| As
we parked in the lane near to St Mary’s Church, where the
fête was taking place, there was a certain something about
the greenness of the trees and the shady walk down to the church
that told me that I was right about this being an affluent area.
My suspicions were confirmed when we were greeted with the cake
stall at the entrance to the church. Before us rose a veritable
K-2 of cakes, every one screaming ‘I was baked in an Aga you
know’. It was good to know that those hours between greeting
the nanny, lunch and the personal training session with Giles hadn’t
gone to waste.
Further
along, the barbecue was well underway and selling burgers made from
local animals whose lineage could be traced back to the court of
Henry VIII. There was also a huge array of salads and, of course,
lashings of balsamic vinegar for all. Burgh was obviously the kind
of place where petitions calling for the provision of quality ciabatta
for all and the outlawing of instant coffee occupied the majority
of parish council time.
In
the church grounds there was a scene of dampened misery similar
to that at Aylmerton, only here everyone was prepared with Barbour
jackets, cagoules and golfing umbrellas. There was the usual array
of games outside, including the fête staple of Whack the Rat,
which requires you to hit a stuffed sock dropped down a drainpipe
before it hits the ground. Who needs television?
Inside
the church, the vicar himself was running a tombola of sorts. It
was the kind where there is a board full of nails and you pay to
pull them out, winning a prize if you pick one with a painted tip.
I couldn’t help thinking that the vicar could have made the
stall far more attractive by using a picture of the crucifixion
with nails to pull out placed at strategic points, rather than just
a plain white board, but I imagine that may have upset some of the
parishioners.
I invested
a pound in four nails and drew them out. I had a fifty per cent
success rate. I hadn’t been paying too much attention to what
colour on the end of the nail went with which prize, but it turned
out that, along with my pack of fizzy chews, I had won one of the
star prizes – a bottle of Chardonnay. The vicar didn’t
exactly look delighted for me. Maybe he had been reading my thoughts
about the crucifixion scene idea. Is having a potentially blasphemous
thought a sin when it could actually help church funds?
Read
the chapter
breakdown to find out more about the contents of A
Fête Worse Than Death.
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