Strawberry Fair, Midsummer Common, Cambridge UK 2011

General
If you like open air picnics, a place to buy loud clothes, live music, dancing, (from disco records to ska), carnival atmosphere where eccentricity reigns supreme, dressing up, dressing down, (but not nude!) people watching, open air party with friends, food al fresco, hearing kids calling each other Merlin or dressing up as May Queens, dogs and punks, sprogs and spontaneous singing - you may like Strawberry Fair. For, all in all, Strawberry Fair is a Summer's Day that the English Pagans like to come out to party.

Whether a curious bystander from established society, passing by to sample the off beat entertainment, or the die hard punk/anarchist waiting for a revolution, the Pagan Life Rhythms which define English Culture are to be found on Midsummer Common for one day in June, and everyone is welcome as this space becomes the place for freedom of expression.

2011 was no exception – the weather was warm but not hot, a little blowy but not a gale – perfect for striding along the pathways which criss cross the common, to sample the market with its wares, and the stages and tents with live music. All along the way we met and watched people – being glad that this idea, which began in the 70's, has maintained a traditional 'Fayre' atmosphere and is still alive and surviving through the generations.
For more info about Strawberry Fair - http://www.festivalsforall.com/festival/strawberry-fair-2011


I must qualify what I relate here is only what I saw on 4th June 2011 – there was probably more, but I couldn't be everywhere at once!

What was going on

live music performances, circus, historical re-enactment ( medieval), St Johns ambulance and Samaritans were on site, stalls from Cambridge - local walking and history clubs, Love Music Hate Racism, RSPB, and UK Anarchists Stall

Bands
acoustic tents, daytime reggae and guitar funk, Bijoumiyo funk band as the evening started, Punk sets including Freedom Factor - daytime, ska stuff and Tarantism – festival dance band headlining the Evening. Other stuff around the site...

Goodies to buy
Lots of clothes and jewellery, junk shop, plants, silly hats, tarot, belt buckles, painted tobacco tins some music CDs (but not many), face painting, lots of beer.

Goodies to eat
Malasian, Thai, Chinese, burgers, chips, buritos, jacket potatoes, paella, noodles, coconut water and Jamaican cuisine with fruit cocktail, sweet stalls, candy-floss, ice-cream vans, cup cakes....

The moods of the crowd
Day time – picnic with the kids, meet ups with old friends,
Night time – arguing drunks on the fringes, but mainly good party atmosphere with the mildly drunk, the stoners and the straight people who like a dance.

Recommendations – bands I enjoyed were Tarantism, Freedom Faction and Bijoumiyo
A taste of real life eccentric British personalities, commercialism kept to a minimum, safe environment – child and dog friendly. Admission : Free.


Manners – festival etiquette – plenty of space to find somewhere quiet/friendly to sit, friendliness, appreciation for bands you are seeing for free, smiling - attitude to corporate people on site, including commercial businesses, police, first aid – can seem like a pain, but good in an emergency. (Although no emergency noticed, no mugging, no attacking, perhaps stealing ????, no police brutality/no rioting while I was there – would probably do you for being a menace with drunk and disorderly, but people just having a laugh were left alone).
One undercover cop spotted – pretending to be drunk and flipping his wallet about – pathetic and best avoided.

Things I'm glad we took with us
liquorice all-sorts, jacket to sit on and later to wear, small bottle of water just in case we got really thirsty, camera, prawn crackers (!) good attitude and about 40 quid between 2 people
Things I didn't need – torch, bog roll, bad attitude, bottle of malt drink/any glass bottles, map of the site (exploring was part of the fun), whistle (rave days are now truly over)

Diary of the day

We arrived in Cambridge around mid afternoon after an easy drive, parking on a side road about a mile away. We walked towards Midsummer Common buying some liquorice all-sorts from an Indian shop on the way – these turned out to be half the price charged at Strawberry Fair. Also took some mints.

The common had a fence erected all around it, and as we arrived at the gate security men were searching people for glass bottles. We drunk from our glass bottle before we went in. The security checked our bags by squeezing the outside, they were friendly but serious although they did not look for anything else. A glass ban seemed fair enough as cattle are grazed on the common.

As we walked in we heard a band straight away. They were called Freedom Faction, playing a punk set in a nice big-ish tent. http://www.myspace.com/freedomfactionuk

I was enjoying the songs while my friend went off to find a loo! A boy sold me 2 cds of the music for 6 quid – a bargain I thought for good punk. The lead vocal was a girl singer who could hold a tune and scream as well. It was a good punky start to the day.

The loo queue was ridiculously long, people were pissed off with the queue jumpers. We spent an hour or so sitting on the grass with lots of other people. It was a good time to rest – to pace ourselves for the next few hours and do some people watching.

The eccentrics were starting to stand out from the crowd. A man painted red....a clown, wonder-woman with a hula......babies in buggys with face paint and punky mums, lots of kids out with parents enjoying the day.....students drinking beer – not too much to spoil things....the girls were wearing their summer dresses – lots of lovely designs and patterns – beautiful people rubbing shoulders with the crass fans and the travellers who were passing through....a guy on stilts, people with mad wigs....

A girl came through the picnic space with a basket full of flapjacks – many flavours but no space cake this year. (She said, 'I'd get so arrested') We settled for ginger and lemon flapjack and had a day we would probably have otherwise forgotten....Along came a Love Music Hate Racism flyer – promoting a band called Kissmet who would be playing locally in two weeks. Cambridge is good for music and politics LMHR is a good cause - www.lovemusichateracism.com


Soon afterwards a plane flew over with a large sign flying behind it - A venue in Cambridge called The Junction was open that night playing a Pendulum DJ set from 10pm to 6am. Apparently this venue always does something special after Strawberry Fair every year. Meanwhile, on the picnic space, there was no music to be heard. I suppose 4pm was a bit early, and it was a good time to pace ourselves. We chilled out with some prawn crackers and flapjack, taking in the large crowds that were mingling around us. Suddenly I caught sight on the 70's boys on the path. How photogenic, I grabbed my camera and went to meet them. 'Surely you are actors?' I asked, to which the guy in the blue sparkly shirt replied, 'actually I'm a mechanic!!!!'


We decided to walk further into the fair. The size of the crowds meant we took a slow amble, enabling us to see the sights. We glimpsed the clothes stalls and the big stage. Disappointingly the speakers were turned down too low – we realized only after going some way past that some reggae stuff was happening, but we couldn’t hear properly. We carried on walking past a bar called the Kings Head with loads of people waiting to be served – I didn't dare look to see the price of beer. Instead I took a photo of the sign – it was 'V for Vendetta' wearing his mask!!! I appreciated the subtle anarchy undertones.

On past the bar was a tent with a band performing a song with awful lyrics about a smelly girl...we moved on pretty quick and found the loos at the bottom end of the site – where there were no queues. While I waited for my weak bladdered friend, I spotted a couple of lads sitting on the grass nearby. Drawn by the sight of one of them holding a tiny guitar, I approached and boldly begged him to sing me a song. He looked like a good contender and I persuaded him to play. He broke into song in strong voice, and sung the tale of a beaten woman who must decide her future – a good subject reflected in strong lyrics, with a tune that held great timing. This was pure talent and I asked him about himself. Tom was actually from Cambridge but studying in Brighton – he told me he was going to start a band – which seemed like an excellent idea to me!


We continued our walk, turning into the wind as we rounded the common towards a cordoned off area with tents where the re-enactment people had set up a camp. While some were entertaining the crowd elsewhere with pretend fighting, we stopped to watch a lady in full medieval costume, cooking on an open fire using the implements from days before Sheffield steel. Further wanderings took us past stalls run by Cambridge groups promoting things to see and do in the area.

By now we decided it was time for a coffee and spent ages faffing at a vegetarian stall with stupid sugar packets, with only a few grains in a long sliver of paper. The prices were expensive for hummus and other right-on vedgy stuff – later I saw an identical van elsewhere on site – this was a corporate company, not your 'friendly home made reasonably priced goodness on a plate mate' stuff.

Having been wound up by the 'cant get enough sugar in my coffee' experience we walked on – there was no live music to be seen – although there was a disco going on in the 'cafe' – which still had chairs and tables but the tea, coffee and cake had run out.....Nosing into a big tent next door I spotted a girl with snakes in her dress– but again no live music – people seemed to be waiting about and by now we were getting hungry. Past another stage we witnessed one of the fair workers proposing to his girlfriend. Very sweet, but when the music finally came on it was guitar funk – which is not my scene.

Next we came across a New Zealander's stall – I wanted to look at the green-stone carvings that are worn in necklaces, and they were superb but out of my price range, however, I was bought a pair of paua shell earrings! We resumed our hunt for food and having walked around the whole site settled on spicy chicken, rice and nan bread and a chicken Berito for my mate - we were both stuffed on 11 quid between us.

I put on my black trousers behind a van – with two layers now on my legs I was now warm enough for the evening that was creeping towards us. We were not prepared to go through another coffee experience with the corporate vegetarians, so we tried the Sugar Box – a van that sold cup cakes and coffee. This coffee for 1.50 each in a polystyrene mug was as good as it could get and the people were friendly. I had to admire their display of cup cakes which were arrayed in all colours : the fifties retro thing looked good. https://www.facebook.com/SugarBoxx


We picked up our coffee and sat on the grass opposite the Samaritans. I took off my sandles and changed into my skull and cross-bone socks and my silver glittery base ball boots – I was going into evening mode.

After our delicious coffee we were ready to follow the path back to the centre of the fair. On the way I was looking at the clothes stalls - really nice party clothes – fine silk dresses and cotton tops, thick colourful jackets, all sorts of jewellery. If you hate shopping for clothes and want to find stuff which is out of the ordinary you could easily spice up your wardrobe for very reasonable prices in a friendly festival atmosphere. I replaced my lost nose stud from a Jamaican stall run by a grey-bearded Jamaican guy – he was a tough cookie - it was the hardest pound I ever spent – but he smiled at me in the end....

Passing one stall we spotted a basket that said 'bargain basement' so I went to investigate. I found a nice hippy top and a long white skirt at 2 pound each. I went to chat with the stall holder as he was packing away and while I was there a merlin figure appeared with his staff and hat....it turned out that this boy worked for the stall! He was with his brother and his brother's girlfriend. This Merlin chap was named Benjamin and we had a spontaneous chat about Tarot – I was sure he would make a good reader and the hippy girls would love him!


Walking away towards the main stage we caught a great funk band, but by then we needed another coffee. It made sense to return to The Sugar Box, where they gave us a free cup cake to go with our coffee. We watched the rest of the funky band's set gorging on the sweet icing and beautiful coffee...it was a perfect combination of taste to rally our energy for the night to come. The excellent funk band ended too soon it seemed – everyone was feeling funky now – the children and babies had disappeared from sight as the party atmosphere took over! The funk band were called Bijoumiyo( http://www.tourdates.co.uk/bijoumiyo) It turns out they are from Cambridge
http://www.myspace.com/bijoumiyo and are well worth checking out!


Avoiding a handful of over the top drunk people we headed towards the 'punk' tent at the far end of the common. On the way we stopped at a small patch along the path to buy some colourful wristbands, the lady was lovely and tied them to our wrists for us. Four wristbands for a pound!!!! We carried on past a real pub, only to find an anarchists stall on the way. 'where's your Michael Jackson stuff?' I ribbed them....they were good humoured anarchists who showed us their books and CDs. We brought a punk cd for 3.50 with 26 tracks – absolute bargain – and a magazine called 'Now or Never' at just 2.50. – they said they would review our drum and bass album, so we are going to send them Nostramus' latest release 'Doomsday Dot Com'.


We reached the punky tent and I used the last half hour of daylight to take pictures of the crazy art work along the fence. Next to this was an area where there were the pagan trees of the year set out in a circle, a living calendar! After a rest and a fag – we noticed excitement growing in the crowd for the last band to come on – Tarantism!

Tarantism's style is difficult to put in a genre - strong lyrics, great tunes and lots of crowd communication – 'get in touch on facefuck' said the singer – and you bet I will! It was a very varied crowd - there was the girl who sold us the wrist bands, groovin away and smiling at us! Punks, hippies, crusties, students, drunk, stoned, trippin, straight – all dancing - all gathered for the experience, and no disappointment!!! The music included strands of Irish penny whistle, but moulded to folk, moulded to heavy bass and guitar, dancy, lyrical stories – 'what's the song about?' asked one of the May Queens dancing beside me, bedecked in daisy chains around her head, 'Its about musicians getting too stoned to make music' her mate said, – 'cool', they all replied, and jumped around some more! Well that's what I call communicating with the youth – on their terms!!!
I admit to getting excited about this band. 'That woman' who I have yet to find a name, could really sing – she has developed a punk edge to a folky style and is able to transcend the genres. She delivered in a strong vocal style reminiscent of Grace Slick but with the sentiment of Chrissy Hynde – she really couldn't give a fuck and the audience loved it!

But as I say this I remember how she played both her pennywhistles in harmony simultaneously and rocked the soul out of the place – which makes here pretty unique in my book. 'Turn It Up' is an old favourite and they did a song about how couples row about putting up a tent...'Do Some Music' is a new song – powerfully delivered and coming from a new double album the band has recently been working on. The encore ended with a full on drum and bass rave which would probably result in a lot of people on their knees the next day. Mine had already gone and I was back to dancing mainly with the arms, reminiscent of my fortieth birthday when, on finding myself dancing on the bar in Santorini, I realized that should I fall off and break an ankle or something I would be in big doo doo.

A dread-locked crustie caught my eye, for no other reason than that he had two beautiful dogs with him and his friends, and hearing my friend rustle the plastic wrapper to open his tobacco, the dogs tuned straight into the sound and thought there may be a chance of a treat. This entertained me greatly and with the last thumps of Tarantism and their call to take our litter home and be safe, it was time to leave. We only had to limp up the road, discussing what a fun time we had and it wasn't long before we were coasting off out of Cambridge, back into the black night of the English summer.