down to fate...

Here's a quick run down of a few fetes happening this weekend from our very useful fete finder. Please drop by any of them if you're in the area and let us know how it went. If you get any good pictures don't forget to post them to our village fete flickr group, there's a £250 prize for the best 3 photos by the end of the summer.

And if you have your own fete planned why not add it to our fete finder aswell.

And so we predict the following fetes will happen over the next 2 days..

Saturday 30th June
Abbeville Fete
Abbeville Road, Clapham SW4 9ER
Brackenbury School Summer Fete
Dalling Road, Hammersmith
St Mary's Fairford Country Fair
Walnut Tree Field Fairford
thurmaston carnival
Leicester
Long Buckby Junior School Summer Fair
East Midlands
St.Johns primary school summer fayre
St John's primary school, RIPLEY,Derbyshire
Tiffield Thunderbolt
Tiffield, Northants
St Lawrence 150years celebration
Effingham, Surrey
St. John's Primary School Fete
Horsham, West Sussex
KEMSING VILLAGE FETE
KEMSING, South East England
Montbelle School Fair
New Eltham, London
Radley Summer fete
Radley, Abingdon
Sheet Primary School Summer Fete
Sheet, South East England
St Mary's & St Peter's Summer Fair
Somerset Road, Teddington

Sunday 1st July
Beech Road fete
Chorlton, Manchester
** Our Vic and Fiona from our Manchester office will be at the Beech Road fete if fancy saying hello, they'll be the ones with the smoothies in the corner**.
Bonnington Square Festival
Bonnington Square, Vauxhall, SW8
Safari Sunday
St Paul's School, The Avenue, Friern Barnet
Brown and Chilton Candover Fete
Brown Candover, Hampshire
Ursuline Primary Summer Fair
Blundellsands, Merseyside
Llanfach Summer Funday
Llanfach Park, Clytha Square, Llanfach, Abercarn
Bishampton Village Fete
Bishampton, Worcestershire
Ponsanooth Village Fair Day
Ponsanooth, Cornwall
Gumley Open Gardens
Gumley, Leicestershire
Little Eaton Carnival
Little Eaton, DERBYSHIRE

We'll also be doing something very similar to what we did at Taste of London last week at Taste of Bath up until Sunday if your popping by.

an innocent guide to village fetes

Kat has just designed a lovely little booklet that we're giving away on our village fete tour. I'm planning on adding it to the village fete website as a nice little slide show (like this one we did about how to have a slightly better 2007). But for now, and in the spirit of one of the best websites on the internet, here it is as photos...

Look out for them at a innocent village fete near you. They're collector items now, we only have 2 copies in the whole of fruit towers they're so rare.

a man called adem

We're very excited that Adem is going to be playing at our innocent village fete in Regent's Park in August. He'll be doing a set on the Acoustic Bandstand on Saturday.

Here's some facts about Adem if you've never heard of him before..

He sings nice songs and plays really good music

He's signed to Domino Records (home of the Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand and some other great bands)

Pete from howies rates him

He's got a nice t-shirt with two pink circles and two green rectangles on it.

a taste of London

We had a great time at Taste of London on the weekend, thanks to all of you who came over to say hello. Here are some of our 'favourite bits' as they say on the telly..

Pin the tail on the monkey (they're cheekier than donkeys).

Rat splatting.

Shy coconuts.

And the best of all, happy drinkers.

We'll be doing the same again at Taste of Bath from this Thursday (28th) to Sunday (1st) if you're visiting.

a taste of fete

Our touring village fete is currently setting up at Taste of London in Regent's Park, Erin's on her way over there at the minute to see how it's all going.

Look out for the big sign above if you're going along yourself and come and say hello, throw a coconut at a shy, or a ball in to a bucket. And sample a few of our smoothies of course.

For an update on our touring fete why not have a quick look at our village fete flickr group, it's starting to fill up nicely now.

some more things for the weekend...

Here's a quick run down of a few fetes happening this weekend from our lovely new fete finder. Please drop by any of them if you're in the area and let us know how it went. If you get any good pictures don't forget to post them to our village fete flickr group, there's a £250 prize for the best 3 photos by the end of the summer.

And if you have your own fete planned this summer why not add it to our fete finder aswell.

Here's the run down...

Friday 22nd June
Melin Gruffydd School Fayre and BBQ (Whitchurch, Cardiff)
Fair on the Green 2007 (Harlington)

Saturday 23rd June
Feckenham Wake (West Midlands)
Moseley Festival (West Midlands)
Woodthorne School Summer Fete (Wolverhampton)
Ombersley Village Fete (Worcester)
Krekorian (Congresbury)
Payhembury Primary School Fayre (Payhembury, Nr Honiton)
Sparsholt Village Fete (Sparsholt, Winchester)
Stimpson Avenue Primary School Fayre (Stimpson Avenue, Northampton)
Tideswell Wakes Week (Peak District)
Holywell Village Fete
Christ Church Primary School (Brick Lane E1)
Church Hill Summer Fair (East Barnet)
Hilly Fields Fayre (Brockley, London SE4)
Wimbledon Village Fair (Wimbledon common southside)
St George's Church Annual Community Garden Fete (Donnington, Chichester)
Blewbury Village Day (South East)
Balfour Infant School Summer Fair (Brighton, East Sussex)
Seer Green Cherry Pie Fair (South East)
Wargrave Village Festival (Berkshire)
Witley Parish Fair (Godalming, Surrey)

Sunday 24th June
Diggle Fete (Saddleworth)
Hardingham Fete
Doddinghurst Donkey Derby (Brentwood, Essex)
Vauxhal Park Summer Fair (SW8)

Oh and don't forget Peckham Pet-Tastic 3 of course.

Wraysbury village fete

Michelle, Vic, Peta, Jonathan and Tansy all spent their Saturday at Wrasbury Village Fete, near Windsor as part of our village fete tour.  Despite heavy rain that morning, the opening parade started proceedings off in fine style, led by the Wrasbury Primary School.

Following them came the local fire engine, but that didn't escape the soggy ground and got stuck right next to our DGV*

And for quite some time.

Meanwhile our ball in the bucket game went down a treat...

As did the ferret racing with most...

Though some weren't so keen, including jonathan who took to making our game a daisy chain starting line.

(which we let this little lad slightly overstep).

All in all it was a wonderful day, we learnt about the local wine society, got some more inspiration for our own fete and met some lovely folk. 

It was an eventual happy ending for the fire engine too, though not so much the village green.

* dancing grass van

Tansy.

a trip to the Bagnall village fete

This weekend I visited the Bagnall village fete near Stoke, with Helen, Gayle, Dan and Hannah. The fete is held every fathers day and helps raise money for their lovely Moorlands village hall in Bagnall.

To start the day off, Morgaine Blake was crowned Chestnut queen. From what I gathered the role is largely ceremonial and unfortunately doesn’t include any real powers. We thought it best to keep the Chestnut queen onside anyway and shared a few smoothies with Morgaine and her retinue.

We had a good look round the fete to see if there were any ideas we could use for our own fete. On our tour we met the two Sue’s who were selling their Dead Rat Preserves. They have a great range of all sorts of jarred goodies without any deceased rodents or artificial preservatives. But if you try them you’ll have to search them out at fetes around the local area as they’re not yet available in the shops. Despite the memorable brand name, our Helen bought some apple and roast garlic chutney for our next cheese club.

We also met Carol (above with her stall) who runs Fruits of the Earth. She delivers fresh baskets of seasonal organic vegetables within about 25 miles of Bagnall. Carol also sells bags of organic, fair-trade nuts and pulses, and I got some South American Quinoa because the back of the pack suggested they were quick to cook. Neither Carol or I knew exactly what I was supposed to eat them with, so if you’ve any ideas, please let me know.

We had a go at the various fete activities. Whilst I was regretably ‘too old’ for the bouncy castle, I did have a go at splat the rat. Whilst the rat escaped largely unscathed, the bat did not and the game closed shortly after my enthusiastic but unsuccessful strikes split the bat in two. Our own game, ‘ball in the bucket’ went down well, especially when punters discovered it was free. Faith was our top scorer winning a record 5 smoothies. Even then Faith continued to play with the understanding that we didn’t have enough smoothies to give her anymore prizes. Faith told us she enjoys all sports that involved a ball and I suspect she’s quite good at all of them. Fete game owners beware.

We had a great time and I’d like to say thanks to the organisers for making us so welcome to this lovely community event. And a special thank you to the lads from the bouncy castle, for helping us push our Dancing Grassy Van out of the wet field at the end of the day.

Jan

making fete games

We've started making a few of the games for our fete tour. Here are some pictures, direct from the workshop.

No sign of any coconuts yet. Guess they come later.

a wicker fete

Here's a nice little music video for the Young Knives with a distinctly fete theme. It all starts to get a bit strange and ends in a middle english version of The Wicker Man. It's quite a catchy tune aswell.