Giving shows the bird
Above: Gone to lunch
Like everybody else in the Cotswolds except for curmudgeonly keepers, admire falcons. The rodent-munching flying machines are, like bamboo-eating Pandas and plankton-consuming whales, the benevolent face of wildlife.
I cherish the soaring birds of prey that embody the concept of freedom, or at least I do until I see one at any of the various country fairs that fill our region’s summer calendar. For it is at those shows, after I have handed over a wedge of notes to park my car in a muddy field, that a bloke with a body microphone tries to entertain me by attempting to woo just such a winged creature from its high tree retreat by the production of a comatose mouse.
It is supposed to replicate nature in the raw. In fact it is almost always a demonstration of how ornithology can induce narcolepsy.
This falconry display is not alone in stupefying the average country show attendee. Many of the other events in the main rings of these family fun days are, frankly, a bit dull.
The Royal Corps of Signals White Helmets Motorcycle Team, for example, is less gripping to me than a semaphore rendering of War and Peace. I admit that I did once enjoy the sight of a pyramid of men with their arms outstretched balancing on a moving motorcycle, although mostly because I was waiting for them to fall over. But I was 10 years old at the time. Now I am older I wonder why my taxes are being spent on squaddies mucking about on bikes when the money might be better spent getting them to practice their Morse Code in Helmand Province.
This ennui also overwhelms me when have to witness yet another display of Western riding, watch a man casting a fly on dry land or listen to a huntsman disingenuously explaining through a tinny PA system that the sole purpose of the pack of bloodthirsty hounds baying at his feet is to potter after a smelly duster.
These demonstrations that pass for entertainment at our rural fairs are the anodyne 21st century replacement to the politically incorrect bull-baiting, bare-knuckle boxing and cock fighting, although why the latter was ever outlawed remains a mystery.
The old Cotswold hoolies dating back centuries and held in places like Painswick, Randwick and Stow-on the-Wold featured the considerably more riveting bearded ladies, two-headed calves, waxworks, freak shows and travelling zoos with snake-charmers and dancing bears. Gurning through a horse’s collar and racing naked through the streets were also part of the jollies. One local event was to hoist a live goose on a piece of rope and let riders gallop underneath it and try to pull off its head. It may not have been the most tender of amusements but you have to admit it is a lot more fun than a corn dolly demonstration.
Nowadays our excitement ostensibly comes from observing a cart horse pull a log or hearing an elderly steam tractor toot its horn. The nearest we get to bull-baiting is the ferreting demonstration, using artful bunnies to show an ‘environmentally friendly method of rabbit control’.
And there is a reason why these modern pageants celebrating the acceptable face of the countryside are so inoffensive. For nowadays they are little more than an elaborate advertisement to draw us into a tented high street. Retail therapy is the new bloodless rural entertainment. It has eclipsed all else at the Fair.
A canvas maze of shops – known in show parlance as ‘trade stands’- now flog everything from designer dog leads to fashionable 4x4s. Anything and everything that is needed for a genteel life in the countryside is for sale. [Editor’s note: including
Cotswold Life]. There is, for instance, always a craft marquee peddling local ethnic goods to service the ecology-minded customer, a ‘farmers’ market’ tent caters for the foodies and an open-air industrial estate displays agricultural machinery for those who chew straw. Even the estate agents are all present and correct, dressed in tweeds and offering unctious hospitality.
And just like any high street there are also the fast food outlets, stands hawking exotic edibles such as organic ostrich burgers and Fair Trade Mongolian ribs and a raft of watering holes (frequently combined into one giant bar and called a beer tent).
The modern country fair is not unlike a 20th century pre-Tesco’s market day when the whole town would turn out to do its shopping, sell its cattle and drink the place dry.
And as long as it doesn’t rain it can be an enjoyable day out. However I can’t help feeling that it is an awful cheek to charge a whopping entrance fee for the privilege of witnessing a couple of falcons and a few chaps on bikes who are only there, like the Cheltenham Christmas lights, to encourage us to spend money in the shops.