Welcome to your June Eden Local !

We are almost halfway through the year in terms of publications, but as I write this, it is on a sunny Sunday just after the Coronation. How was it for you?

I’ll come back to that in a moment. Following a monthly trend, we welcome a number of new advertisers to the Eden Local, with some more joining next month.

It has been a very busy March into the May period, with some interesting weather and lots of events, when you add in Easter in April, the bank and school holidays throughout April and May, the May Day Carnival, local elections and the Coronation. Then in the middle of all this, the unitary council launched, with the county and district changes, and with a lot of road closures suddenly upon us. Well, what is there to add?

Covered in this issue, the Lions 40th May Day Carnival, which we first started promoting in July 2022, published online, and the first article started going out in the last week of July 2022 through doors alerting people to the 1st May date. I have shared my experience of my involvement on page 6 and on pages 10 – 11 we have the return of the May Day Carnival, with a nice piece from John Rogerson, the President of the Penrith Lions Club. Many of you reading this will know him, or know other Lions or have attended the Carnival. Going back to John briefly, and his colleagues, many of whom I have known for some time now, they work so hard as volunteers. It is amazing what they do as a charity. I never met a group like it, that is so appreciative of what anyone does for them. In short, they are there every week raising money, just to give it away and to stage an event like May Day is a huge, huge task.

Moving on, I did have a short break for 4 days in April, as I hit a big birthday and started my 7th decade. The day started out with the delivery of the 40th May Day Carnival programmes and then the journey started. After John Rogerson collecting the majority of these that were going to programme sellers, as mentioned I had 4 days setting off on a Thursday. I covered 1,300 miles! I ventured west, east and south, eventually up at 05:30 heading across Brighton to the station then finally arriving back in Penrith after lunch, ready for a busy week heading towards May Day.

We had some logistical challenges that we overcame for your Eden Local deliveries in April that was the May edition. Depending on where you live, many of you would have received a 106 bus - 8-page brochure. Originally planned for March distribution with the April edition, unfortunately this arrived late, which then had to go into May routes. Anyone living in the area we cover on or around the A6 and in Penrith should have received the 106 literature. In Penrith North you would also have received some election information from one of the candidates via the magazine.

The results of the Penrith Elections are on page 12. Thank you to Penrith Town Council for getting these over. Something highlighted, possibly more in the local elections, is people with the inability to actually post leaflets through doors correctly. Whilst out on my deliveries, the amount of leaflets hanging out of letter boxes was worse than ever. Some just left where possible, stuffed in any crack in the wall, gaps in doors and I even saw one wedged between two bricks!

What do these people think they are doing? What do passersby think when they see mail hanging out of letter boxes during the day, and for a few days or more... In fact, a few weeks later after posting the Eden Local on Wetheriggs, I was in the same streets selling the Lions Mayday programme. I lost count of how many election leaflets, posted some weeks ago, that were still hanging out of letter boxes, but we were in a holiday period. It’s the same with menus and charity bags, but elections tend to bring even more idiots out with no consideration for the residents that are away.

In the winter when it happens, this means the letter box is wedged open until it is removed, but it also means that sometimes we can’t post this magazine because the junk mail is wedged in the letter box. As a policy, we do not put fingers through letter boxes and as a free magazine the teams are instructed to make sure they get a clean post, so the letter box is closed.

And finally, as we print, we had our Coronation weekend, some parties on Saturday, some on Sunday and some on Monday, but where were they in Eden? In national media there were lots of surveys and opinion polls about whether people are for or against the Royals. On my regular group chat with my five ex school friends, now afar, there was quite a heated debate with a couple of rants!

I sensed over the last few months leading up to the big event it was quite different locally to any other Royal celebration or occasion we had witnessed in the past. Are some people all ‘Royalled’ out was one thought? One of my friends, also my best man 25 years ago, but also a school friend from infants through junior and senior school, we even worked together after we left school, he was all set for watching the big event like me.

Considering as a group we had known each other for the past 43 years; we’d never talked about Royalty. The views were split but generally balanced I don’t think it helped national media whipping up the storm for the protesters against the Royals. Then with the opinion polls, it just needed a camera on one person to say, ‘what a waste of money’! Then you look it up‘it costs 86 some say 100 million or more of taxpayers money’. I had seen this online in news releases. I was ready for this one.

One of my friends kicked off the day with ‘I’m not watching - it costs so much money’. He had bought a burger a few days earlier, not the norm for him and he complain how expensive it was, from a well-known international franchise. So, in I went on the conversation, and I presented to him that his burger costs £3.69 and then I told him how much the Royal family costs everyone in the UK individually which was £1.29 each per year according to a number of searches online. I then quoted that pre lockdown according to the world’s leading brand valuation consultancies, that the Royals contributed 1.77 billion pounds to the UK economy.

Continued on page 6

He hasn’t spoken to me since! Am I Royalist? I would say I am very interested in anything that is part of our history that has a place in our future. As explained to my friends in my conclusion, if I woke up one day and the Royal family wasn’t there I would find it very strange. In a way a bit like when we lost our Queen, after being there all my life, though I’d never met her majesty the Queen, she’d featured across my life at home, in organisations, at school and in business.

It’s something I said to them all, was to think about it.

I’ll

be back in next month

Thank you for picking up your Eden Local Lee

Phone: 01768 862394

Email: lee@cumbrianlocal.co.uk www.cumbrianlocal.co.uk

Cumbrian Local Publications Ltd

Home based business, Penrith CA11 8

WHAT COMES NEXT?

by Lee Quinn

In short, with the ‘Connecting our Community’ and the ‘May Day Returns’ articles to follow, within 48 hours of writing this short piece, I’ll be attending a meeting to discuss and do a review of the 2023 May Day Carnival with the Penrith Lions Club members.

Of course, when it comes to the first May Day of 2024, it falls on Monday 6th May. We’ll never know what the weather is going to be like. Between now and then at the meeting I would have attended on 9th May, we’ll be 363 days away from May Day 2024! A February 29th leap 2024 year.

For the first time since COVID, a general election in a December, a Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, a King’s Coronation and local government reorganisation, the Lions and all those supporting them shouldn’t have so many trips, hoops, loops and hurdles to overcome to May 2024. It’s looking clear at the moment!

Pending road closures this May, the Brougham Hall Wartime Weekend will go ahead as we enter 2024, and the 80th celebration on 6th June 1944 of the D-Day invasion of Normandy by Allied troops that took place to liberate German-occupied Western Europe. May weekend 11th – 12th 2024 should be a big weekend for the event organised by a small team of local representatives of the North Lancashire and Cumbria Military Vehicle Trust.

All this and the UEFA Euro Championship from 14th June to 14th July in Germany, and then we have the Paris Olympic Games that are expected to take place from July 26th until August 11th 2024.