Long Live

The village of Cropredy, in Oxfordshire's extreme north-east, is better-known than most of its size (population well below 1,000). Partly because, since the 1970s, it has been the location of an annual folk music festival - hosted by the folk-rock band Fairport Convention - at which point the population expands to 20,000. Anyone with even a passing interest in folk is likely to have encountered Fairport and heard of the festival. Various band members are minor local celebrities - we vaguely knew one of them because his children went to school with ours; I once sat next to another at the cinema: he walked out after 10 minutes, realising he'd seen it before! 

More historically, the Battle of Cropredy Bridge was a major engagement in the English Civil War. The river Cherwell formed a natural barrier between the armies. The kings army wanted to cross the river to travel to relieve their embattled troops in the north. Fierce fighting at the bridge prevented their progress, but only at the expense of many deaths on the Parliamentary side, and the demoralisation of those that remained. Like many Civil War battles, it is hard to say who won

The two strands of Cropredy history are neatly linked by Ralph McTell - a close friend and collaborator of Fairport, and a frequent guest at the festival. In the 1960s, he wrote a song called 'Red and Gold' (lyrics) about the battle. It is a well-worn folk trope of seeing great events of history through the eyes of contemporary common people. For all that, it is a better song in my mind than the folk-cliché 'Streets of London' that made him famous

We walked over Cropredy Bridge today - taking our own brief trip into (personal) history. We lived in the village for two or three years, during which our daughter was born and I made a decision to leave one line of work and retrain in a new one. Not as significant as a major battle, but quite big moments in our life

My pictures of the bridge are unimpressive. Instead, the other event of the day: our first sight of the new queen (MrsM's sharp eyes, as usual). As far as I could see, in poor light and dark comb, she is not yet laying, but her presence is nevertheless reassuring. I don't have a gold marker, but we could mark her red