All that comes with it

Every year during the winter half term school holidays the village where we live holds a moonraker festival. Basically this involves daily workshops where kids and their parents are supported to make huge paper lanterns on a theme (this year was the sea). Then on the Saturday night there is a procession through the village with everyone carrying their candle-lit lanterns. Scattered within the hordes of lamp carriers are various bands (there was a Dixieland jazz band, a troop of drummers, and a brass band). There are also other bands dotted around the village that play for the procession as it goes past.

Last year it was our first winter in Slaithwaite, and therefore our first moonraking. Having moved here from Batley, where the closest comparison to this event was kids setting dustbins alight in the park, we were overwhelmed with a sense of community. Not to mention the sense satisfaction that we had chosen the right place to bring up our child. This year was the same. Slightly better even as we managed to see a few faces in the crowd that we recognised (the Dr’s receptionist, someone that Kerry chats to on the train, that kind of thing).

I grew up in a small town just over the valley from Slaithwaite (Holmfirth to be precise, home of the TV show “Last of the Summer Wine“). I’m really pleased that Amy and the looming #2 will get to grow up in a place where things like the moonraker festival goes on. I can see her eight or nine years from now running around the town with her friends on moonraker night, just like I did during Holmfirth folk festival or the torchlight procession. Events like those are building blocks for a childhood. Days that you can hang your memories on like Christmas and bonfire night but more local, and therefore somehow more special.

I like it here and I’m glad we moved.