"Home to Roost" by Tessa Hainsworth is the third and last book about her life as a postwoman in Cornwall. You can find my reviews of the first and second books here and here.
We're back with Tessa and her family for their third year in Cornwall. By now, life has found a pleasant rhythm; husband and wife are busy but without any of the stress they used to have in London. Of the children, we learn little; they seem to just happily tag along and lead their healthy country lives surrounded by friends.
Once again, the change of seasons, the landscapes of Cornwall, its villages and small towns, farms, animals and people are described well. I've never been to Cornwall myself but imagine these books must hold special appeal to someone who knows and loves it.
Once again, Tessa gets up to a special adventure on top of her job: In the previous book, it was growing her own vegetable; this time, she discovers the joys of running someone else's B&B for a short time and renting out her own house.
For someone who used to have a high-profile career which certainly required plenty of organizational and other skills, Tessa and her husband go about their endeavours in a surprisingly naive manner. I've never run or worked at a B&B myself, but having stayed in them many times, I have no trouble envisioning the work involved - much more than "just" serving breakfast!
More than once while reading this book, I silently shook my head at how little forethought seemed to be going into many of what the family do.
Also in this book, a couple of newcomers arrive from London. Tessa and her husband, originally having come from the big city themselves, sympathize with a lot of what their new neighbours experience. Are they going to be friends?
Then there are the recurrent characters of Tessa's customers, co-workers and other people she meets, both at work and in private. By now, she knows them well, and friendships have developed based on mutual trust and community spirit. She has causes for worry about them as much as joy.
Of course, Tessa's best friend Annie appears again, too. I found her news towards the end of the book a little too predictable to believe in Tessa's delighted surprise, but maybe it's just me.
All things considered, I still liked the first book best, and felt a tiny bit disappointed with this one. Don't get me wrong, it was still an enjoyable read; not brilliant (neither does it aim to be, I suppose), but nice enough.
In real life, the author has given up working as a postwoman after 3 1/2 years. I suppose she does not need to do that job anymore, having become a published author with her books selling well and being endorsed by the Cornwall Tourist Office. Therefore, the mini series suitably ends here.
What else does our annual Horse Market parade consist of? We've had horses and carriages, groups in historical and national constumes and uniforms, tractors... Well, a parade isn't a parade without marching bands!
Of course you've already seen some of them on the first four posts about the Horse Market. Here are some more:
They were all playing well and in tune. O.K., who was watching the parade with me, has been part of his home village's orchestra for almost 40 years now; he plays the trumpet. I've not yet been to any of their concerts, but I will most likely get to attend one this weekend, and am very much looking forward to that.
Anyway, he was watching the bands closely and kept commenting on them, saying things like "They march as irregularly as we do," or "They really know what they're doing, well practised", and so on. It was interesting for me to look at them with an expert at my side! I imagine it is not easy to play, stay in tune and in rhythm all the time while walking along the streets, lined with crowds of cheerful (and sometimes noisy) people.
When I was little, I always loved the marching bands most; the way the big drums made my tummy resonate was exciting!
Something else I loved about the Horse Market was the funfair set up east of the town centre. It is still set up every year, and after two showers (one of which we watched from the shelter of a building's entrance while eating something we had bought at the market), O.K. and I walked there and had a look round. We did not go on any of the rides but enjoyed seeing others having fun - or at least pretending to! - and spending their money to be whirled around in the air for a few moments.
The sun was out now, and everything looked cheerful and festive:
This is not yet the end of my Horse Market posts... I've a few more pictures, one set about fashion (through the ages) and one of pictures I like because I find them interesting on a deeper level.
Today's post will show you some more pictures from the Horse Market parade. Yes, it was a long and colourful parade - lasted a bit more than an hour, and it was never boring, at least not to me!
After having given you a very quick run through Ludwigsburg's history, I'll show you part of what makes up our town today: People who originally came from many different countries live and work here, and most of the time, we work and live rather well together.
According to the City of Ludwigsburg's homepage, the numbers as of 31.12.2015 show that today, nearly 80 % of my hometown citizens have German citizenship, with just a little over half of them having an immigration background, i.e. they are "second generation" immigrants or have taken on German citizenship. Roughly 20 % are foreigners, i.e. not having German citizenship.
The Horse Market parade, along with some other festivities throughout the year, is always a welcome chance for groups from various countries to present themselves, their music, their customs and costumes, and (at the festivals) their food.
Here are some of the groups. Can you guess their countries of origin?
(Strictly speaking, this first set of pictures is not a group from some other country - you've already seen them on my last post. They squaredanced along the street, and it was fun watching them - maybe the pictures can convey a bit of that.)
Not all groups were carrying signs informing the crowds who they were, and I must admit I don't know all of them myself. But I remember most of them, and now it's your turn to guess and my turn to tell you whether you guessed right :-)
Time for a little bit of history!
One integral part of Ludwigsburg's Horse Market parade - other than the horses and marching bands - are the groups displaying the town's history. Let me take you along, I promise it won't be boring :-)
The first group in the "historical" section of the parade were the Romans. Now, they were not the first people to settle in the area that is now Ludwigsburg (there were settlements of Celts/Celtics [I never know which is the correct form] here centuries before they arrived, and probably Stone Age people roamed the woods before them).
But the Romans definitely knew a good place when they saw it, and so they set up shop along the river Neckar. I wrote about Roman remains in a suburb of Ludwigsburg here, if you are interested.
We don't know all that much about the next few centuries, as there wasn't any town on the spot where Ludwigsburg is nowadays. However, the surrounding villages and smaller towns were already in existence. Some of them have officially become parts of Ludwigsburg, although being much older than the city itself. Anyway, some of the people may have more or less (rather less than more, I'm afraid) looked a bit like this:
Then came the year 1704 and Eberhard Ludwig, Duke of Wuerttemberg, decided he needed a tiny little hunting lodge for him and his friends when hunting in the woods north of Stuttgart, his official residence. The foundation for what was eventually to grow into one of the largest (if not THE largest) Baroque palaces in Germany was laid. For decades, the place was one big construction site, with only the workers and their families actually living there: (Baustelle means building site)
But with the Duke moving in, his court of course followed, and that in turn meant work for more people. To make the small settlement grow into a proper city and make moving here attractive for everyone, several decrees promised the newcomers religious freedom, tax liberation for the first 10 years, free building materials and plots of land at a very low cost.
The scheme worked, and today Ludwigsburg has just above 90.000 inhabitants, although we are not exempt from paying taxes and certainly do not get cheap land and building materials for free anymore!
Over the years and under Eberhard Ludwig's successors, the town grew in importance, reaching its pinnacle when it became a garrison. For a long time, the face of my town was mostly a military one. Uniforms were everywhere; horses and groups of exercising soldiers were the familiar sights and sounds. Around them, a healthy economy grew - the soldiers (and sometimes their families when they had them) needed food and drink, washing and cleaning, gambling and other amusements.
But the dukes did not neglect holding court at the ever-growing palace, and each one left their mark on the town.
I've briefly told you here how Wuerttemberg, which had always been a Dukedom, became a Kingdom "thanks" to Napoleon and Friedrich making a deal. Here they are, riding in a carriage together like they've in all probablity never done in real life:
Times changed, and so did fashion. The following monarchs of Wuerttemberg did not always choose Ludwigsburg as their residence; some of them only lived here during the summer months. That meant less work and money for the people of Ludwigsburg, but although the number of inhabitants shrank considerably for several decades, the town was never given up completely.
Except for the glasses and the lipstick (only ladies of a certain profession would have gone out on the streets wearing make-up in those times!), you might have come across people looking a bit like these:
Postal service all over Germany was patchy, to say the least. Mail was carried in coaches such as these, and they could also be booked for travelling from one town to the other. It may look romantic, but most of all, travelling was uncomfortable and lengthy back then.
All around Ludwigsburg, the old villages and smaller towns still existed. Many of them lived on farming, selling their produce also on Ludwigsburg's market. (I wrote about the market square here.)
As a brief skip back in time again, this group from Ossweil (today, one of our suburbs) shows how the inhabitants of this much older village may have looked over the centuries:
This man in an old conductor's uniform offers a very small glimpse into the time when Ludwigsburg and its suburbs were first being connected by a network of bus lines. I think I even remember them looking like that, at least I know they had very similar devices for coins and tickets when I was little:
After WWII, a new town emerged at Ludwigsburg's south-western edge: Pattonville, named after General Patton and built by and for the US military and their families. All during my childhood and teenage years, the US-American influence was strongly felt - not questioned by my generation, but no doubt sometimes strongly resented by the older people to whom the sight of US soldiers in our streets must have been a daily reminder of the hard times during and after the war, the guilt most Germans feel to an extent about the terrible crimes committed in the past, and the fact that Germany lost the war, having no choice but to allow the country to be split into four occupation zones between the allies.
But time moved on, and so did people. Americans and Germans became friends, and we still have groups of people holding up the traditions and pastimes they learned from their friends, such as this Squaredance group:
Today, Ludwigsburg is a bustling town. We have our share of problems, of course, but all things considered, it is a good place to live - neither too big nor too small, with enough work for (almost) everybody, many shops across all price ranges, and some unique places of interest, such as the palaces and parks I so often show you here on my blog.
We are a colourful mix of people from many different nations, as you'll see in one of my next posts about the Horse Market parade - and we only wear traditional German dirndls for special occasions :-)
