Millbrook Skate Park: the official opening

As sod's law would have it, I only managed to get decent photos of the older part of the skate park this evening. Ho hum.

The parish council was out in force at 6 o'clock to get down with the young people and watch our esteemed Leaderene, Frances, cut the ribbon to mark the official opening of the hard won facility.

Piers "Tea-Time" Taylor also came along to offer his expert commentary on which moves we were witnessing; he said things like "hey - big air" and sounded as if he knew all about it. I tried "hang-ten, daddy-o" but Tea-Time merely held his head in his hands and sobbed, so I probably missed the coolest dude prize by a small margin.

The Leaderene waved joyously to a small flock of teenagers who stared with near perfectly imitated fascination at the bunch of old farts standing in the way of their skateboarding and polite applause was proffered all around.
The only fly in the ointment was the hijacking for a photo-opportunity by our favourite district councillor and Tory parliamentary candidate, Sheryll Murray, a woman who has had nothing at all to do with the bidding for funding, nor with with supporting the building project, nor with negotiating with suppliers, not even with attending fund raising events. Nothing whatever, until she thought there might be a bit of free publicity at the opening. Postings passim will enlighten newer readers to my heart felt opinions on Cllr Murray. As a parish councillor myself these days I have to be a little more restrained than in the past; we'll leave it that I find myself happy to publish the opinion of a fellow attendee who described having a conversation with her thus, "you know the sound you get when you scrape a finger nail down a blackboard...".

Just so's fellow Millbrookians can remember which brass-necked Tory NOT to vote for ever again, here's what Cllr Murray looked like during her attempt to shamelessly grab entirely unearned glory:
But let's move away from unpleasantries; the event was a success and the skate park is a success; well used by many local young people who now have somewhere to expend some of that surplus energy without endangering themselves or others too much. The parish council and in particular Bruce Selkirk (who did shed loads of work on this project) deserves a decent pat on the back and a nice glass of Bordeaux. Here's one of Mr Selkirk (2nd left) with Karenza (who did lots of bid writing and is on the far left of the shot), The Leaderene and another attendee whose name I missed are also in shot.

Our own Little Louche Lewis was in evidence scuttling gamely on little legs across the park and managing to avoid being mown down by large young men on planks of wood with wheels on.

And last, but not least, what it's all about, someone skateboarding. Not a great photo, but I only had the little camera...






I'm on stupid o'clock shift tomorrow, so I find it's time for bed...night night.