At the main road the kids from The Blue School were whooping and hollering and it was clearly shaping to a mega event. We walked the back roads into town to do our shopping. Quarter to eleven in the town centre, surrounded by a dense throng, we were treated to: insane young people careering the flame-route on quad bikes; self-important police bikes with their blues-and-twos (there was booing); and a succession of sponsor coaches trapped by the crowds: then it all went quiet. Ten minutes passed and I snapped Clare (below) losing the will to live.
When will my flame come?
We started to make our way home but as we walked up Sadler Street we met the elusive flame coming the other way. How the crowds loved it!
The torch arrives
And then there was silence and we all became festival goers on the way home. But our day was far from ended. Minutes later we were en-route to Burnham-on-Sea for our first picnic of the year. If it had been ten degrees hotter and the bitter wind from the sea had let up it would have been truly idyllic!
A Picnic at Burnham-on-Sea
The author poses in front of our nuclear power station
Hinkley Point B is visible along the coast from Burnham - the arrow indicates the dull breeze-block which is the rapidly obsolescing fission machine.I cheered Clare up by imagining a critical accident: the actinic flash, the EM and neutron pulse, the spherical shockfront then the ascending mushroom cloud, turning ashen gray as it blew towards us. All of this assumes, of course, that EDF have a secret weapons facility in the basement.