A Day Out In Holywood

Day out

Posted on May 4, 2009 by Ivan

 Off to Holywood today for the May Day Fair. The town gets closed and they have jousting, stalls.fancy dress and a large maypole in the middle of it. Will let you know what the craic was when I get back.

Got a bit side tracked with my SOF stuff so will just write this up now .

Every Mayday week-end Holywood is host to a big celebration of the Maypole traditions. There is lots of activity and plenty of things for folk to see and do. When we arrived (a bit late in the day unfortunatly) things were well on the way. People were queing up at the many stalls, all for charity.
There was lots on offer from bric-a-brac to homemade preserves, food to fancy goods and all going to various good causes. Of course there was the usual burger stalls and ice cream vans all put on this earth to torment parents of little children.

At one end of the town they had erected a climbing tower and anyone could have a go. Of course all the proper safety precautions were taken but even so it seemed that it was just the younger generation who dared brave the hights.

As we walked round we saw lots of people dressed in medeival costume. There were jugglers, rat catchers, knights and damsels. A court jester tried to teach passers by how to juggle with varying degrees of sucess. (This was one of the better ones.

At the other end of the town we came upon a bit of a fight. Obviously two guys had a disagreement over who could woo the local beuty so they decided to sort it out in the only way that real men should. In a big fight!!!.

Last year they had Knights on horseback, jousting, but alas and alack not this year, or if they did we missed it.

In another part of Holywood the was the Radio Ulster road show with Hugo Duncan, not our cup of tea.

BUT his guest was. I was May McFettridge in all her glory. She/he had the crowd in fits, even though it was raining, spirits were not dampened. As usual she picked out members of the audience for ridicule and derision. Two women in particular were the target of her tounge. “Are you’s two sisters”?, she asked. “No” ,was the reply. “Oh”, she said, “I thought you were waiting for Cinderella”.

All in all it was a good day and we were glad we went
I’ll finish with a piccy of our May because I didn’t get one of the Maypole dancers ’cause we were too late so you’ll have to make do with May on Mayday.

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