15 Nov 2020

We have a church fete coming up in a couple of weeks, and now that I have no excuses of other things to distract me, I really need to get my backside into gear and start some planning.

We tend to have a ‘same same’ church fete with the same sort of stalls every year. This makes it easy for people in knowing what is needed, but it does – in my mind if in no one else’s – get a little bit ho hum after a while. We always have a white elephant stall where people can offload their junk, a secondhand book stall for people to offload the books they bought at last years fete, hamburgers and hot dogs, as well as cakes and craft stalls. Nothing that you don’t see at hundreds of other fetes and fairs around the country each year. It’s fun, but very very familiar.

So this afternoon, for no other reason than to distract me from doing any actual fete planning, I searched the internet for different things people do at fetes and fairs and fundraisers. I got distracted very quickly and embarrassingly easily by festivals around the world.

Apparently France is the place to go if you want to experience things a little different… They have festivals featuring pig squealing competitions, snail tasting festivals, sculptures made from lemons, marathon races where runners stop for wine and oysters, giant strawberry tarts, and so forth.

In Thailand they have a massive water fight, which has to be a good thing. Apparently you could get saturated with water from anything from a water gun to an elephants trunk 🙂

Or you could go to Turkey (travelling overseas was that thing we could do pre COVID days….) for the Mevlana Festival, where the Whirling Dervishes teach tolerance and religious ecstasy through a form of hypnotic dance, apparently.

If you’re a fire bug, then heading to Japan for the Nozawa Onsen Fire Festival might be your thing. They light a towering pyre and have a fire-fuelled battle between villagers. Actually – if you aren’t a male aged either 25 or 42 you won’t be allowed to take part. Maybe they are the most lunatic ages. Sounds about right.

If you have a thing for a bit of colour in your life, then the Holi Festival in India might be just the thing, as long as you have access to a washing machine after the festival. Throwing dye powder is popular in some local events, but nothing like the photos I’ve seen of this festival in India!

But I think I’d really enjoy going to the Tomatina festival in Spain. Forget the water fights or throwing of coloured dyes in other countries – in Spain they chuck around 100,000 kg’s of tomatoes at each other. It is said that the town resembles a horror film afterwards. Perfect!

But as none of these festivals are going to be on our radar this year, unless we live in those countries, I know of a little church fete you could come to, to buy my white elephant junk and some secondhand books 🙂

Have you been to an interesting festival like those ones I found?