Last weekend a street food 'festival' came to Exeter. One might expect that a street food festival should take place down a street, Fore Street perhaps, but no! The organisers, not local people, had been handed the keys to the gates of Northernhay Gardens by our City Council. The Council likes to encourage such 'events' (the Government encourages them too). The Council managed to cut the turf for the occasion.
On the Thursday I met two of the food festival organisers, Tudor and Holly. They were ready to offer me, as someone residing near the park, beer, this was ironic in view of later events, and street-food gratis. I was assured that the gates would not be locked and that there would be free access to all for the weekend. I did not try to claim my sweeteners but the two assurances turned out to be lies.
The next morning the glorious, still unpainted by the Council, Victorian, wrought-iron gates to the Gardens were plasticuffed with aesthetically, in my opinion, displeasing signs. One read that the gates would be locked and it apologised for 'any inconvenience' &c. Another read: LIVE MUSIC, DOGS WELCOME, STREET FOOD FESTIVAL THIS WEEKEND! FREE ENTRY, OVER 20 FOOD STALLS. The gates were locked throughout Friday and again on the Monday.
Well, let us start with the live music: there is a fundamental difference between concerts which , however, intrusive, have their term and music (or the cries of dinosaurs) which takes over the whole of Saturday and Sunday. For a street food festival it was apparently necessary to play lowest-common-denominator 'music' amplified to such levels of sound that the Gardens and their surroundings were distressing to residents like myself, and the police might have been asked to deal with what was, by definition, anti-social behaviour, but, as we all know and as we shall see later, the 'local' police were included in the thirty pieces of silver, they came with the keys to the Gardens.
At the gates to the Gardens there was a security check: This must the first time since Jacobean times that visitors to the Gardens have had their bags rummaged.
THERE WAS A BAG-CHECK TO PERMIT CITIZENS OF EXETER AND OTHERS TO VISIT NORTHERNHAY GARDENS!!!!
Our forebears must have turned in their graves but the food-festival organisers were taking security seriously. No-one was to come into the Gardens without first demonstrating they were clean. There was a team of security men and women as numerous as an infantry section. I counted ten but there must have been more. These were not Exonions, they were recruited, like the Black and Tans, of people without local connection. I think they mostly came from Wales. They were commanded by a stocky ex. Royal Welch Fusilier.
I struggle to understand why security men were there at all, and so many! Bad things happen everywhere, but in Exeter, at the weekend when every corner of the city is crowded with people, to mount security guards in Northernhay Gardens!
I suppose it would have made some sense to search people on the way out. There might have been desperate thieves stealing vegan sausages.
The good people of Exeter, conditioned for years to tolerate the intolerable, queued to enter and to demonstrate that they had no bombs, knives, grenades, vitriol &c. without a word of reproach. All, as far as I know, was good humour with lots of joking and laughter. No-one, as far as I could see, beside myself, felt that the bag-check and the dozen or so security men were ridiculously over the top.
But what, you ask, about the dogs being welcome? Well, they were welcome but a neighbour of mine was not.. He was treated worse than a dog and I shall deal with that in PART 2.
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