I’ve had one of those days today that just became more and more weird as it drew on.

I went to Espinasse this afternoon for the local fete and as far as I was concerned it was a fete worse than death.

it got off to a bad start in my opinion before the day even started. We had the typical defilé as you might expect, but whoever heard of a village fete here in the Combrailles where there wasn’t even a hint of a brocante? The Combrailles is the brocante capital of the world and the locals will vider their greniers at the drop of a hat. All we had today was a brocan’t, and that’s not on at all.

Highlight was the Irish musicians who came on stage at 18:00.

Now I bet you that you can go into any Irish pub anywhere in the whole wide world, or any folk night anywhere in any English-speaking area of the world, or anywhere wherever any Celtic musicians might be grouped and the first two songs that you will always hear will be “Dirty Old Town” and “The Wild Rover”.

And here in the backwoods, miles from civilisation and 200 years behind the times, what did these Irish musicians play as his first two songs? YEEEEUUUUCCCCCHHHHHHH. I had a word with him about it afterwards, and his response was “ohh well”. Yes – ohh well indeed.

But that was not the most weird part of all of this. They stopped the music mid set …. to draw the lottery numbers and shout out the prizewinners. It was just like being in any Workingmen’s Club anywhere in the United Kingdom where they would stop the … entertainment … (and I use the term loosely) so that they could play bingo.

It was absolutely unbelievable.

Another thing that we had today that was astonishing was a politically-correct May Queen. Normally the May Queen of any village is a young teenage or preteen girl and there are good reasons for this, especially for the pagans amongst us, those of us who are more than 2,000 years old and with long memories and those of us happen to know a little about early medieval village life.

But of course the way the world is these days in the UK and other such cases it’s becoming less and less politically correct to have a real May Queen just in case someone might photograph her – but who would ever have thought that such a taboo (because that’s what it is in the strictest and literal sense of the word) would have reached down here?

Mind you, I know that it’s not a politically-correct thing to say, but it could just maybe be because they couldn’t find a virgin in the village?

Another thing that caught my eye was an American from Colorado Springs wandering around and wearing a T-shirt reading
“Land of the Free
Home of the Brave”.
Anyone who has ever read anything that I have ever written will know all about my opinion about the USA being “The Land of the Free“. Everywhere I’ve ever been in the USA it’s always been “please prepare your admission money”.

As for “Home of the Brave” – well Manifest Destiny, Sand Creek and Wounded Knee as well as hundreds if not thousands of other similar “incidents” saw to it that there are no longer any braves in the USA.

In fact the more I thought about it, the more offended I was about that blasted T-shirt and in the end I went and had an “frank exchange of views” with the wearer.

There was clearly something up with me today – I don’t normally let things like this get to me. It must have been the heat. In the end I came home and had a shower (and we aren’t talking about Open University Students Association’s Executive Committee either). 19:45 and still 43 degrees in the container. I’ve picked a good site for that.

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