Our Fete
By SIR HENRY BASHFORD
LL village fetes are the same fête. Their objects may differ. They may be in aid of the Church or the Chapel or the village-hall or a, political party. But nobody, except their promoters, bothers much about the object. It is the fete that matters. There was one not Iong ago at a neighbouring village on an extremely hot day, and having done, as I thought, my duty, I sat down under an elm-tree. Behind the elm-tree was the road. Twenty yards in front of me, and a little to the left, the members of the band were taking off their coats. Rather nearer, and on my right, a boy and a girl, evidently visitors, were trying to roll tennis-balls into a sort of rabbit-hutch. This was an innovation and had not yet established itself. But the houp-la. table was being steadily patronised, an ornate teapot, among the prizes, being the princi- pal object of desire. But there was a substantial group round the darts-board and the customary queue lining up to bowl at skittles for a pig. Each of these would be longer after milking- time.
The last of the old clothes, photographs of Weymouth, novels by Annie S. Swan, deck-chairs that could perhaps be mended, and water-colours of haystacks by deceased aunts had bed removed by their purchasers, and the heroines in charge of the rummage-stall were adding up their gains. A lady with a cake was collecting guesses, at sixpence at a time, as to what the cake weighed; and another was doing the same thing with a vegetable marrow in a perambulator. In the remote distance, over a sort of rugby goal-post, boys were trying to pitch a sheaf of straw. At the far end of the field stood a colony of tea-tables, flanked by a farmhouse and the village church. As it was now nearly five o'clock, people were drift- ing towards them. It was a pleasant scene, with the downs beyond. The boy who had been trying to roll tennis- balls into the rabbit-hutch then approached politely. " Did you say, sir," he asked, " that the Cornish Riviera - express comes past here every day ? " I told him that I bad. ' Is she pulled by a King, sir, or a Castle? " "Generally a King," I said, "but sometimes a Castle." He thanked me and went his way, having pronounced it a jolly good fête, and with this I agreed. It was not quite perhaps, as fetes go,, as brushed and combed as some that are held in gardens. But in that particular village there was no suitable garden, and it did have a band; and bands were not always to be found even at fetes held in gardens. There are, in fact, two schooli of thought about bands. Bands are admittedly superior, but a gramophone with an amplifier is cheaper. The choice is usually left to a sub-committee; so is that of the date. It is impossible, of course, to choose an afternoon upon which other fetes are not being held. But care should be taken that these are not either too many of too near. There is also the question to be decided as to whether there shall be a fixed price for tea—eat as much as you like or can—or whether it shall be paid for item by item. And there is the critical matter of the entertainments. But this is not so difficult as it looks. It has already been simplified by long experience and keeping both eyes on the ball, and the ball is money. Most of the proved money-makers, as I had noticed, were represented on this occasion. There was however, oddly enough, no treasure hunt. - But all else was there. On my way over to tea I had another handful of shots at the darts-board and, after tea, I returned to the houp-la table and won two celluloid hairpins and, amidst envious coos, the tea-pot. I hadn't the heart to take this away, so left it with the rector to auction. The downs in the heat-haze had become taller. Drying grass scented tlo air. The band, soothed by beer, seemed to be playing Wiltshire version of Eriskay. The drowsy horizon loiterili sunwards, the cottages that might have grown out of the ea Ili the summer tan on the village faces—all these held one in thrat Later in the evening the rector rang me up. They had marls a profit, he said, of eighty pounds.
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