Ok so by now you may have gathered we are a little mad in this corner of England. No? Oh. Well to demonstrate how bonkers we are let me tell you all about Pirates Day. Oh and our tiny ickle achievement of GETTING THE GUINNESS WORLD RECORD for the amount of pirates in one place. In case you didn’t get that I’ll say it again. WE GOT 6166 PIRATES for the record. That’s right we have beaten everyone else so far this year and not by a little bit but by a stonking 4300 people (give or take a few) and we would have had more, but those funny chaps otherwise known as the Police got a bit safety paranoid and stopped anyone else coming in.
So how and why? Well we are a bit different here and with the history of the area including Pirates/smugglers someone last year thought it would be good to add it to our week long Carnival celebrations during the summer. It went so well that the same bright fella said this year, “I know let’s do it again”. To which a drunken cheer went up with an unanimous aye! At some point it steamed into a Guinness World Record attempt. We have spent the last few weeks nervously watching as news rolled in from around the world where various folk were attempting to do it. “The Germans have it, 1600”, “The Americans have it, 2200” The rumours abounded. Ah, um will we get enough? Battle cry’s (well ok more drunken or eccentric ramblings) went on, the orders sent out “Be there or beware”.
And so to the day. My Aunt had kindly offered to have a pirate party for those of us who could come. Food aplenty with the odd bottle of ginger beer we gathered around, painting faces with ‘tashes or stubble. The transfer tattoos applied and the sweet treasure box eyed up by 10 kids and a couple of us adults.
My Grandfather even got into the swing of it, cheerfully going about town to get his outfit and the telescope made, complete with birdie on the end. Our Family Pirates ages ranged from the littlest at 22 months to Granddad in his 90’s. Soon it was time and we set of for the count. An area near the RNLI lifeboat house (whom, we mustn’t forget, we are raising all this money for) had been set up for the gathering. The long queues slowly marching towards it were full of colourful and cheerful folk. And eventually we got there. We had to stay in the arena for a while so they had laid on entertainment in the form of Jack Sparrow and the Caribbean crew. Now these guys are good, very good. They had sword fights and pyrotechnic cannon scenes.
Dead men walking and so much more. But soon it was over and we went back to the party. No-one knew how many of us there was but we knew it wouldn’t take long before the noise started: “6166” the Old Town whispered, “6166” they started to Rumble, “6166!”They all Shouted. Phew and wow. Now this is a town that can be proud of pulling together and being generally mad....
