The Fair That Wasn't Held

We were driving back from the coast and took the scenic route, which is how we ended up in the village at dusk just as the lights came on across a fairground.

It was a proper small harvest fair: a carousel with painted horses, a cider tent, a brass-heavy local band, stalls selling jam with handwritten labels. We stayed two hours. My wife won a jar of honey at a tombola. I drank warm cider from a mug I had to leave a deposit on — a pound coin, into a bowl of pound coins. The people were friendly in that watchful village way. An old man at the gate, when we left, said 'safe home' and touched his cap, and the phrase kept ringing in the car for no reason I could name.

We slept at an inn two villages over. In the morning my wife wanted more of that honey, so we drove back the ten minutes.