Sunday 28 June 2015

A Narnia Experience

Hello, thank you for popping in. Have you had lovely weather this weekend?  Tick.  Have you stayed up late watching Glastonbury and/or the football on the tellybox?  Tick.  I am pooped.  I have had a busy weekend, visiting the Shrewsbury Food Festival yesterday and Narnia today.  Please allow me to explain.

If you are wondering what on earth I am talking about, The Chronicles of Narnia are a series of seven children's books written by C.S. Lewis in the 1940s and 1950s, the most famous of them probably being The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.  I read the books when I was twelve years old and I loved them, I saw TLTW&TW at the Westminster Theatre in London in the 1980s and I watched the BBC television series not many years later.  More recently, films have been made but I haven't seen them, possibly because my children thought they were too old or possibly because I'm a bit of a purist!  

 

Oh come on, surely you knew that I would still have them? 
 
So, when we were invited to a Narnia Experience at St Lucia's Church in the village of Upton Magna, I couldn't resist and nor could some of my friends: eleven of us went, aged 4 to 70something. 
 
 
From the outside, the church looks like this -
 
 
However, once we had been ushered through the wardrobe doors and past the fur coats hanging on the rail - if you are familiar with the story you will understand why we had to enter this way - the inside of the church had been transformed to look like this -
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
People gasped.  A lot of hard work had gone into this and I reckon that every artificial Christmas tree in the village is now in the church.  We were ushered round by stewards as the story unfolded in a performance by adults and children which lasted for about 45 minutes.  There was a LOT of applause at the end.  However, that was not the end of our Narnia Experience.
 
Back in the community centre, there was tea and cake, good cake -
 

£1.50 for a cup of tea and a slice of cake like this -
 

That's not all, there were also family craft activities: I could have made a lion mask like Aslan, a set of panpipes or a shield like Peter's -

 
 
 
Two of us painted rather lovely plaster animals.  These were apparently made by a dental technician, hence the perfect attention to detail -
 
 
 

 I could have had my face painted.  This teenager painted her arm -

 
As I said, I could have had my face painted, but I didn't.  However, two of us couldn't resist it, especially the lovely lion who had never had her face painted before!
 
 
And the cost of all this fun?  £2.50 for adults, £1 for children.  It was less than half the price of yesterday's outing and I had more fun.  So thank you to everyone involved, to Di for inviting us, to St Lucia's for hosting.  They are holding a Narnia-themed family service at 9.30am next Sunday, 5th July, if you fancy it (I'm afraid I can't make it). 
 
 
 
What a weekend: to Shrewsbury and back again via Narnia, with Glasto thrown in on the tellybox! 
 
See you soon.
 
Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x

10 comments:

  1. Wow, what an impressive day out. They certainly made it look authentic, its been a a long time since I visited the Narnia books...now where are they????

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  3. I have the very same set of Narnia books, in the same condition as yours. I think my case was lost years ago. What a fun experience! Our children (we have three) begged us for years to have another one so that they could be the Narnia children. We did not oblige.

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  4. What a good idea! I hope they made lots of money as well as giving everyone a nice day out. An unusual theme for the summer. :-)

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  5. What a fantastic idea! I love the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe so much and often refer to the lamps around where I work as the 'Narnia lamps'. The romance and magic of that story has always captured my heart especially imagining Mr Tumnus under the lamp with his parcels. That and Glastonbury - perfect! xx

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  6. How utterly wonderful!!!!! So glad that you had such a great time and enjoyed it so very much!!! xx

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  7. I LOVE the Narnia series and have very fond memories of reading them to both my kids ... and they loved them too! Such magical books. What a wonderful display the church put on. Gosh! it looks incredible! The kids/adults who made it up must have felt so pleased with the results. I'm impressed that your friends had their faces painted, what good sports ;)
    I enjoyed your Shrewsbury post previous as well ... you have a very fun way of writing and I love reading your posts. I'm now following you along since I enjoy visiting you (or I will be following as soon as I finish this comment and add you to my bloggy list!). Enjoy your, um, day tomorrow I guess as you're most likely sleeping now.
    Wendy

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  8. What a great community effort. Looks like it was a lot of fun and you certainly got a whole lot more than what you paid. Best wishes, Tammy

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  9. It looks wonderful, what a lot of hard work has gone into those displays, no wonder you were enchanted by it. Tea and cake too - perfect:)

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  10. Visiting Narnia was the hightlight of my week too! Probably the highlight of my summer season!! It was enchanting to be part of this venture at Upton Magna. I wonder if they'll follow this?
    It was so good to visit with a number of Hadley Messy Church, watching the faces of the children was worth going for too.
    The art work that followed was amazing and the cake?? Well, cousin Doreen had had to do with that and the sandwich making - enough said!

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