[Sundae]

I love fairs - we just don't get any close enough to here any more.
And I'm at the awkward age where I'm too old to go to fairs without children, and too young to die.

If I had a closer (indeed any) relationship with my sister, I'd take hers to Thame Fair. It's not a bad one - they close off the whole High Street. If you go early enough it's full of families. Later it's a drunk-teenage-fest, although of course for many years that was the main reason I went with my friends. They couldn't quite decide whether I was weirdly cool for loving the rides and trying to drag people on them, or just a complete lamer. I think I got away with it because I was still up for a drink and a row and a snog afterwards, and they could all pretend the only reason they went on the rides was because I forced them - yeah, didn't force them to squeal like girls though, did I?

The one I would really like to go back to is Nottingham Goose Fair. My, that's a real fair. They have a Wall of Death and everything. One year we went on this weird ride which just felt like you were in a washing machine. You got churned up and around for an unfeasibly long time. I think the chap running it wanted other people to see it in motion, to encourage them to get on. We just came off a bit bemused, to find the people we were with had wandered away in boredom. Can't say we didn't get our money's worth.

That was the first time I had encountered the phenomenon of mushy peas with mint as a take-away delicacy. Mushy peas in a cup. What will Northerners think of next. And yes, I know Nottingham is the Midlands. But I've never seen it any further South than that. It's the thin end of the wedge. After that, you get up to fruitcake with cheese country.