Our Favourite Fête

We've said it before and we'll say it again, Stansfield is positively our favourite summer fete.
There's fine ale (Nethergate Augustinian and Suffolk County), excellent burgers and a friendly crowd.
Normally the sun shines brightly on this event but this year rain was forecast ...

Ensuring we weren't far from the bar we started the fete at midday with a series of our finest dances before passing the baton on to the Punch and Judy show.
It gave us a chance to look around the many stalls selling plants, books, hats and so on, or to try winning a prize in the tombola or the draw.

We spotted some likely morris recruits amongst a group of teenagers but they ran off before Martin Cleverdon could "persuade" them to join us.
The visiting firemen were not much keener, citing health and safety as one reason for not picking up a stick.

We were due on again at 3 p.m. but with twenty minutes to go it started to rain - heavily. As readers of these pages will already know, it never rains on Little Egypt and such was the case this time as we hurried into the village hall for a quick top up at the bar followed by an impromptu indoor display of some of our fancy footwork.

The rain didn't last long and we completed our set "on tour" around the field.

A number of photographers were seen with flashy cameras and big lenses going into contortions to capture that perfect shot of Little Egypt at play and one of the resulting snaps appeared in both the East Anglian Daily Times and the Sudbury Mercury.

Another half hour remained before our final set, and the announcement of half price hot dogs had several of the men getting out their purses to purchase this bargain of the day.
The Master of Ceremonies read out the names of the winners of the various categories in the dog show, followed by the grand raffle draw.

Sadly none of the men were lucky this year, although it would have helped if they'd bought tickets instead of beer and burgers.
As is now traditional we closed the fete with a couple of spirited dances while around us the crowds scuttled off and the stalls were dismantled before the next rain shower.

And, apart from anything else, the afternoon proved, for now at least, that Little Egypt CAN get their feet off the ground, together.

• Stansfield 2010
• Little Egypt 2011
• Little Egypt Over The Years
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