Anniversary of the start of Somme battle in the Great war ....
1st
July 2016 (Friday)
.... 22.00 Wellll .... I have had a busy day, having
been ‘on the go’ 06.30. After
breakfast we went down to the harbour to see the ‘Somme’ drawing that was going
to be done on the beach. There was
plenty of
activity, with a couple of folks sketching out the outline of the ‘drawing’, and a lot of ‘helpers’
standing by to do the actual drawing. Thinking
that the tide was on the way ‘out’, ‘M’ and I decided that we had plenty time to
go along to Crail to see the sand sculpture, “Those left behind”, that has been
done to commemorate the Battle of the Somme centenary. The sculpture, a pregnant lady, sitting
beside a child making sandcastle’s, reminds us that, those at home had to endure
the torment of not really knowing what a loved one was ‘going through’. It was only when telegrams began to appear in nearly every town
and village in Britain that the scale of the slaughter became apparent. I say ‘nearly every’ village because, 52 villages’
in England earned the description of “Thankful
Village”, because everyone who went off to the ‘take part’ in the Great War
came home; 14 of those villages are actually
“doubly thankful” because they lost no one, in both the Great war, and the
Second World War. Scotland doesn’t
have a “thankful village”.
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| Elie |
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| 'M' wearing woolly hat .... in summer! |
When
‘M’ and I got back from Crail, the ‘sand drawing’, unfortunately, was under two
feet of water. Jim and Myra had made a
similar mistake; they had taken “SD” up
to Gillingshill for his morning walk, arriving back in Elie just before
us. The four of us went for coffee at
Harbour House.... hoping to see a picture of the Elie ‘sand drawing’ in tomorrow’s
Courier.
In
the afternoon ‘M’ and I went along to Leven, ‘M’ needed to buy some things to
take home to New Zealand. We had lunch in Sainsbury’s, then went up to
Cupar to the ‘Fudge Doughnut’ (hereafter ‘FD’) factory, only to find that they
had run out of ‘FD’s. Imagine a FD factory running out of ‘FD’s! We bought some kind of ‘tower’ thing instead,
which, although it probably had the same calorific value, .... it definitely did
not have the taste, nor texture, that a puku loving ‘FD’ has!
I
have the ‘Walk and Feast’ tomorrow; a
guided walk through Balcarres Estate, that
begins with coffee, at 10.00, in
Colinsburgh Town Hall, and ends with soup and
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| Crail sand sculpture |
Photographs
: Top – The ‘sand drawing’ team at Elie, Middle – ‘M’ warmly wrapped up, enjoying
a nice, crisp, Scottish summer morning, and
Bottom – “Those Left Behind” ... a sand sculpture in Crail commemorating the
100th anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Somme, in the Great War.
