Low life | 3 September 2011

I took my grandson, Oscar, 20 months old, down to the regatta on the bus, a double-decker, his first experience of one, and we sat upstairs at the front. The bus was far too big for the narrow country lanes and the overhanging branches of trees thrashed against the upstairs windows.

We alighted at a bus stop in the middle of the festivities, beside a funfair in full swing. The tipsy bank holiday crowd, the flags, the bunting, the lines of orange police cones, and the bright yellow fixed-penalty notice stuck on the side window of almost every visible parked car, made for a colourful scene.

We hadn’t been there more than a minute when a precise naval officer’s voice on the loudspeakers announced the arrival of a Hawker Sea Fury over the town. Presently a plane similar in shape to a Spitfire appeared and performed a series of loop the loops right above our heads. After that the chap on the loudspeaker announced a one-minute silence so we stood quietly and still for that, the rain gently pattering the stretched fabric of our borrowed umbrella. The silence was a mark of respect for the Red Arrows pilot killed earlier in the week. The Red Arrows have performed at the regatta for as long as I can remember. Not this year. The difference between a Red Arrows display and a minute’s silence was stark.  

After the silence, granddad’s bladder told him it needed emptying, so we made our way, via the funfair, to the public convenience next to the river. Oscar tripped and trotted along beside me, his small hand in mine. Perhaps I should say here that the more I get to know Oscar, the more I respect him.