Ah! The joyful sound of Ye Olde Samba Drums

I was in Barnstaple at the weekend for a lightning raid on three shops. It was a case of buy, buy, buy and then bye, bye, bye. While there I saw, from a distance, the start of the parade for the Pilton Festival. All Green Man, real ale and, well, samba drums. Why? It's not that I am utterly opposed to samba drums, but these days in North Devon few public events seem complete without them blowing whistles, banging their sodding drums and gurning at each other. I realise this makes me sound curmudgeonly, but I would be willing to wager that similar events in, say, Brazil rarely attract the presence of some geezer in stripy trousers, a lurid waistcoat and unmentionable hat who is hacking away at a fiddle while occasionally going on about escaping the hangman's noose, or his sweet love drowning in a pool.

Would an event such as Chulmleigh Fair suffer for the lack of samba drums? I don't honestly know if Chulmleigh is a hotbed of samba drumming, but I suspect that the man with the fiddle singing songs of rural rogering fits in better - all Thomas Hardy, super strength lager and unwanted pregnancies. How much more traditional could you be?