A curate’s egg month is just passing, with a desperate pre-judging anxiety about South Hams District Council planting its town beds and cutting its hedges, then a magnificent team effort by the Kingsbridge in Bloom ‘blue tops’, so the town looked better than ever for the two phases of judging for South West in Bloom.

Fierce sunlight in late June that tired out the watering teams, then bursts of rain in time to refresh our plants.

In the meantime, very mixed opinions about the quayside development, then nearly 300 folk pack St Edmund’s Church to mostly complain about the botched procedures.

While comments bit into that planning area, almost without notice a well-thought-out ­application for the Kings Arms landed. If The Quay pub rethink delivers, it will be a double whammy.

Probably the wettest Fair Week ever. I walked down Fore Street with Fair Week president Adrian Masters in our posey jackets – mine the kids called “deckchair” – in torrential rain, but the lanterns were ingenious and withstood the battering,

as did the kids and lantern ­minders.

The Fair Week team and resilient performers responded to the deluge with great spirit and mostly good humour. A few events were modified. One that did not change one iota was the town crier competition, which is –now international. At Overbeck’s the nearly 30 criers and escorts performed beneath stormy torrents and what became a lake while we judges cowered in the conservatory.

The bell-ringing parade across Kingsbridge town took place without compromise – those tricorn hats channel the rain in front like a church ­gargoyle.

The people in the Anchor flinched at the colossal ­clanging.

Dry at last for the carnival parade, with several full-on floats – including our new one – although a tree had inconveniently grown bigger in Duncombe Street since last year, so there was a delay, but all ended well.

There are many things Kingsbridge lacks, but community spirit is not one of them. Bravo!

Robin Griffin

Weymouth Park, Hope Cove