Source: blackmorevale.co.uk
The sun might still be burning the fields to a crisp, but as far as the villages are concerned, summer ends on the last day of August and all holiday fun comes to a full stop.
The weekly markets are no more, the swimming pools are emptied and the tourist offices close. But September marks the beginning of the season for all serious village activities, such as the annual markets. Each village specialises in something – truffles, wool, books and, in our case, hemp.
When I first heard about this event I couldn't quite believe it as I always thought hemp was another name for cannabis and, however relaxed the people here are, I think it owes more to the pace of life than to the evil weed.
Posters featuring the five-leaved logo familiar from hippies' T-shirts began to appear around the district, with the name of the village and the date of the festival prominently displayed, all in a sober, straightforward style as if advertising more noxious than home-made jam. It couldn't be anything sinister, could it?
On the day of the festival all the familiar signs of a normal market day appeared – tapes to cordon off the stall-holders' spaces, temporary car park, microphone and speakers, tables and chairs outside the buvette.
The stalls went up and people were busily setting up their displays, the only difference from normality being the giant fronds of what I assumed to be hemp draped around the place.
The mayor stepped up to the microphone and welcomed everyone to the fete, saying, as far as I could understand, that she hoped we would all learn some new ways of using hemp.
Well, if our straitlaced mayor was urging us on, who were we to demur? So we plunged in among the stalls, eagerly looking for new uses for hemp.
The first stall had a sort of doll's house
with a section of roof cut away to reveal our first new use – insulation. An earnest young man sought to convince us of the superiority of hemp over more conventional materials for insulating walls and roof spaces and pressed some informative leaflets into our reluctant hands. Somewhat disappointed, we moved on to the next stall which featured a tangled display of ropes, ropes of all thicknesses but all made from hemp. My husband left me to it and I next caught sight of him entangled in a fetching display of enormous knickers, all made, you guessed it, from hemp. Now I'm as willing as the next woman to try a bit of experimentation but I draw the line at hemp knickers.
with a section of roof cut away to reveal our first new use – insulation. An earnest young man sought to convince us of the superiority of hemp over more conventional materials for insulating walls and roof spaces and pressed some informative leaflets into our reluctant hands. Somewhat disappointed, we moved on to the next stall which featured a tangled display of ropes, ropes of all thicknesses but all made from hemp. My husband left me to it and I next caught sight of him entangled in a fetching display of enormous knickers, all made, you guessed it, from hemp. Now I'm as willing as the next woman to try a bit of experimentation but I draw the line at hemp knickers.
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