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Diary

Frances Osborne

Wednesday, 7th May 2008

Frances Osborne watches 'The Wicker Man', and promises not to look after any lambs

On Monday morning I am outwitted by my four-year-old daughter, who manages to leave for school in a light cotton dress on a phenomenally cold and wet spring day. That night I therefore take myself to Chelsea Town Hall for the launch of The Seven Secrets of Parenting: Or How to Achieve the Almost Impossible. I pick up a copy and read ‘Ditch the guilt’. Sold.

On to the Getty Images Gallery for a campaign to find adoptive parents for thousands of British children. The photographer Cambridge Jones, himself adopted at the age of two, has joined forces with Barnardo’s and a host of celebrities to put together portraits of some of their smiling, laughing faces. At the launch party, photographers are crowded around a group of well-built and fit-looking young men. They are, I am told, England rugby player James Haskell and X-Factor finalists Journey South. It amuses me that it is not obvious which is which. Unlike the last time I was here — with a bevy of old rockers who ran no risk of being mistaken for national athletes.

The Bank Holiday weekend finally begins in the early hours of Saturday, at the Boris victory party. It is a jolly affair. Not least because the guests have been there since 5 p.m. on the day before, when the results were optimistically expected in. The next morning, after some sleep and much breakfast, we join many others oozing up the crowded M6 with a Battle of Britain mentality. For who could expect the usual two-hour direct rail journey to take less than five and half hours and two changes on a holiday weekend? We eventually arrive at Knutsford, the real-life Cranford, for its famous May Day parade. This includes every schoolchild in the town dressed as an historical character, in date and geographical order, followed by Pennyfarthings, sedan chairs and a 12-year-old Royal May Queen in a carriage. At the front, however, twirls a mischievous character not on the history and geography syllabus. Jack in the Green harks back to Mayday’s pagan origins as the festival of Beltane and is the symbol of rebirth — and fertility. It does not take much imagination to see why Oliver Cromwell banned Maypole dancing et al in the 17th century. It takes a little more to see why the maiden schoolmistress daughters of the Knutsford vicar reinstated it here in the 19th — those Cranford ladies are clearly just as feisty as Mrs Gaskell made out.

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