A day of magnificent outcomes. I thought today I would catch the train to Coventry to see the war Memorial park they have there. On a website I found they had done a lot for the 100 year remembrance and I was interested to see how it looked. It is a very impressive park with an enormous memorial in the middle of the park. The families were given the option to plant a tree for their loved one when the memorial was built. About half of the families took up the offer so there are 125 100 year old trees. There have also been trees planted for WW2 and other conflicts so the trees total a staggering 800. They are magnificent. There was a very interesting memorial for WW2 parachutists which is something I hadn't seen before. It had a knitted poppy on it. When they opened their remembrance project it was attended by Prince William who laid a wreath and helped plant poppies with the children in the garden. I meet up with a man who told me after the Prince had left they left the wreath out in front of the cenotaph so the next day he told the park management they might want to collect it out of the weather or before it gets knicked and it now sits in a glass case. Funny! There is a beautiful sculpture done of three large beech tree leaves, within each one, cut outs of Coventry of a different era. One showing the industries in Coventry that were used during the war, another showing the role of Women in Coventry during the war as the worked in all the car, ammunition factories to name just a few. The third is about the future of the park and all the modern day uses for it while not forgetting its origins. A great piece of thoughtful sculpture. At the visitors centre they also had another piece called "Missing Faces" where they put all the 264 mens photos on the wall who were killed in WW1. They had about half the photos of the men and left provision if others came to light they could add them.
As luck would have it, also in the visitors centre later in the afternoon , Julia O'Connell the 'artist in residence' was revealing her final works after working from the park over the year. I decided to come and see her work and I'm so very glad I did. I had a lovely afternoon having tea and cake and listening to talk along with seeing her beautiful work. She is a textile artist and had taken some beautiful photos of wildflowers in the park and turned it digitally into fabric. From that fabric she made two beautiful quilts to be used at the cafe for the public to put on their knees to keep warm and a bigger one to go on the ground as a picnic blanket for children to sit on to listen to stories. Her website is www.juliaoconnell.co.uk . After talking to various people and a lady called Ann who had been to NZ and admiring Julias work I started off back to the train station. Someone called out to me and it was the park manager running along with her plate of sponge wanting to talk with me. She was fascinated how someone from NZ got to be at the Artist in Residence talk. We talked for a while. She was very nice and it turned out it was her who took the knitted poppies off the remembrance trees which was one of the reasons I had come to the park. Never mind. I had a lovely day. I did have an amusing train ride back to Birmingham with a man who said the train was going to London , not Birmingham then cracked up at the shock on my face!!! Not funny!! I get confused because you sit backwards. I dont get it.! Anyway, we had a lovely chat about sport, not rugby as he was a semi professional football player and boxer, cricket, not getting the 5 day game and how he had been late 6 times this year to pick up his daughter from day care so far this year and fined twice. What a hoot. A fun end to a great and very unexpected day.
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