, surely they could have kept the actor racially neutral? I am starting to see why Labour might have had a problem; there is enough racial ignorance and stereotyping in this country as it is!
ReplyDeleteHi Claza - thanks for the comment.
ReplyDeleteEmm - the story/legend of St George is based around the time of the Crusades when Knights from England (and other Christian countries) fought the Saracens/Moors/Turks (Muslims) in the Holy Land.
That is historical fact and (in my opinion ) you can't airbrush it away. Whether it was the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do it happened and we can't change it now.
Glen
Glen, what wonderful pictures. I love your son's dragon. :-)
ReplyDelete