It's Hop Festival weekend this weekend and the town is choc-a-block with people and crawling with Morris Dancers. They seem to descend on the place as if it's some kind of Morris-ing convention, with several "sides" performing at once up and down the main thoroughfares; blackened faces, bells, staffs clashing, decorated wes'c'ts twirling in the breeze. The "people" themselves all seem to be wandering around with pints of Shep's various products in plastic take-away "skiff" type "glasses", a cause of much anguish to thirsty, glued-to-his-post Dad on such a hot day.
Dad's own part in this is to avoid Morris dancers and head for the Standard Quay, where-at the Visitor Centre for the Sailing Barge Cambria. It's being opened officially (although it's been open all Summer really) by the Mayor of Swale, cutting the ribbon, hacking chunks out of the cake etc. In fact, the M-of-S is actually wandering about in a gaggle of other Cinque Port Mayors. I gather they each try to support each others' functions when possible, and I'm guessing a beer-rich Hop Festival is a prime attraction. So we have 9 dignitaries in fact opening the Centre. How posh are we?
We also have our own folk band, who one of our lot borrows from Deal on a reciprocal basis - the Deal Hoodeners, who perform a variety of Sea Shanties before also retreating for a well earned beer.
Too hot for dogs, really, though, and we head for the shade.
Deefski
By the way, traffic on this site seems to have suddenly picked up. We have approaching 4000 views and we are getting visited 60-70 times a week. Thank you all for your interest.
No comments:
Post a Comment