Shooting stars...

Did you see the shooting stars last night, The Perseid meteor shower?

No, me neither. Why is it that when ‘once in a century, lifetime, decade, year’ celestial things come around its always too cloudy, or foggy, or happening somewhere else? Oh well, there’s always next year.

The meteor shower, caused by the dust of the debris trail of Comet Swift-Tuttle as our world passes through it , is there for a few days then gone for another year.

Just like Thame fair. Thame fair; it’s only a few weeks away (calloo callay). As a child it was around this time, shooting star time, that I’d begin to get excited by the thought of the fairs arrival.

I felt the first lazy yawn of autumn in the air today – the smell of smoke and crunch of leaves, the mists and scudding indigo grey clouds. Almost time for the fair, the fair is coming, the fair is coming.

The mid-September fair in Thame was such a ‘magic’; such a ‘magic’ that every year I could hardly wait for ‘Thame fair week’ to arrive. Of course it wasn’t a week - the fair would arrive on Wednesday morning, set itself up with the wave of a wand, the swish of a top hat, and stay just a few short days, running the length of Upper and Lower High Street - like a long, stretched out, sleeping dragon awaiting the breath of life.

Three nights only - Thursday, Friday, Saturday - by lunch-time Sunday gone; as if it had never existed, the smell of candy floss and onions blown away, the popcorn cartons and brass BB gun pellets swept neatly up or pocketed by small boys, the tiny, plastic-bagged, goldfish all taken home to die in too small bowls a day, a week, a month later, but all too soon.

Half-a-crown, two shillings and sixpence, twelve and a half (new) pence; what pleasure it bought – and one for each three nights, one year a ten bob note! Hard to believe that I rode, and threw, and eat till sick, THREE NIGHTS, for all of fifty pence!

A ‘go’ on the rolling ball clowns, their sinister faces scaring me when I was not quite four, ‘score over twenty to win a prize’… Hoopla, ‘win a fiver’… the Penny arcades, the steel ball bearing spinning around and around, into the cup, and all to get your copper penny back… one arm bandits, ‘three cherries and you win a shilling’... the laughing policeman, ‘ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, haaa’… the haunted house, ‘look out, look out, here comes the GHOST’!

And the middle, by the Abingdon, the huge white, Boxing Tent, men only, no children or respectable women, ‘all comers taken! Go on Bob, go on Bob!’… the Tunnel of Love, ‘never, not me (but wishing I could)’… the Dodgems, and Rockets, and Ferris, the Helter Skelter… and the clang, clang, clang, of the brass bell upon the wooden bus, and my little red car, honk, honk, and the Roundabout slowly turning by crank - ‘wait until it stops’, and, and, and, and, and, and….

… then finally, and at last, each closing race on the galloping horses. First, so young, in a Dragon Boat; and later riding up and down, up and down, laughing on painted, psychedelic horse, clinging to the golden twisted pole, as music from the whistling organ pipes pumped out of its heart and mine.

Thame fair - from pushchair three to sulking early teen, holding breath, hot-handed; waiting for the fair to come, dreaming and wishing for those three short nights of joy and wonder – would I felt that still.

Smell the smoke, hear the crunch of leaves, reach out and touch the mists, and watch the scud of the indigo grey clouds… autumn’s coming; Thame fair is on its way.

I can hear the music once more, perhaps this year I'll return.

Thame fair video - click for link