[Lee_EONNext]

Does anyone remember the Harvest Festival at school? Showing my age here or do they still do this?

[Tommysgirl]

@Lee_EONNext

I remember the Harvest Festivals at my primary school. We all took fruit and vegetables into the school assembly, and sang harvest hymns including 'We plough the fields and scatter' A local baker used to make large quite flat loaves in the shape of a wheatsheaf. After the festival they used to take all the stuff to the church hall and the Womens Royal Voluntary Service ladies used to distribute it amongst the elderly people in the village.

I don't know if all schools still have them, but my great-nephews primary school still does.

[retrotecchie]

@Tommysgirl

The WRVS is no more, I think. Modern times and all that. In town just the other day I saw a bloke and a lass both wearing hi-vis jackets that just said Royal Volunteer Service, so I'm thinking the chaps and the chapesses have now just merged into one single organisation.

Our village school still has their Harvest Festival in the local church just down the lane from me. The kids (all twelve of them) form a 'crocodile' with a teacher at each end and walk past my hovel bearing assorted produce and goodies. They always walk back empty handed so the procession is a little quicker on the way back to school again. The offerings are donated to a local food bank 👍

Last one this year though as the school is closing at Christmas. Then the village officially dies...no shop, no pub, no bus service, no telephone box and finally no school. I'm staying on as the token 'sais' but we'll be downgraded to a hamlet so I won't be able to say 'I'm the only sais in the village' for much longer 🤣🤣

[Tommysgirl]

@retrotecchie

You'll be right about the Royal Volunteer Service, the chaps and chapesses two separate organisations will have merged into one.

It's sad when villages lose their school, bus service, pub and shop. It's happened to quite a few small Northumberland villages, but I didn't realise they lose 'village' status and become hamlets.

'Sais: if I'm right, that means English person. 😂😂

[retrotecchie]

@Tommysgirl

There is just a shade more nuance to it. Sais means English person, yes, but it's more complicated than that.

For instance, there was a 'do' at the village hall a few years ago. When I first moved to the village, I made an effort to get to know the neighbours, meet the natives and learn a few pleasantries in the local dialect (North Wales has a version of Welsh that is rather different to South Wales and we use a third dialect which neither can understand properly 🤣). A lot of 'incomers' round here make no attempt to integrate so naturally there can be a little 'friction'.

One such person turned up at the event and was actually rather obnoxious and a bit offensive. I was sat with a couple of Welsh friends and one of them made the comment "There are two kinds of English round here....'sais' and '🤬 sais' ". Rather worried, I asked which category I fell into.

Hywel, who is a six foot three rather burly ex-Rugby player passed me a can of beer, put his arm round my shoulder and said to me "You're a 'sais'....but you're our 🤬 sais".

[Tommysgirl]

@retrotecchie

'You're a sais...but your our 🤬 sais 'That's great. 😂😃.