With Flora Day cancelled this year due to coronavirus, we are taking a look back in time.

Below is how the Packet reported the Flora Day of 1995, 25 years ago.

HELSTON is not just a town with a past but a place with a real future, MP David Harris told the Mayor’s Flora Day lunch. “What is needed is a catalyst for renewal and a confidence that the town is going to prosper. I’m sure it is,” he said.

“The new moves and moods created by the Helston Forum and Helston Live could be just those ingredients needed for regeneration.”

But Mr Harris, who danced at Midday with wife Diana for the tenth time, called for Kerrier District council to be more imaginative over planning and cheaper, more adequate parking.

“Ancient towns like Helston face the challenge of fringe-of-town shopping, like the new Tesco, but with the right policies and approach they can turn such developments to their advantage,” he said.

Helston should be building on its strengths, including its fame as the home of the Furry Dance, its attractive town centre, its good schools and RNAS Culdrose.

“A town which had its first charter in 1201 and which is still the centre for a considerable rural area is going to go on changing but provided that change is handled skilfully and sensitively it will flourish,” he said.

Among guests at the lunch - served by WRVS members Betty Parsons, Marion Polly, Daphne Butler, Ann Garner and Hilary Wheeler - were former county, district and town councillor Dick Curnow and his wife Daisy, the president of the London Cornish Association and a delegation from Italian twin town Sasso Marconi, whose town clerk Roberta Perrotta presented a plaque to the Mayor, Brenda Banfield.

The Mayor of Sasso Marconi, Renata Bortolotti, sent a goodwill message. “I want to reconfirm our mutual promise of friendship, solidarity and common work. Our children’s exchange represents a future united Europe where people can meet different cultures and find new friends,” she said.

-----

Flora Day was extra special for one couple in the Midday Dance.

Robert Webb and Joanne Lawrance, dancing together for the first time, were struck by Cupid’s arrow at Helston’s big event last year.

And the weekend after Flora Day next year they plan to marry.

Robert, 24, spotted Joanne, 27, in the crowd at Lismore while he was dancing with his cousin, Sara Hosking. It turned out Jo’s parents were the couple in front.

Robert’s aunt, Christine Hosking, who was also dancing in the same group, introduced him to Jo and it was mutual love at first sight.

Until then they did not know they lived just ten miles apart near London.

Although both Helstonians, they never met as children because, while Jo went to Helston School, Robert was educated in Indonesia, where his father was then working.

Robert, a computer engineer at East Grinstead, is moving home to Cornwall with a new job soon. Jo is an accountant in London but as from next month will be working for a firm in Newquay.