The whole of Padstow is a bit quiet today, lots of people are still here but after all the May Day celebrations there is more than one sore head around town!

Visitors pour into Padstow for the day, many staying over for the event as there is so much to see:  the night singing is when everything starts as groups of “Mayers” go around and sing the night song under the windows of the older, established families.  Around 5.00 am more people go and collect green branches to decorate the town to go with all the bunting, flags and the May Pole, the town looks really great then, all fresh and clean in the morning sunlight. 

There are two or three kids osses who come out early and dance their way around the town, we were lucky enough to have two come in yesterday to dance for the residents during breakfast.  This starts things off in a great way for us.  As the parents and friends are with them we make sure the outside bar is open by 7.30 so they can all get a drink while they are here.

Once they have moved on there is a bit of a lull here until around 10.15 / 10.30 when the Blue Oss comes through on its way around Padstow.  As there is a whole army of followers the bar really gets hit so it is a case of head down and get on with serving the people in front of us.  I have to admit I’ve never seen much of the Oss itself while it is here as we are so busy.  Many people stay around after that, we have a BBQ going too and sell burgers, pasties and jacket potatoes, which makes a real change for the chefs who are out front with us, I think they enjoy the change and actually meeting some customers.

This year Ginty who works 2 nights a week and 3 days was the Master of Ceremonies for the Blue Oss, this is a real honour for him and he was really looking forward to leading the procession around Padstow.  We will be keeping a copy of today’s Western Morning News for him as he has a great picture on page 8.  The story may come up later on www.westernmorningnews.co.uk .

While we are now tidying up and putting things back to normal the committees for the 2 parties are already planning next year’s event.  If I can find some links to stories about it I’ll post them here later.

Here’s the article from the WMN with the picture of our Ginty looking very smart:

http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=248235&command=displayContent&sourceNode=248201&contentPK=20527708&folderPk=115131&pNodeId=249131

This entry was posted on Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 4:39 am and is filed under About Padstow. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.