July 2017

This month started with the Mencap disco at the town football club, on the 1st of the month, a very enjoyable evening was had by all and there were some pretty impressive dance moves on show!

On the 5th July Marlborough played host to the Wiltshire and Swindon games which occupied most of the sports facilities at Marlborough College and the town leisure centre, a large and very impressive event. This gave young people from all over Wiltshire and Swindon the chance to experience a multi sports games camp for the day. I presented one of the swimming medals and went on to watch a vast array of sports. Not content with a whole day of sport I then proceeded to Marlborough Cricket Club in the evening for the Mayor’s Cricket Match. I opted not to play, which I was glad about when I saw the speed of Marlborough’s fast bowler, but was ably represented by a scratch team which included four members of 4MI Battalion. We put up a pretty good show but, unfortunately, lost by 50 runs. Still, we managed to raise £335 towards sports equipment at the new Marlborough St Mary’s School.

On Friday 7th July, it was off to the High Sherriff’s summer reception at Odstock Manor where I had a very interesting chat with archaeologist Phil Harding who told me about various holes that he had dug around Marlborough and what he had found there. He also informed me that, at one time, he had worked for Pelham puppets.

Then to cap off a fairly busy week we had the Puppet Festival over the weekend of 8th/9th July. I really enjoyed the puppet parade on the Saturday morning despite parading in full gown in the heat. I was in absolute stitches with some of the antics in the parade especially when two of my grandchildren decided to join in and dance with the Punch and Judy puppets. This was also the weekend of the Marlborough Civic Service so we had a fairly unique event with puppetry in the service, I still can’t quite believe that we had muppets singing hymns but we did. I was accompanied by eight other Mayors and various other dignitaries who thoroughly enjoyed themselves. The day also included the puppet exhibition where I got to meet the original Muffin the Mule puppet, this meant a lot to me, it was my earliest childhood memory of television. A local dance school finished off the day with a show portraying the Bob Pelham story.

Thursday the 13th July was the judging day for Marlborough in Bloom, the culmination of a lot of hard work by various members of the community. I met the judges fully robed and even wore the hat for the first time, I hope it made a suitable impression. This was followed by entertaining the judges to lunch for which we thank Rick Stein’s for donating that, I’m sure that made a good impression. They were then bid farewell in the afternoon, we await the results down in Torquay on the 5th October.

The final event of the month, as things started to quieten down for the Summer, was the Mayor’s Bowls match on Saturday 22nd July. We actually played skittles this year, which was probably a good thing given the weather. A very enjoyable evening and more money was raised for the Mayor’s charity fund.

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