It’s odd, isn’t it, how full technicolour memories can be evoked all of a sudden often from a small and unintended catalyst. I was making a skirt recently and as I was cutting out the pieces it crossed my mind that the left-over bits of material would make rather nice bunting – and bam! There I was immediately transported back to summer fetes and folk festivals.
Yes, it’s true – I am a folkie – and not your modern nu-folk type either but the proper old crusty version. I’m talking tankards on belt, socks and sandals and finger-in-the ear singing to classic folk tunes that invariably will have a ‘fol-iddle-i-ay’ in there somewhere; and of course, real ale.
Growing up I did not see my childhood as unusual in any way but looking back now I realise perhaps it was – and I wouldn’t have it another way. We generally spent our summers in a field somewhere in the UK and it was camping at its most unglamorous. For any festival goers you may think that porta-loos are not much fun but at these folk camps, things could be a lot worse. For you see, every person attending would be allotted a team for the week or two there and each team would take on different duties. If you were lucky you would be in the kitchen (a kitchen in a marquee I must add) and although it might mean peeling potatoes for 200 people at least it didn’t mean you had drawn the shortest straw of all – which was to dig the campsite ‘toilet’ and when the events were over – fill it in again.
These folk camps and festivals though were part of a huge and colourful tapestry of people, skills, events, music and so much more that filled my formative years. Where else other than folk events would you get to meet Clarence, a friendly dragon, who collected donations by having pennies dropped into his mouth and who fought off the mean and nasty horses that would chase (in good spirits) young children. They were places you could learn a new skill or share yours with others. For instance, I remember making simple versions of jig-dolls (jig dolls were made with loose limbs and stuck on a horizontal stick to be bounced upon a flat board in time to music) out of wooden clothes pins – simple things perhaps but maybe they were simpler times; certainly this kind of activity provided a lot of fun for us as children. Even washing clothes at folk camp had an up-side. Once you had washed your items in a plastic bowl (probably the same one you used to wash your camping plates and cups in too) on the wooden trestle tables, then you could have a go at using the mangle. No, I am not ancient, nor were we transported back in time, but at folk-camps in the 80’s you would often find a mangle.
Music and singing are a huge part of this world too. We may all roll our eyes and laugh at some of the really traditional ‘folorum, folay, fiddle, dee,’ etcetera songs, and rightly so in some cases, but there is a lot of beauty too from the words, to the harmonies and the music accompaniment. At one of the folk festivals we went to every year down on the Kent coast, in amongst the grockle shops in the small seaside town, there was a pub where there would be singing sessions and they were magical. The place would be packed and the swell of sound made from a mass of people singing and harmonising together was really special. My favourites were often the sea shanties (a type of work song that accompanied the men working on sailing vessels helping them to keep time together hauling on the ropes and such). I don’t know why I love them so much but always did and to this day they can often bring a tear to my eye. There is one in particular which my granddad used to sing that I cannot even get through a line of; both because it is a beautiful song but also because the memory of him singing it is so strong and I miss him very much. It is called ‘The Farewell Shanty.’
Both sets of parents and my grandparents on one side are, or were, in folk bands and so from an early age my siblings and I learned the fun of stripping the willow, casting out and ranting our way through barn dances. On the subject of ranting (a highly energetic dance step widely used in clogging) I confess that I do in fact know how to clog dance, although whether my brain and feet would keep up now I am not completely convinced. I have done my fair share of clogging through streets accompanied by the much maligned sounds of the accordion and melodeon taking it in turns with the local morris teams with their sticks, hankies and bells all watched by either amused, bemused or frankly uninterested crowds. Rather quaint and embarrassing for some people perhaps but I only need to hear a jingle of bell, clomp of a clog and the wheeze of melodic bellows and I am instantly transported back to fun days out as a child.
Street fayres and summer fetes were key in this celebration of English eccentricity and I loved them. They meant summer, sunshine, bunting, crisps, music, dancing, table top sales, straw bales to sit on that made your legs red and itchy but smelt so wonderful. They meant sweating in raincoats (for this was England and it is always a decision between getting wet from the rain or getting wet from the sweaty mugginess of wearing a water-proof coat), hog roasts and ridiculous games such as wellie wanging, crockery smashing and of course – splat the rat. For those of you who have never had the delight of this last game it was simply a toy rat (often made from a sock with buttons for eyes and a shoelace for a tail) dropped into a piece of upended pipe and you paid your pennies to be given a stick to try and whack the rat as it appeared out of the other end of the tube. I’d take that over any pixelated phone game any day!
I suppose I may be looking back through rose-tinted glasses. As I became a teenager I became less enamoured with it all, not through embarrassment as some may think but more because it was such a present and normal part of my life it was almost boring – there is nothing more tedious for teenagers than what is just normal at home. But I am finding that as I get older I am falling back in love with it all again. I suppose you can take the girl out of folk but you can’t take folk out of the girl.
In light of this blog I have made a mini row of bunting available to purchase here tinyurl.com/zemn53e – and there will be more to come.
