Our new High Sheriff on sining duty (From The Oxford Times)

Our new High Sheriff on sining duty

3:48pm Wednesday 21st July 2010 in

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‘Nothing but blue skies,” sang the High Sheriff of Oxfordshire Marie-Jane Barnett, and out on the lawns of Towersey Manor this seemed a perfect description for what we could see overhead. Sun shone on happy crowds enjoying Pimm’s, champagne, strawberries and ice cream at Sunday’s Summer Jazz Picnic Party, hosted at their home by the High Sheriff and her husband, David, in support of the Oxfordshire Community Foundation.

The entertainment was supplied by The Big Bear Stompers and Blake’s Heaven Big Band, with The Hunkydorians, a talented bunch of young musicians from Lord Williams’s School, Thame, adding to the afternoon’s enjoyment. Marie-Jane herself was press-ganged into giving us a couple of numbers.

That she is a talented jazz singer was revealed to readers of The Oxford Times’s Limited Edition magazine in May. It was, in fact, already known to me, she having given a star performance at a summer ball I attended some years ago at Summer Fields School. Challenged to say how many years, I would probaby have guessed seven or eight. Actually, it must have been at least 18 because the Barnetts’ younger son, Oliver, was a pupil at the time and is now 31 with a son of his own. That’s Finlay, pictured with dad and grandmother below. Ollie, incidentally, is a man of some significance in the music business, as sales manager for Putumayo World Music, based in Cape Town.