Last Saturday night we went to the ‘Humber Bridge 25th Anniversary Bash’. This had been organised by our good friends Chris and Gwen, the ones with the wavy plates in Session 29. You know the sort of thing, take a picnic, table, chairs, booze, watch a concert and end with a fireworks display.


Gwen and Christine have a lot in common, they like the better things in life. They both work on the theory that ‘you only get what you pay for’, so if it’s cheap it probably isn’t good value. So naturally we had privilege tickets, not for us to sit with poor people at the back of the field, we are privileged, when we arrive we will get to sit at the front nearer the stage.


But first of all we have to get there. We park in one field and then have to carry everything across the next field to our privileged position. We have tables and chairs, cool bags with the food, more cool bags with the wine and various assorted bags with table dressings, lamps, blankets, fleeces, etc. As we leave the car I have seen Sherpas with lighter loads, I am sure that Tiger Tenzing Norgay set off with less for his 1953 assault on Everest with Sir Edmund Hilary.


The first job is to get set up. Chris is an old hand at these sort of picnics and takes control. First he has ground sheets to stop the damp, we are in the middle of a heat wave and it hasn’t rained for three weeks and we are all sitting on chairs but Chris knows that later tonight the damp-proofing will be necessary so these are arranged to cover an area big enough for the fourteen or so in our party. In reality, a decent developer could probably build three houses on the area we covered but at least we wouldn’t have other people sitting on our knees.


Just as an aside, have you noticed that if you are the only person sitting in your deck chair on the beach the next person to arrive will sit right beside you. Why do they do that?


So the ground sheets are down, the table's up and the chairs in place, now it’s Gwen’s turn. Out comes the lace table cloth and napkins and the crystal glasses; we are in the middle of a field remember. But we have done this before Gwen has taken crystal glasses for wine on the beach and brandy glasses to holiday cottages to say nothing of Christine’s coffee perculator in a camping tent. She only camped once, didn’t like it - never done it since. Nowhere to plug in the hair drier.


Now it’s out with the nibbles, crisps, olives, cheesy things, etc., before going right into the picnic. Gwen had been shopping at M&S and brought salmon, prawns, assorted types of fish plus various Italian meats - all very good of course and brilliantly presented - but maybe losing out in the substantial department. Fortunately Chris, who is not one to buy only one of anything when you can buy four, had realised the problem early and from out of his many bags comes the sausage rolls, scotch eggs, flans and various items of, shall we say, the stodgy variety. Suddenly everything's well with the world.

We eat, we drink and then WOW! on comes Katherine Jenkins. I have never seen so many men suddenly interested in opera singing. I, of course, have always been an opera fan and am only looking through the binoculars to see if she is using the correct breathing pattern. But the others well….. I'm not sure. And there I was thinking that Charlotte Church was the only good thing to come out of Wales in living memory. [Oi, watch it boyo -Ed.] I settle down with the binoculars for a good night. We are only three yards from the stage but for obvious professional reasons, I need the binoculars to check her breathing.


It’s an excellent night, we started at 4pm in the field when the sun was shining and it was very warm in our heatwave, all the girls in sleeveless tops looking very summery. By 8pm everyone was in jumpers and by fireworks at 11pm all the summery girls had turned into grandmothers wrapped in blankets trying to keep warm.


Right after the fireworks, 1000 cars were trying to get out of the car park field at the same time. We are going nowhere and not helped by Chris saying “muscle your way in front of the queue”. He drives a very large four point something litre Lexus but was now in Christine’s Clio which doesn’t seem to threaten other drivers quite as much. To top it all the village next to the car park had a gas leak and we were all directed onto the wrong roads.


But even after the long journey home we had had a brilliant ‘party in the park’. Looking forward to next one Chris.