and the winners of the fete flickr competition are...

The results are in and after a hotly contested vote we now have the 3 winners of our village fete flickr competition. We give you:

The best picture of bunting 2007

By Little Teabag.

Best fete game picture 2007

By Richard S.

And the best overall fete picture 2007

By Pirate Internet.

We'll be in direct contact with all 3 winners via flickr mail very soon. Congratulations to all of you on your imminent year's supply of smoothies. Don't drink it all at once.

every loser wins

It's been over ten long years since Wicksy first sat down at a piano and tinkered out 'Every Loser Wins' (they had amazing acoustics in the Queen Vic back then). Well this week we learnt the hard way the true poignancy of Wicksy's words.

Do you remember our attempt to break the world record for the longest bunting in the world at our village fete in Regent's Park? We failed. We didn't quite make it. The current record is still held by Wendy Hughes, helped by 6,000 Buckinghamshire school children.

It's taken us a while to measure up all the different bits of bunting but the final total came to 0.455 miles, 771.72 metres short of the record unfortuanetly.

But as Wicksy sang, every loser does indeed win and we have also won in many ways...

You sent us so much beautifully hand made bunting we felt truely in awe of your creativity and dedication.

We got to hang out with the Girl Guides for a weekend as they helped us to organise our attempt.

It got us all together for a lunch time of bunting making at fruit towers and cheered the office up with the tangles we put up afterwards (I bet the Central Office of Information has never looked like this on a random Wednesday in July).

And we all had a lovely couple of days out in the park.

We're sorry that we failed, you can't win them all though as they say. We are humble in our failure but would like to thank every single one of you who helped or donated bunting to the attempt.

Just watch this space next year, we're determined to get in that book now.

(Oh and if you fancy getting yourself one of those ghetto blasters that were all the rage in Albert Square in 1986 then have a look here).

make someone's year

You probably remember that we started a village fete flickr group a while ago with a prize of a year's supply of smoothies to the best photo in each of the 3 categories. Well the time has come to decide on the 3 winners, the only problem being we can't decide.

So we're hoping you can help us by visiting our voting page and selecting your favourite photos from our shortlist. We'll then announce the winners in our family newsletter on Wednesday 19th September (you can join our family here if you aren't already a member). Voting will close at midnight on Sunday September 16th.

Go vote.