Tinseltown has departed

Sigh. I was going to show you a neat little sign that appeared at the bottom of our road a while ago. It was a eye popping shade of fluorescent lime green and emblazoned with the legend "WB LOC".

A trip to Lacock just over a week ago revealed an intriguing number of companion signs along the way, plus its sister in Lacock itself, "WB HQ". Then the penny dropped - these were signposts from the M4 telling the Harry Potter film crew where to go. Major excitement down our neck of the woods! Alas, the signs have been taken down and the machine that is Hollywood has departed for pastures new.

I tootled along to the village see what was going on - lots of people striding purposefully up and down the street talking into their walkie talkies and saying things like "I've just seen a pap - it's a woman with a child in a pushchair", and lots of brawny men in hi-vis laying down white matting and erecting barriers to keep us muggles at bay. The filming was at night, with about a hundred people descending on the village to try and catch a glimpse of their heroes. They must have been extremely patient - the actors didn't meet their fans until late on the third night (the last one) of filming. I'd given up by then and was snuggled up at home with a glass of Baileys.

On the plus side - It was a beautiful day and I did take the opportunity to use my National Trust membership to look round Lacock Abbey (used as a location in earlier HP films). It was the home of William Henry Fox -Talbot, the inventor of the negative film process in the 1830s - quite a good link into the more modern stuff going on a couple of streets away at the time. The grounds are lovely too - lots of cyclamen under the trees at the moment. I also had a gawp at the village allotments as some of them are in the Abbey grounds - in a walled garden, much green eyed envy expressed by VP at the time.

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