It's Day 28 and we're in my old stomping ground of the north-east where the torch travelled along some of the most beautiful (and under-rated!) coast in the British Isles.
Mary Manley of the beautiful Barter Books in Alnwick (one of my personal favourite bookshops of all time), said she saw very little of the Olympic torch whilst it was lit, but she did manage to catch up with it, and torchbearer Dick Moules, after it had been extinguished.
‘It was an awful day in Alnwick. It was pouring with rain and very few people turned up at the market place. There a few stalls there, but we were very unlucky. It was a real damp squib. The torchbearer Dick, a local charity fundraiser, appeared in the market place and we all cheered as he passed on his way out of the town and on towards Hisburn.’
Mary had been invited by the BBC to attend a celebratory breakfast at a local cafe. It took her a while to find out where the breakfast was taking place so she didn’t quite make the 6.30am start.
‘I was about three hours late, but I did finally manage to meet up with some of the BBC and local council staff, including Councillor Neil Bradbury MP, Steve Stewart, chief executive of Northumberland County Council, Philip Roberts, regional head of the BBC in the North East etc.’
The highlight of course was when Dick arrived and Mary was photographed with his extinguished torch.
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| Mary, Dick Moules and Matthew from the BBC |
After the breakfast, Mary returned to the shop, which had arranged a relay race for local schools. It was promoted as part of ‘The Festival of Alnwick’. (‘We weren’t allowed to use the word “Olympics”!’)
‘Because of the awful weather, only two schools showed up: Duchess’s High School and Lindesfarne Middle School. Four boys’ teams and four girls’ teams took part in the 500m race and all wore t-shirts bearing the words: ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’. This maxim has been close to the hearts of the owners of Barter Books ever since they found an old World War Two poster bearing these words at the bottom of a box of donated books.
‘We pinned it on the wall, where it has attracted a huge amount of interest.’
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By: Kelly Butcher,
on 7/15/2011
Blog: The Lemme Library (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap) JacketFlap tags: harry potter, keep calm, Add a tag
   I found these at a great site called "Keep Calm, Harry Potter" 
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