Category Archives: Alan Sillitoe

Victorian Goose Fair

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Nottingham Goose Fair, Market Place, 1890s
Credit: The Paul Nix Collection

The Goose Fair has been a prominent fixture in the local calendar for as far back as 1160, with only an outbreak of leprosy in 1346, the bubonic plague of 1646, and the great Wars of the 20th century bringing it to a temporary close. So there’s a fair bit of history surrounding this annual festival. However, it is a book reference that is the latest cause of celebration for Nottingham’s not-best kept secret as this is where a randy factory worker called Arthur Seaton received a good kicking from two Swaddies for having his end away with a married woman and her sister on a certain Saturday night in 1958.

Is that a snake woman or are you just pleased to see me? Source Sillitoe Trail.

To celebrate this important location (rather than adultery or violence) the Alan Sillitoe Committee has commissioned local historian and author Ann Featherstone to give a talk about the history of the fair. Ann will be sharing her love of the Victorian period when the fair included freak shows and menageries, performing seals and diving shows, fat ladies and skeleton men. The Balloon Headed Baby, Mary Anne Bevan the World’s Ugliest Woman and Leonine the Lion Faced Lady are just some of the acts managed by Tom ‘The Silver King’ Norman, the man who commissioned the silver bells that are still used today as part of the Lord Mayor’s ‘ringing in’ ceremony. Sadly these oddities are long gone from the fair but if you switch on C4 at 9pm any night in the week then you’ll find they’ve found a new home.

Sydney Race’s secret diary. Photo Ann Featherstone.

Ann’s talk will draw upon the diaries of Sydney Race, an obscure diarist who, writing in the 1890s, documented the last live shows of the Fair before it transformed into the gleaming chav magnet that we know and love today. One regular feature of the Fair then was the animal shows (and we don’t mean the GB Lions they failed to flog at the Olympics that you’ll be able to win on hook a duck). We’re talking proper animals: hyenas, wolves, and bears, all abused and mistreated for the pleasure of the paying public. The exhibition of animals was seen as both entertaining and educational. Perhaps the most bizarre act to feature an animal was the Globe of Death (or Wall of Death) where it was quite common for a lion to be taken on the wall in a side car.

The Victorian Goose Fair was a bizarre, horrific and tragic experience, which explains why people loved it so much. Ann will be recounting some of these tales and illustrating her talk with visuals. She will be open to questions as well as encouraging the audience to share their own memories. If you are interested in local history, human oddities and want to escape the current Fair for five minutes, then cross the road from the Forest Recreation Ground and join us in the New Art Exchange. They do some pretty nice nosh in there as well, should you crave more than cocks on sticks and mushy peas.

‘Victorian Goose Fair’ by Ann Featherstone New Art Exchange, 39-41 Gregory Boulevard, Nottingham, NG7 6BE Nae.org FREE 4.30 – 5.30 Saturday 6 October

The Goose Fair is the fifth location on the Sillitoe Trail Mobile Phone App which will be launched on 27 October at Sillitoe Day. 

To get you in Goose Fair mood I am currently tweeting Sillitoe’s short story ‘Noah’s Ark’ about two boys on a limited budget out for a bit of fun. A lot of the tweets include photos of the Goose Fair that go back to the Victorian age.
I’ve also written about the history of the Goose Fair for Colin Haynes’ quirky Nottingham Essence  

 

MotaMouf

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MotaMoufEvent 4 the ‘turgid Trent’ is now live on The Space and features four essays by myself and two spoken word videos from Andrew ‘MulletProofPoet’ Graves and Alex ‘MotaMouf’ Young. I want to dedicate this blog to MotaMouf.

I first saw beatboxer MotaMouf performing at the Riverside Festival with Maniere des Bohemiens, a gypsy swing-jazz band from Nottingham. Then a few months later with Nina Smith on the LeftLion stage at Spendour. I was blown away by this teenager with the elastic mouth who was able to adapt his style to any kind of rhythm. I asked him if he would be interested in performing on stage with me at a spoken word event called Gunpowder, Treason and Pot. The conceit was simple: I’d ask him a question and he would make all of these weird noises. Then when I gave up trying to communicate with him and motioned to walk off stage he would burst out with an amazing poem about Rosa Parks (which is published in Issue 49 of LeftLion, out today.) It worked brilliantly and was the latest example of his incredibly versatile talent.

MotaMouf’s inclusion on The Space was not planned and was completely inspired by Kate Tempest’s outstanding performance video for Tongue Fu. I realised we had to diversify our text heavy content and that it would also be great to see him given a voice on such a prestigious stage. As always he was excited and prepared to try anything. A fitting lesson to other performers out there…

MotaMouf signs contract on the bribe of cake and tea in Lee Rosy’s. Photo and food costs James Walker.

The theme for Event Four is ‘Solitude: Is it possible in a digital age?’ I met up with MotaMouf a few times at Broadway and we worked on various ideas. I asked him to think about the electronic noise of modern life such as vehicles telling you that they’re reversing, elevator musIz, Tesco self-service tills, and city buses asking you to join their Facebook group every five minutes. He then went away and worked on a narrative.

During these meetings MotaMouf confessed that he felt kind of typecast as a beatboxer and was currently the front man of a new band called Just James. He was also more in to rap and grime music now. I told him to combine all of these things and to go with what felt right as I had every confidence he’d produce something fantastic.  At the time I was writing accompanying essays about how Alan Sillitoe hated being labelled as a ‘working class writer’ and an ‘angry young man’ and so it seemed a bit hypocritical to limit MotaMouf in a similar manner. The whole purpose of the Sillitoe Trail is to broaden the reach of literature and make Sillitoe’s novel accessible to audiences who may otherwise never have encountered it. Rap and grime are such audiences.  Tick.

The video was shot by NG64bars and is absolutely beautiful. My only instruction was that it had to be near a canal to link to the essays. A really important element of The Space is building up partnerships with other organisations and trying to support and promote each other. Robert Freeman Cooper has done a brilliant job and I’m delighted to be able to bring his organisation in as a partner and promote yet another great organisation in Nottingham as well as an incredibly talented beatboxer. I mean rapper. I mean poet. You know what I mean.

Please note: MotaMouf used to be spelled MotorMouf. He has very recently changed the spelling of this as it is not quite as unique a name as you might imagine.