Innocent Fete - Guilty of boring the hell out of me

I've only been to one state fair in my life. It was in Texas and I went because the Texas State Fair is famous for deep frying things in hot oil. They deep fried a mars bar, ice cream, fruit, cookies. I even saw a deep friend salad. I didn't eat it, but they definately deep fried it. It was about the most disgusting thing I'd seen in my life.

This weekend, I went to the Innocent Smoothies Fete in London, (Fete is British for fair), and can say that while I didn't see anything deep fried in hot oil, I certainly saw a lot of sweaty fat. Acres of it in fact. The sun was out, and so the vast gastropods that inhabit this isle buffed down and exposed the world to their mounds of glistening, sloppy gut flesh, their dimpled greasy thighs and their sparse "pube on a soap bar" chests and bellies.

It was like a giant, lard coloured lava lamp with BO. Were it not for my iron strong constitution, I'd have vomited more or less continuously.

It was a strange site really. The fete was kind of like a little window into the suicidally depressing world of the British public. At American state fairs, we usually have a few attractions such as a bearded woman, there's sometimes a stuntman jumping a bus, there's plenty of hot dogs and beer, and at the very least, there's always a ferris wheel, which is kind of silly, but is always good fun.

The British take on the state fair is a little different. They have ferret racing. This involves taking some lengths of PVC piping, cellotaping it together and pushing the ferrets into the tube and then waiting for them to come out the other end. I know you won’t believe this, but I’ll report it anyway…the PVC piping is NOT transparent, so the result of the entertainment, is that a small, wet rat is placed in one end of a tube and then we all wait for it to emerge from the other end, cheer and, (in the case of the couple standing in front of me) perform a synchronized fart and leave.

Good grief.

But the depths of this day were not limited to mere rodent abuse. There was all kinds mindkilling entertainment. There was a dog agility course, which involved middle aged British women, (or men, who can tell at that age) choke dragging their poor dogs around an obstacle course. There was the usual beige of English people queing in line for something gadawful, (the Pimms line was about 4 light years long). There was maypole dancing, which had British people clapping and smiling at what amounted to little more than a group of children wrapping ribbons around a pole. Sweet, maybe. Interesting. Possibly not. Worth the five pound admission charge. No.

But the real part of this day that I wanted to share with you, was the VIP area. British people are nothing if not class conscious paedophiles, so even their state fairs, godawfully boring as they are, still have a little section where everyone can scurry away to and say, “Well, yes, it was rubbish, but I got into the VIP area. I think I saw Harry”.
Idiots.