Dear Reader, this begins at the beginning... It is truly a mild May at the moment, like my name and everything
is sublime. Time to get up and go out into the sunshiney world. Venue of
choice for the Bank Holiday weekend? Something outside
Shallington-on-Sea, something really country. Everyone is heading
in, time to head out. So, what better than the Merrick Horse Fair in countryside, in the
middle of nowhere, only known by word of mouth, little advertised
simply because it is something that the travelling community attend
for the serious business of horse selling. I'd overheard someone talking about it in the pub in one of
my brief sojourns spent in a drinking hole between catching buses,
an altogether lengthy business in Norfolk. But hey, it means that
you get to hear things that you wouldn't ordinarily hear... I take the plunge and ask someone in Shallington-on-Sea I hardly
know if they'd like to come. Marion works at the
Shallington-on-Sea TheatreDrome and routinely sells me tickets for
the Second World War propaganda films I don't seem able to get
enough of. She is always very friendly, so I'll pitch it and
see. (I still haven't got many friends, any in fact, because it
seems it takes ages when you move to a new area.) But I don't have a car so I need a driver. I don't couch
it in those terms but smile broadly and tell Marion that it'll
be an unforgettable experience. Anything rough and ready usually has
an element of excitement about it. Where there is excitement, by
definition, there is unpredictability, or so I reason. Marion grins at me, miraculously agrees to come and says
she'll pick me up at seven in the morning. It is a Sunday, so
that is very good of her. I had said we'd need an early start
because that is when everyone arrives, and if we are there from the outset... She waves me away, having had enough of my hard sell, but adds
that she would ask a friend called Dara to come. Marion and Dara pitched up outside mine in a rattle-box of a car
full of rubbish. I took a seat with my ankles nestling against
abandoned McBurger wrappings, old Hi! magazines and so on. Marion
had "parked" in a way that suggested that the vehicle had
been abandoned by a car thief rather than actually properly
positioned. Rufus and Rita climbed on board and we were off. It took an hour to get there and when we did, it was easy to spot,
by virtue of the fact that the Norfolk police had turned out in some
force. During the afternoon we couldn't help noticing that they
pulled over every traveller with a BMW or any similar prestige model
and ran a stolen car check on them. Without fail. The show field was full of horse boxes pounding with high-spirited
horses making their desire to get out and meet and greet others of
their own kind all too clear. Some of the metal horse boxes had huge
dents in the sides and were actually shaking from side to side due
to the frustrated onslaughts of their occupants. A huge amount of whinnying filled the air plus fight-shrieks of
horses that had met, and taken exception to each other. The early bird catches the worm and deals were being done almost
as soon as the horses were led off their ramps. The official sale
process was to take place later on, with an auctioneer on board, but
there seemed to be many owners bypassing the entire process. They
had never intended to be a part of the formalities. For them it was
just a cash gathering. The main accent around seemed to be Irish, a tightly-spoken,
slightly swallowed and hard to understand version. All around us
young blades were galloping across the showground area, leaning
back, feet forward like Argentinian gauchos. | 
