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We
learn to recognise each other, the summer fete junkies. Almost every Saturday
from May to July we’ll be there; on school fields, village greens
and church car parks. We’re looking for something. Something that
can’t be rummaged for at the white elephant or won in the tombola–
something to do with nostalgia, loss, guilt, and shared memory. It is
The Perfect Summer Fete.
The summer fete represents the same particular type of enjoyment derived
from eating fish and chips at the seaside – the idea of the activity
is invariably better than the activity itself. The reality is that the
chips are greasy and overpriced, the service is bad, the weather is grim
and the fish, far from being caught on the end of the pier has been shipped
in frozen from Icelandic waters. But when you tell it: “we all had
fish and chips by the sea” there is a significant gap between the
image that these words conjure up - the image which becomes the memory,
and the actuality of the experience.
I think the same is true of the summer fete. I only remember the sunny
fetes from my childhood, if the fairy cakes were like stones, if the wasps
swarmed about me, if there were tears in the tea tent I don’t remember.
My memories of the village fetes were formed along with everyone else’s
in a sort of fete collective consciousness. I’m not suggesting that
everyone’s fete memories are the same – some particularly
colourful examples include an egg decorating competition where the protagonist
covered her entry in dead bees (she did not win), and my own experience
of witnessing a particularly nasty accident befall the life boat lady
as she was setting up her stall. The point is that we all seem to know
what the archetypal fete involves, we all know what should be at a “proper”
one, and many of us find it necessary to re-enact the cultural memory
of the summer fete like members of the sealed not re-enact famous battles.
The summer fete originated as a type of feudal hegemony, the lord of the
manor putting on entertainment to appease the workers who depended on
him for their homes and livelihood. Today the typical fete is still a
fiercely stratified affair with the middle class parents/parishioners
competing for supremacy, whether it be the organisation of the most outlandish
fundraiser or the baking of the fluffiest scones. But what is all this
effort for anyway? Ostensively it is to raise money for the school or
the church. There is also the worthy notion of somehow bringing the “community”
together, although fetes aren’t necessarily even aimed at or attended
by the communities where they take place. The reality is that they are
organised by and for us - the summer fete junkies, who spend the summer
months roaming the green spaces of middle England looking for just one
last fix.
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