Time travel....

Cast your minds back, if you will, to June 2010. There was a little bit of a heatwave around that time, it was gloriously sunny, if not always boiling hot and it was fully of happy, balmy, light evenings... sigh.

It was 26th June, it was a sunny day and so Sparrow and Nightingale cracked out their best dresses and headed up to Cressing Temple Barns to sell some wares and also help out a great cause at the same time - the Helen Rollason Cancer Charity. This local charity carries out fantastic work, with dedicated research labs and support centres giving emotional support and hope to those dealing with cancer. Nestled out in the Essex countryside (well, a bit) lie some barns originally built by medieval monks of the Knights Templar in the 13th Century. Let me tell you, they did a good job of it!

This beautiful barn was to be our location for the day. We quickly unloaded the Sparrow and Nightingale mobile (aka Mr Nightingale's car, which has been officially named Carlisle), found our table and set up our wares. It didn't take us too long, think we were getting the hang of it by then!

We were loving the atmosphere, it was so great to see so many stalls, all different, with so many quirky and cute items - if I had any money then I definitely wouldn't have any left at the end of it. As the day rolled on we explored some more and found a fleet of vintage cars, more barns filled with lush stalls, horses, crepe vans, tearooms, an old bus and a french scene where you could have photo ops, it was a great day out!














We were located right next door to the rather fantastic A2 Jive dancers and the vintage hair do stand, the Hair Raid shelter (brilliant name, I love a good pun) - where you could get victory rolls galore.
The Jive dancing was so amazing to watch, if I had the time and a willing partner I'd love to give it a go - who knows, I might get round to it one day! A big crowd turned out to support them which was fab as that meant lots of people to look at our stall.

Unfortunately that didn't turn out quite so well, we had lots of people looking at our stuff, and gave out lots of business cards but it was a bit of a slow day truth be told. There was so much to look at though and so much choice, one can't blame people for looking around so much - I know I would have! Not to worry though, at the end of the day we had a fantastic time, we had lots more positive feedback, and it was just great to feel part of something that attracted approx 2000 visitors and was a big event that raised money for a great cause!

As we packed up and drove back to Chelmsford, we blasted the radio, rolled the windows down and decided that one day taking Sparrow & Nightingale on tour would be awesome. And so, we drove off into the sunset, dreaming of a sepia toned future.