All the excitement surrounding the Queen’s Platinum jubilee has set the hamsters in my brain sprinting around the old memory banks. They have whizzed me back to 1977 and having to learn a song to celebrate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. I can hear our rather tuneless, if enthusiastic, young voices trilling at a jamboree in a field somewhere “Guides of the world wish her long life and happiness… singing with love and loyaltttttttty … God bless Elizabeth …God bless Elizabeth ..God bless Elizabeth (breathe) Elizabeth our Queeeeeeeeeen.”
Well, it certainly seems our good wishes have worked a treat as Her Majesty continues with her incredible reign.
It’s wonderful to hear about various events taking place over the festival weekend to mark this milestone. A particular thanks to everyone at the archives for the amazing weekend of events they have planned to celebrate the platinum jubilee.
Given her advancing years I hope Her Majesty has someone else to open her fuel bill as it might give her of a bit of a shock to see how much its costing to heat Balmoral these days. Here at Meikle Logie we use oil for our heating and our prices have, quite literally, doubled in the last six months up from 57ppl in December to 109ppl today. I know gas and electricity prices have also sky rocketed. If you are interested in finding out if there is anything you can do to reduce your bills through reduced energy consumption, then come along to the community coworking space on 6th June for a free energy saving conversation with Martin from the HEAT project in Blairgowrie. Thanks to our Climate Café for arranging this advice.
It's great to read about the progress of the PH8 group. At the start of the pandemic this group was pulled together out of thin air to provide coordination to community support at the start of the pandemic. Now, two years later, and having undertaken the community survey, it is moving forward to become a fully constituted charity that will coordinate a number of initiatives. The group have taken this moment in time to look back at all that has been achieved in the past two years including a helpful financial overview of all monies raised and spent.
Many thanks to everyone involved so far and wishing the new incarnation of the group all the very best with taking forward new initiatives.
Maybe one idea could be to set up a knitting bee as we’ll need to pile on the jumpers now that we can’t afford to put the heating on. Come to think of it maybe we could knit a jumper for the Queen in regal purple and white to keep her cosy at Balmoral. It would make a perfect jubilee gift – and so very practical. We could also knit matching jackets for all the corgies – now that would be cute. It would also mark us out as a very thrifty and creative community - qualities I’m sure Her Majesty admires. We might be rewarded with an extra special smile and wave as she passes through Dunkeld and Birnam station on her travels north and south on the royal train. Hey! Surely time for another of those classic Jubilee guide songs …
altogether now …

Sally Robertson