About twenty minutes after arriving at home after
our visit to West Bay/Broadchurch on Saturday, I was rushing out of the door again to meet up with the bf. after his long day at work. Our destination: Plymouth's annual summer jazz picnic.
It was held on the lawns in front of Saltram House, a part of the estate that I hadn't been able to see on my
last visit, in brilliant evening sunshine.
Once we'd arrived and paid our (very generously reduced) entrance fees, we settled down on the lawn among the picnic-ers with our own tea, just in time for the first band, the Sussex Jazz Kings, to begin performing their second set.
Picnic-wise, there was stiff competition - many people had brought tables and chairs with them and there were olives, brie and bottles of wine as far as the eye could see. (A certain young man commented on Plympton being the home of the middle classes and made a UKIP joke, which I shan't transcribe here)
That said, we were in good company in the audience, spotting a couple of our former school teachers in the crowd. The atmosphere was somewhat informal, very relaxed and many people got up to dance - although the number of dancers seemed to increase as time went on and full advantage was taken of the (again, v reasonably priced) licenced bar at the side of the stage!
During the next interval, we were treated to an 'umbrella parade' - we were unfortunately unprepared for this, but many jazz-goers, young and old, had brought decorated parasols and umbrellas and proceeded to march around the lawns in the procession.
For the rest of the interval, we took the opportunity to explore the gardens a little further. As I said, I couldn't go into this part of the estate on my last visit to Saltram, as it's only open to visitors who pay to go into the house as well, but our jazz festival tickets enabled us to have a proper walk around.
Despite the late hour, the sun still shone through the trees as we made our way up towards the 'folly' - essentially a 'pretend' castle which might have been build under the pretence of making the estate older than it was, or just because Lord and Lady Parker decided that they bloomin' well wanted a toy castle.
From this end of the garden, there are views out towards Plymouth Hoe and the city centre, with the big wheel glinting in the sunlight, and across the parkland where I had walked the previous week with Miriam.
Inside the little folly was beautiful in a peculiar antique-grunge-chic kind of way - I hope I'm not being rude and that that was the designers' intention, because it was certainly striking in a spookily lovely way.
Beneath the folly is also a little dungeon, where Oli threatened to put me if I continued snapping millions of photos (I think my few Instagram followers would have welcomed that, actually, given the amount of spamming I do as soon as I have a wifi connection...)
Once past the folly, we turned back towards the house, trekking intrepidly through the foliage and past beautiful garden ornaments and plants. Oli even found a potential entry for his surely bestselling debut book, in the form of a garden bench (but I won't give away too much about what could be his magnum opus).
Our return to the lawns outside the main house for the second half of the concert took us past the ornate orangery, which was almost empty on this occasion, as all of the orange and other citrus trees had been moved outside, presumably due to the hot weather. There was, though, this rather dapper young chap to be found inside on his plinth.
And I found this one outside too.
The remaining half of the show passed with yet more enthusiastic dancing to the dulcet tones of the famed 'voice of Cornwall' and the music of John Shillito's Select Six as the sun set.
It was a fantastic way to spend an evening supporting local musicians and artists - as we left just before 11 o'clock, an almost-full moon shone down over the Saltram estate and Plymptonians were thankful for the joys of jazz, portable picnic tables and the Sainsbury's Taste the Difference range which graced them.
(: xx
