Happy St Piran's day

Firstly, Happy St Piran's Day or in Kernewek Dy'Gool Sen Piran Lowen.



Picture taken from the I'm having a St Pirans Day Celebration Facebook page.



I know on my blog that I often am very negative, like many people I have grave concerns about some of the things that politicians are doing to Cornwall like not respecting our border. More generally the cuts and how they will affect the NHS, the Fire Brigade, the Coastguard, Libraries etc etc etc

But this time I though I would be a bit more positive, the true nature of celebrating days like St Piran's is to have fun, to drink and be merry, see friends and family and above all celebrate. Cornwall has many fine festivals such as Penzance's Golowan- Mazey Day, Montol, Murdoch Day, Trevithick Day, Padstow Obby Oss, Helston Flora Day, Bodmin Riding and so the list so goes on. I always look forward to these events, it is nice to see the community coming together, having fun and letting their hair down. In this vein it is great to see the Pirantide festivities are growing both in number and the scale of existing events.

It is interesting to note a couple of items in the news recently, the continued calls for St Piran's Day to be makred as a bank holiday (e petition for Cornwall Council to mark St Piran's day as a holiday) (article from the West Briton) and today news that the May Day bank holiday may be swapped for another date. The two I think could be linked, the latter is important in as much as that it indicates that bank holidays do not have to be static and the government is open to change in this regard. So why not St Piran's day? we have bank holidays for so many days that I do not know the significance of, why not have one for a discernible reason?

I quite like the idea of Cornwall swapping one bank holiday for the 5th of March, we could all get together, have street parties, go to rugby games, listen to live music, or simply go to church to remember one of the Christain pioneers in Kernow. We shouldn't think of this in terms of money, people couch these things in terms of the benefit for tourism etc, but I really feel this misses the point by a long way. The real benefit of festivals, fairs and holidays can't be deduced from a calculator they are not about money. They're about community, celebration and taking a day out to have fun.

The future aside, this weekend go out and celebrate St Piran, concentrate on having fun, forget about money and smile.

Here's a link to some St Piran's events: http://www.cornwallinformation.co.uk/news/

If you can't make any of these events why not enjoy some traditional Cornish produce, perhaps a pasty followed by a saffron bun or hevva cake with some obligatory clotted cream, and washed down with a nice Cornish ale. yum!