This piece is a celebration of celebration. We have so
many festivals and shows during the summer in the Peaks – some
of them obscure, others massively well-known. I wondered what it
would be like to attend all of them, and this poem came in the
voice of someone who might do so. I also wanted to include a
moment which I genuinely saw – of a girl in a wedding dress, with
her bridegroom on a fairground carousel at midnight.
The Ice Cream Man
Five hundred probably, by now, she said
and pinched my bum in passing
as I took for two small cornets and a can of pop.
This time it was the Ashbourne Shire Horse Show;
a pleasant pitch between the thick bright toots
of Carter’s Steam Fair and a hot dog stall.
Five hundred days of beasts and ribbons,
sweet-toothed farmers, candy floss and Portaloos,
hard-trodden grass and canvas beer tents.
Five hundred festivals of opera, tractors, rhubarb;
of walking, fell-runs, working dogs and horticulture,
boat show, showground, fairground.
Champion studs and May Queens, morris dancers,
face painters, stallholders, strolling players;
an infinite number of sticky children on grassy blankets.
I remember, five hundred festivals ago, a bride
in her wedding gown, rising and falling above the mud
on Carter’s Steam Carousel, shouting over her shoulder
it doesn’t matter what we celebrate
so long as we keep celebrating.