Waterworks


It was the day of the annual Faversham Nautical Festival. Small groups of people from the amateur dramatics society meander through the crowd, dressed as characters from Dickens novels. Three young men charge, yelling, through the crowd, dressed as Victorian robbers, or ne'er-do-wells, or something, but their point was rather lost on me. A man in a grotesque seal costume rolled about on the cobbles, making little children cry with his coughing bark. Down at the river a flotilla of craft bobbed in the sun, each strung with bunting and with their most colourful sails hoist. A teenage pirate with a cardboard sword and eyepatch welcomed children onboard a 'pirate' ship: they boarded the vessel by way of a rickety gangplank.

 Later, outside a little whitewashed riverside pub an elderly man steps back to illustrate a point in his conversation with two others. His feet strike a stone milestone and he falls backwards to the ground in slow motion, landing with a thud on his back, his pint of bitter pouring over his face and long grey hair. His two companions continue talking as though nothing had happened, clearly used to the old boy's clumsy antics.

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