I've also seen it advertised as 'Hooton Pagnell Summer Fete' or just 'Hooton Pagnell Fete' - as it is on the official programme.
I caught the bus to Hickleton as usual and walked the couple of miles down the road to Hooton Pagnell.
The fete had only been open for about ten minutes when I arrived and so there weren't many people around yet - it got a lot busier later. I took the opportunity though to rush round the village and take some photographs without anyone being in the way.
The earliest cream teas of the day were already being served at the church before 10:30 and I accepted a free taster sample of Yorkshire parkin myself a few minutes later from one of the stallholders.
It was getting busier all the time and by this time I was ready for my sandwiches, which I ate in a quiet corner of the churchyard - I still had room for a cream tea at The Hostel a couple of hours later though.
There was plenty of music to enjoy; the Doncaster Concert Band, 'Essential Jazz', the Doncaster Ladies' Choir, and Doncaster Waites [Mediaeval musicians]...but my favourite, by a long way, was the Frumptarn Guggenband from Barnsley. Described by the DJ as they walked past him as looking like part of the opening sequence of a James Bond film. I really liked them; their music was very catchy, tuneful, well-balanced and humorous, incorporating influences from a New Orleans funeral band, a German oom-pah-pah band, a samba troupe..with some outrageous costumes and oversize Mexican sombreros thrown in to the mix which was then finally sprinkled with a bit of voodoo and black magic. Absolutely wonderful!
After three hours under the hot sun I set off for home, still facing more of the sun though, and walked across the fields to the shops at Woodlands from where I caught the bus back into the town centre...to arrive home and find out that my landline telephone isn't working and so I've had to make arrangements for an engineer visit. Damn.
No comments:
Post a Comment