'Excuse me,' I say to one of the salesmen, 'I don't mean to be rude, but are you travellers?'
'Oh no,' he replies with a smile. 'We're from King's Heath in Birmingham. We go round all the markets in the Midlands. We always come here.'
'So…' I look about. It's slowly dawning on me.
'Yes,' he says. 'Most of the stallholders here are regular market traders. But you'll see more gypsy things if you keep going further down. Excuse me, please, sir.' And he turns to do his job with a middle-aged couple who are running their hands over a gold ormolu clock with sour-faced cherubs on each side.
I take another look at the people around me, the buyers. They're not travellers either. There are so many of them, they've obviously not all come from Stow. I listen and detect Birmingham accents, Welsh and even the familiar tones of my own east Midlands. I hear one woman say to the chap with her, 'It's not as good this year. You can see better stuff on Stratford market any Friday.' On all sides people are carrying plastic buckets stuffed with T-shirts and are pushing baby buggies whose tops are sagging under the weight of everything from discount nappies to rolls of curtain material. Behind the stalls and in much of the middle of the field, I can see a mass of pickup trucks, four-by-fours and loads and loads of the biggest caravans you've ever seen. They're the modern white and silver ones. In the gap between IRISH AND RAP CDS and GENUINE ROMANY CRAFTS, I see a white door swing back, and a middle-aged woman, making tea, turns to survey the crowds, her underclothes framed by her open dressing gown.
I've just spotted a red and gold traditional Romany caravan perched up on a trailer and am thinking what a shame it is that it's not on the ground being pulled along like it's supposed to be, when suddenly, the crowd in front of me parts and I see a pony galloping full tilt straight at me. I dodge right but the snorting animal does the same, and as I swerve back to the left, the pony's nose whacks me on the shoulder. I glimpse a boy of about ten, riding bareback, hear a shout of 'Git out!' and bump hard against someone. A powerful grip on my elbow steadies me.
'Are you orlright there?' It's an Irish accent. 'Sure there's no harm done at all.' He's in a singlet and flat cap. I thank him, and he points behind me, 'Watch how you're going now.'
There's a horse and two-wheeled trap now careering through the crowds. The driver, in a battered old straw hat, is laughing and shouting, 'Mind yer backs there!' And he keeps cracking the end of his whip over the top of the horse's head so the animal's fairly bouncing along, every fibre in its body sparking with life.
'So what's going on?' I splutter to my big Irish friend.
'John there. He wants to sell the mare. And he's showing her off.'
At which point, there's another crack, another 'Mind yer backs!' and the mare and John, still laughing, hurtle back the other way.
There are no stalls at the sides now. It's mainly horseboxes with ponies tethered to their sides. Now I don't know much about horses and their like – I took riding lessons in my late twenties and got sniggered at so often by know-it-all teenage girls that I stopped. But I do have a reasonably extensive knowledge of children's toys. And these animals look exactly like living, life-size replicas of 'My Little Pony'. Their manes, tails and fetlocks (I confess I looked up the word when I got home) are as fine and wispy as the down on a duckling's back. Their coats are smooth and gleaming, and the coy tuft of hair bobbing over their eyes seems to put a smile on their little faces. The fact that the nearest one to me suddenly shits, in a way that suggests it might have been overdoing the prunes and liquorice allsorts, does I admit cut short my musings on life imitating art. Nevertheless I'm captivated. And I watch while a young guy starts to size up one of the animals. It's a frisky creature. It keeps pulling at its tether and prancing in a way which, after my recent narrow escape from death by equine trampling, would tell me to keep well clear. But the man just picks up its foreleg so he can examine its hooves, then feels its ribs all over, before taking hold of its top lip and bending it over to look at its teeth.
Groups of men are standing around. The older ones favour long sticks, tweedie pork-pie hats and a muffler. The young guys go for singlets and mullet haircuts. I come across two men, a pork-pie and a mullet, standing in the middle of a circle. They're having an intense conversation, raising their voices every so often. I can't catch the words. Suddenly the pork-pie drags mullet over to one of the ponies, slaps its flank, then grabs mullet's right hand and tries to slap it too. But mullet's not having any. The two men's voices rise higher, then all of a sudden they both nod. Mullet puts out his palm and pork-pie slaps it. Mullet then pulls a crumpled clutch of banknotes from his back pocket, and the circle of watchers breaks out in a satisfied buzz of conversation.
'Mind yer backs!' Which we all do double quick. Seems to me John's having so much fun that if you offered him £5,000 in ten pound notes for the pony, he'd just say, 'Yeah, yeah, but later, later,' before belting off again with a demonic guffaw.
But it's not just horseflesh that's being traded. Two boys with what could be their grandfather pass me. One of the lads is cradling a cockerel in his arms, the other has a cardboard box with a bird's head poking out. The older man's saying, 'Now you gotta keep 'em separate or they'll fight like the Dickens.' And there are dogs for sale too. A pair of cuddly puppies snuggle together in a cage on the grass next to a wrinkled middle-aged woman with a roll-up hanging from her lips.
I spot two young women with RSPCA badges on their dark blue uniforms, and decide to see what they make of it all. Are they looking for cases of cruelty?
'No, there's not really much problem like that here,' says one of them. 'The animals are usually in superb condition. The owners want to sell them after all.'
'The main thing is to give advice,' says the other. 'The people here know a lot about horses, but they're not vets. So if a pony's got an ear infection or anything like that, we can show them how to treat it.'
'So it's a jolly for us,' grins the first.
'It's a lovely day out,' says her friend.
At this point, I'm nearly knocked over, not by flailing hooves this time, but by a quad bike. It's being driven by two extraordinarily good-looking young women. They ignore me, old fart that I am, and speed on.
It's the cue for me to report one of my other major discoveries at the fair.
The Carmen legend lives on.
There are significant numbers of stunningly beautiful girls here. There's a group of four walking towards me right now. The one in the lead looks like a seventeen-year-old Penelope Cruz. Her chums remind me of junior versions of other Cannes red carpeteers whose names I can't quite recall. Penelope's phone rings and the rest of them stop and gather round her, laughing. All four of them have hair that reaches just short of their waists – it looks like they've been brushing it for the last six hours – and wear flowered rosettes on the side of their heads. I could go on about the 6-inch heels (marvels of balance in themselves since this is a rutted field), the shortness of skirts and the more-than-glimpses of tanned midriffs, but I'll just say that none of these four young women would disgrace a Madrid catwalk in Fashion Week. If I'm being super critical, I might observe that their make-up is a bit too much like that of the women you see behind the designer cosmetics counters at John Lewis. Of course, I'm not saying that all the traveller girls wandering round the fair look like this. There seems to be the same range of plumpness, squatness and acne that you'd find in the teenage population at large. I'm just saying the disproportionate incidence of downright beauties is a phenomenon worth reporting. Sociologically speaking.
Nearby there's a group of young men. And I detect some sly glances and smiles passing back and forth between them and the four female phenomena. The lads are pushing each other around in a puppy fight sort of way. Now I'd have thought the girls were a class or two up on the boys. But then who am I to judge? Nevertheless, I give the boys a wide berth, not wishing to end up the battered proof of some potential suitor's testosterone count.
'Mind yer backs!' This
time he's got one hand on the reins, the other holding down his straw hat. Whoops! He nearly got that dandified looking bloke with the handlebar moustache. I join my fellow fair goers in having a good laugh.
As I wander on for another hour or more among mares, foals and stallions, cut-price gnome vendors and dispensers of chips with gravy, I get to pondering. What kind of sorcerer's spell could transform these Carmens into the all-in wrestler I'd seen back in Digbeth Street?
As I walk past The Bell Inn, still shuttered and locked, and on back up towards the Square, two girls overtake me, perfectly steady on their stilettos. I hear one say to the other, 'Mi da won't even let me go on a bus. And mi mammy's the same. And I'm nearly sixteen.'
No difference there then.
It's two o'clock and I decide to drive back to Blockley, and soon find myself sitting behind what must be a fifteen-berth trailer home. The roads are always like this on Fair Day. Although the travellers drift into Stow in dribs for days ahead of the fair, they don't hang around once the crowds of buyers start to thin out. Romantics say it's the call of the open road. Cynics reckon it's because the sellers of horseflesh want to be well out of the way before the buyers have had a good look at their purchases and decide to demand their money back. Whichever version you go with, that's it for another six months. A retreat from tribal warfare, a cooling of mating instincts, and a line drawn under my investigation. I've had a grand day out.
I might go again.
I'll give The Bell a miss in Fair Week though.
CHAPTER 23
CULTURALLY
DIVERSE MURDERS
Subject: Re: Invite to Stow
From Ralph Aardman [[email protected]]
Date: 14/11 19.23
To:
Cc:
Hi Derek,
Thanks for the invite. But I'm off to Cremona University for a few months to study Italian Communist Party influence in the Po Valley. Maybe I can get up to see you sometime later in the year, when your sheltered housing accommodation's been finished.
By the way, I see racism is alive and goose-stepping in the English village: http://www.news.co.uk/midsomer-murders-racerow
Best as ever
Ralph
My first thought is that he's read some Trotskyite twaddle in a left-wing blog about discrimination against gypsies at Stow's horse fair, and I'm all set to offer him a balanced, first-hand view of the matter. But when I click on the link, it turns out he's talking about the Midsomer Murders row. The series's executive producer has been suspended from his job after saying the ITV crime drama of that name has no place for non-white characters. The actual words that landed him in the soup were: 'We just don't have ethnic minorities involved, because it wouldn't be the English village with them.'
'Hang on, the opinion of one biased TV producer is hardly a fact-based sociological thesis,' I say out loud, stabbing the email REPLY button in irritation. But as soon as I've jabbed out, 'Deasr Rakph,' I realise I'd better get my arguments in unassailable bullet-point ranks first, if I'm not to hand him a win on a plate. So I open up a new Word document for some preliminary notes.
Point One. It's true the English village – as well as, falsely, representing some lost Golden Age of peace and perfection – is, for some, the model of quintessential Englishness. Remember John Major saying, 'There'll always be an England with postmistresses riding bicycles across village greens in the mist'? I suppose it's this idea that Midsomer Murders' Exec. Prod. is playing up to. For him Englishness – he doesn't talk ever about Britishness – represents some kind of mythical, ancestral racial purity.
Point Two. So is there much cultural diversity in the average English village? What about Stow?
• Maggie's team of shop cleaners: one Hungarian (via Maryland, USA) + two Bulgarians.
• Cafe assistant where Maggie gets second coffee of day: Rumanian.
• About half the waiters and waitresses at The Unicorn: Polish.
• Maybe this is not much of a cross-section. Too non-professional, though they're all probably mathematics professors or award-winning post-modernist authors back home in Székesfehérvár and Cluj Napoca.
• Ah, but there is Stow's postmistress, Gillian: South African. So that's one in the eye for John Major. And, what's more, I've never seen her on a bike, in or out of the mist. Gillian, it's worth noting, is universally regarded as super-efficient, courteous and an all-round nice person.
The trouble is that, seen walking down Digbeth Street, all these people would be indistinguishable from card-carrying members of the Aga Owners' Club with pedigrees going back to Charles I. So is Stow short on non-white faces?
• Well, there's the extended family who own The Prince of India. Do they count? I'm not sure they all live in Stow. Some of them seem to arrive in cars at about 5 p.m. each day. Perhaps that doesn't matter.
• Then there's Sunny who sold us the burgage: Kenyan-Asian. Well-respected chiropractor. Hmm, but she doesn't live here any more. She's moved to Goa.
I'm still pondering over this next day when Mike calls to fix a date for a hike. He lives in Acton, west London, so I say to him, 'I'm curious Mike, what racial groups live in your part of the world?'
'Well, we've got lots of Poles,' he says, 'as well as other East Europeans…'
'Yeah, Stow's got those,' I pop in.
'… there are at least four Polish groceries in Acton, an Armenian social centre and the Ukrainians have even got their own cathedral…'
'I see.'
'… then there are significant numbers of Indians, Bangladeshis, Afghanis and Pakistanis…'
'We've got Indians.'
'… there's a mosque of course, not just for the Pakistanis. There's quite a famous Arab secondary school in Acton. Then as well, there are the Chinese and, perhaps surprisingly, lots of Japanese…'
'We get Japanese tourists in Stow.'
'… in fact there's even a Japanese school and a Japanese estate agent in Acton…'
'Hmmm, really.'
'… then there are groups from several different African countries…'
I get in quickly, 'We do have South Africans. Well, a South African.' But something tells me our valiant postmistress, kindly and helpful as she is, will be no match for the mustered masses of the sub-Sahara region.
'… the Somalis in particular,' continues Mike, 'they've got their own community centre. Funnily enough though, people from the West Indies haven't settled in Acton, not in any great numbers anyway.'
'Ah, ah,' I butt in, having just remembered, 'The chef at The Talbot's Caribbean. He does a fantastic goat curry. He gets the goat from that bloke on the BBC who does Countryfile, who's got a farm near here.' I immediately regret adding this last bit, which somehow seems to undermine Stow's multi-ethnic bona fides.
'I suspect one Jamaican might not make Stow a role model for racial diversity,' observes Mike. 'Just to put things in context,' he adds, 'what the census calls 'White British' make up just forty-five per cent of Acton's population, and the local high school has sixty-five per cent of students who don't have English as their first language.'
I concede the point, and we agree a date for our walk.
So Stow's not Acton. But then nor is it the fabled TV village of 'Midsomer Ethnicleansing' with border guards checking the blood purity of your English family tree for five generations. So let's cut the foreplay and put this to bed. Are villages in general racist?
This needs another expert answer, so I call Chris, my old school friend-cum-political scientist.
'That's a tricky one,' says Chris.
'Is it?' I challenge. 'It seems to me that if you take Stow for instance, there's no racism problem here.'
'Ah,' says Chris, 'that's exactly what people always say in villages all round the country.'
'So doesn't that prove villages don't have a race problem?'
'Not for sociologists, it doesn't. Faced with people saying "There's no problem", sociologists tend to say, "
Well, there must be one, it's just a different sort of problem, so it gets overlooked". So, they say villages just have a different sort of racism compared with cities.'
'You mean we don't have racially motivated stabbings on tower block walkways, or fire-bombings of synagogues.'
'Exactly. Did you ever see the movie Playing Away, where a village cricket team meets a Brixton XI – all Jamaicans and Trinidadians – in an amateur cup final?'
'No, I missed that. I can imagine it though.'
'Right. The good old country gents treat the blacks like plantation workers or punkah wallahs, as though the sun still shone on the British Raj, and as though we true Englanders are doing these Johnnie Savages a favour by letting them play the hallowed game.'
'Yes I see. Mind you, when was this film made?'
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