Gloucester Cathedral Flower Festival

Earlier this month my mum came to visit last week, to see the advance copy of my book and ooh over it in a proud, maternal fashion.

We also took a trip to see the "Glorious Gloucestershire" flower festival at Gloucester Cathedral, which was pretty awesome.

All the flowers were arranged by the flower guilds from churches across the county - there were some quite traditional floral arrangements designed to perfectly suit their setting, and lots of creative displays with a historical or other local theme.


It was wonderful (if slightly surreal) to see flowers, trees and bits of Costwold hedgerow emerging from all the corners of the Cathedral. No space was left unfilled with flowers, with large displays dotted round the main spaces and smaller ones tucked on ledges and around monuments.

The festival also had the same effect as the scuplture exhibition, Crucible held at the Cathedral last year, that of making you look closely at spaces and details in the building that you would otherwise not have noticed.


There were some very fun displays too, including this one themed around goats cheese (complete with a goat munching on some of the flowers)...


... and this homage to the annual cheese rolling at Cooper's Hill, recreated with a cast of knitted characters:


This display was one of my favourites, celebrating the Dymock Poets and the countryside they walked in.

While I was there, I also couldn't resist taking some snaps of the lovely patterned tiles...

... and some of the intricate needlework:


All in all, a very lovely day out!

Crucible Launch

Last night we went to a rather nice drinks party... the launch of the exhibition Crucible at Gloucester Cathedral.


The exhibition features over 70 sculptures scattered round the Cathedral and its grounds, including work by household names like Damien Hirst and Antony Gormley, in a huge range of artistic styles. It's the biggest art event to happen in Gloucester for years, and I think the Cathedral is a wonderful setting for it - looking round the exhibition last night I saw details of the building I'd never noticed before, and I used to work there!

We were too busy chatting to friends, discussing the more controversial works and celeb-spotting last night to take pics (Alex James from Blur counts as a celeb, right?) but you can see the Crucible website for more info, or browse photos by visitors to the exhibition on Flickr.

I'm definitely going to be revisiting the sculptures I liked during the next couple of months (the exhibition runs until the end of October and entry to the Cathedral is free).