Sixteen Days (Part 8)

The Hat Fair is an annual event that takes places on the streets of Winchester every July. The timing of the Hat Fair always used to be totally erratic, to the extent that I haven't known when it's been happening, or at least, supposed to be happening, for a long, long time. Now it's every first week of July, as the hundreds of banners, bunting and bonus bollocks up around town barks at you every three steps. I think the last time I actually went to the hat fair was in the year 2000, I missed the Friday because I'd just come back from New York. It was one of those holidays where you're away for very short time, often away for less than a week, but upon returning, felt a lot longer. But I went on the Saturday, and drank Smirnoff Ice in the Cathedral Grounds which you're categorically not allowed to do. So this year was my first Hat Fair experience in 8 years, my first Hat Fair Friday in 9. What's the Hat Fair? Oh, The Hat Fair is, to boil it down to as simple an explanation as possible, it's basically a crap version of South By Southwest, only with rubbish jugglers and acrobats and street magicians instead of bands. Or a festival comprising exclusively of the shit bits of Glastonbury. The name is derived from the fact the performers pass around a hat at the end of the performance and look at you menacingly until you cough up your dinner money. It's basically organised bullying by terrifying hippies with fire clubs and organic sausages and a fun family atmosphere. I walked into town expecting the worst.

Eight years is a long time in showbusiness. For example, since the last Hat Fair I've stopped being even remotely impressed with juggling or stilt walking or playing a banjo with your toenails. You can't go through the best part of a decade of inner turmoil and heart-sinking emotional angst, and still expect a "hoots-mon" Scottish bint juggling balls and riding a unicycle in high heels to cut the mustard, and the first performer I saw did not. Part of the schtick with street performing is getting the audience involved, and first thing on a Friday morning, the Hat Fair dead zone, nobody was in the mood, and although the lady in question was arguably competent at all her tricks, nobody could give a flying mother fuck, least of all me. Interestingly, The Hat Fair has become a lot more organised than I remember. It could be they've always done this, in which case I apologise to all concerned, but actually having designated people in certain areas or on certain roads, like tents and stages at a festival, was commendable, although there was a free-for-all in a lot of the other areas for buskers to just turn up. The epicentre of Hat Fair life though, is in the now tee-total Cathedral Grounds. The detoxing of what used to be the most beautiful and historically fascinating pub garden in the entire world, is a real shame and I hope they change it back soon. Anyway, although half of the grounds are dedicated to allowing the next generation of crummy plates-spinners to acquire their art in a gigantic circus skills free-for-all, the rest has various 'pitches' where various performers do their thing. These vary from the very basic (Man balances a broomstick on another broomstick) to the unnerving (man plays on a set of decks whilst a "monkey" (dwarf in a suit) dances in a box) although the two main areas were dedicated to two static acts. The first of these had erected a large set of scaffolding, and did a very by-numbers trapeze and balancing act, but I found it enjoyable, because the woman kept talking in Swedish for no reason, and literally didn't stop smiling the entire 45 minutes, even when her act dictated her to be spinning hula hoops whilst standing on a table and showing off her pants. I though she was ludicrously attractive, but with the sun in my eyes and standing about 50 metres away, Her accomplice, a plucky Irish gobshite with sideburns, was an absolute twat, and although he was clearly the stooge for a lot her more obvious talents, he did a rum turn as a ringleader. Best trick of all though, was how most of the jokes were clearly unsuitable for children, and Irish gobshite did say "piss off" at one point. Excellent. The other main act in the grounds were called The Bash Street Train Station, which I thought sounded a) libellous, and b) rubbish, but I went and had a look anyway, because there was nothing else to do by this point, and they'd built and entire stage up to look like a train station, and there was a bizarre man who looked like a cross between Mr Leach, my old head of year, Tony Robinson as Baldrick in Blackadder Goes Forth, and a bespectacled onion walking around in a green cardigan. Whatever the premise was, it was completely lost on me, but it essentially involved three silent comedians who all played about ten characters each, bumbling around the set getting head over the head with suitcases and hanging off balconies and signals and similar things. There was a plot of sorts, involving the theft of the Mona Lisa by some gangsters with violins that can only be stopped by the patrons of Bash Street Station. The entire thing was soundtracked, thrillingly, by a bearded man with an accordion, who not only played the accordion non-stop for the entire hour, but also did all the sound effects - laughing, trains chuffing in an out of the station, the twitterings of an old later, French people saying "hee haw" and even a few spooky "ooooohs" and "aaarghs!" when the gangster was on stage. The whole thing was borderline lunacy, and hence why it was absolutely incredible. It was a cross between Nosferatu and Zzzap! Also brilliant.

There are a few other pitches dotted around the town, much fewer on the Friday than the Saturday. The Buttercross, which for anyone who's not familiar with Winchester, is a statue monument thing that nobody really understands apart from that you can sit on it. From here, I watched Haggis and Charlie, These two literal clowns, are Hat Fair stalwarts, and I believe they've been a feature of every Hat Fair since it started in er, 1876. Quite fantastically, I sat down, and within five seconds their act started, and it was, and I'm not joking, the EXACT SAME ACT as it was in 1999. I couldn't bring myself to watch them; they're a slightly formidable sight as well, the type that would punch you in the face if you accidentally trod on their flower bed. I went back towards the cathedral and watched an Indian man trying to get people to donate their watches for his magic trick. It was very awkward, because nobody was interested in donating anything to him, especially not their money. I didn't stay long watching him either, Instead, I watched a youngish boy who looked like Andy Warhol wearing a Gonzalez t shirt mucking about with some mini scaffolding and a hat with spikes in it. I figured he was setting up his act, but by the time he'd got ready, I was getting cramp in my foot so I got walking again. I'd run out of things to watch, because the sordid trapeze woman and the train station were already going again. Fed up with how little activity there was, I walked via the Colebrook Street car park, which is an area I'm sue didn't used to be dedicated to Hat Far shennanigans, but all it had in it were some miserable looking craft stalls and a few streamers strung up over the lamp posts and rubbish bins. Not inspiring, but the idea of an ice cream van and a maypole irritating a load of drivers (there was no sign anywhere saying the car park was closed until you got right up to the barrier) warmed my heart. Standing and watching a procession of pissed off drivers approach the entrance, silently swearing and turning back into the side street to try try try again, it was a more entertaining sideshow than most of the buskers I'd seen so far. I went home.

The evening was one I'd planned all week. My parents were due back the following night, so Friday evening was really the last chance I had to get wasted in town, and then come home, cook pizza, smoke in the garden and throw my fag ends over the wall, watch TV really loudly and then fall asleep on the sofa listening to the Durutti Column for a while so I made the most of it. I decided to do a mini-tour of some of my favourite pubs in Winchester. It didn't quite work out that way, but my intentions were good. The first port of call was The Railway, which is figurehead, surely, in the memories of everyone who was ever a teenager in Winchester; the only real live music venue (although Laura Viers playing at the 'Discovery Centre' (Library) is a new pretender to the throne) and centrepiece of the alteno-loser scene. This scene was in full flow as I arrived and sat in the garden. The old guard was still hanging about, I was served at the bar by James aka 'Bollocks', who fits somewhere into the peg holes of my memory, and he did say "..John, isn't it?" but time has been unkind on my memories of 'Bollocks', I'm sure he wouldn't have said that whenever it was I was supposed to know him well. Anyway, the garden was full of fucksticks in dapperwear, all looking sufficiently like a bonsai George Lamb in a Trilby. I sat and read The Fly, which is freely available by the dozen from The Railway. The notably pisspoor writer that annoyed me the last time I read The Fly (which was the last time I was in The Railway, interestingly enough) has now left, but the quality of features and writing are still shocking. If anyone can find me a band with less personality than Black Kids, then I'd like to hear all about them. For some reason, I had two drinks in the Railway, embarrassingly because a girl turned up with a suitcase and a book and sat on a bench facing mine about ten metres away, and I naturally thought that if I was twice and drunk she'd definitely come over and invite me to take here away to Sweden because she'd already packed. This didn't happen. My next port of call was The Exchange, which I loathe to describe as an old haunt because I think I've only been there twice before. It has quite a tarted up garden, and the jukebox was on ridiculously loud and you could hear it from the street outside. I didn't mind, because rather than the usual pip-pip anarchy that starts a party normally in town, like Hard Fi and Kasabian, they were hammering "I Need Some Fine Wine, and You, You Need to be Nicer" by The Cardigans at top volume. The pub was boring though, and I had to sit on a table right next to a voluminous oaf who couldn’t stop putting forward to his drinking partners his own manifesto for attracting more customers to the golf course he worked at, which is, to quote him "the most affordable round in, well, in England". He probably rakes the bunkers. I then went through some back streets and alleys, and carefully resisting the urge to go into the Old Vine and shit on their decor, but opted for The Eclipse instead. The Old Vine, back in Victorian days, used to be called The Sun, and The Eclipse was named as such to say "yeah, we're better than The Sun" so The Sun had to change its name to something else again. This rivalry is now sadly over, because The Old Vine can go fuck itself, and so The Eclipse it was. My favourite memories of The Eclipse include sitting in there a few days before Christmas in 2002, doing the NME Christmas crossword, as well as a couple of nights of the summer of 2003 where I sat inside after work and read the sleeve notes of the CDs I'd bought. It's a nice, small, friendly pub that was tonight packed to the rafters with Hat Fair celebrities, including the Irish gobshite and his Swedish accomplice, who was significantly less attractive, decked up in a tracksuit and a boyfriend on her arm. I sat on a table outside, and a succession of other customers politely embarrassed me by taking away all the other chairs from the table so I couldn't even pretend someone else was going to sit with me.

The last pub I went to was the same place I saw the football on Sunday. It felt like weeks ago, not five days, and as I looked around and stood under the balcony in the rain looking around at the awful people there, the categorically unrepresentative misfits and high collared teens. I looked in disdain as they took photos and talked about putting the photos up on Facebook. Then I went outside and did the same. I was going to stop at The Mash Tun on the way home, which is a lovely little pub for dreadlocked art students and dog breathed loons, and where I spent New Years Eve 2004. But it wasn't there any more. In its place was a Tapas Bar, which looked like it has about as much soul as one of the Chicken Satay excuses for food that they shove on a stick and plant on your plate there. I went home in the rain and watched TV really loud, smoked in the garden and threw the fag ends over the wall, listened to the Durutti Column and passed out on the sofa.