
The Farmers Masquerade Ball (you don’t have to be a farmer) is tonight the 12th of October at 7pm at Allendale Village Hall. The tickets at £30 have all been dealt out (food reservations meant that ticket sales were finished earlier this week), and the ticket holders will be in for a real treat.
They’ll be greeted with a welcome drink followed by canapés, then they’ll sit down to a main course & dessert, with tea/coffee thereafter. I’m pretty sure there will be dancing after that, with the additional piquancy of masked partners!
As the organisers mentioned in their publicity, they’re “raising money for Macmillan as this charity has and is helping many of our friends & families.”
Some fifty years ago, the Farmers’ Ball was the highlight of the social calendar; I’ve heard stories of a grand dinner at the Heatherlea, followed by a huge dance at the village hall, as the agricultural community turned out in their finest and had a party. But it’s true that there had been something of a slippage in the social standing of the ball over the past twenty years, as other social events gained traction.
One of the constant refrains I’ve heard, and indeed uttered myself, over the past few years has been the worry over how the next generation will assume responsibility for running events, as the older one relinquishes the reins. But the Farmers Masquerade Ball looks to me to be organised by just those younger folks who really have stepped up. Sometimes we don’t quite appreciate how seamlessly the community can adopt new strategies, how transitions happen and the new guard is in place before we even recognise them.
So today’s diary entry goes out with grateful thanks to the new wave of movers and shakers in the community who are getting on with things, creating new ways of serving and enjoying life together. Hoping tonight is a real blast of a party!
50 years ago there would be at least four times the number of farmers that are left today so that is partly why it has a slightly lesser role, but the good news is that the younger generation are well represented at the event so hopefully it will continue well into the future. Particularly if the quality of the food and service remains the same.