Faversham Hops Festival

Since 1966, the Notting Hill Carnival has been the place to go for the August bank holiday.  And since the 1980s, the Hops Festival in Kent has been the place to go - if you happen to be in Kent.  While the Notting Hill Carnival was much bigger, the Hops Festival was much more of a festival.  I had heard that you should do the Carnival, just to say you did it, and then you never have to do it again.  Which implies that it isn't worth repeating.  Ad that made me wonder if it is worth doing in the first place.  

The Carnival, to me, was little more than several thousand people crowding onto the streets to drink and smoke and listen to music.  Which is fine except that there wasn't
 so much of a Carnival theme as it was just a giant pub theme.  The floats, when we were there at 2p on adult day, were just flat bead trucks with some speakers and a man, shirtless, singing along with the music.  There was nothing to buy but food, which included jerk chicken, roasted corn, sugar cane and coconut.  I was told later that they don't do vendors selling litems because stuff just gets stolen.    Ater a couple of hours of wandering through the neighborhoods, we felt like we had done all the carnival had to offer, and that was to drink.

By contrast, the Hops Fetival was a lively event.  There were plenty of things to buy, such as hats, fudge, beer of many loccal varieties, antiques, toys...the list is endless.  The shops were open and busy, compared to Notting Hill, whose shops were not only closed, but boarded up out of fear from the  recent riots.
  People were dressed in costumes or wore funny hats.  I was quite surprised to see a lack of that at the carnival, but guessing by the photos seen since, I was just there at the wrong time.  Maybe it's just too difficult to sustain a sense of fun over two days in Central London.

There were dance troupes who wandered about, performing regularly an old English folk dance that involved sticks being hit repeatedly then dancing in a circle.  The music which accompanied he dance was a charming piece that instantly made you think of Ye Olde English village.  There were also groups in similar folk costumes,but entirely in black.  These groups also had black painted faces, which coming from the American South has always been strictly verboden in my corner of the world.  But here, it had a Goth like feel, or perhaps reminiscing of the Schmutzli of German origin, the Dirty Man who accompanies Santa on St Nicks Day in German cultures.  I didn't get to see their dance, but I'm sure it was really cool.

I started to get the feeling of being in a village  when it celebrates the harvest.  There was tonnes of hops plants everywhere.  We got wreaths made to wear on our heads and on the dogs, which made us all smell even more like beer.  The hops were piled onto a wagon, which I imagined used to roll into the village and all the townspeople would cheer and dance.  Everyone was so happy and joyful, perhaps because it was sunny.  Perhaps it was he beer.  Or a combination of everything all put together.  
But there was a delightful sense of celebration that was contagious. Why was that missing from the Carnival?  Is it city life that is so oppressive?  Is there nothing to celebrate in the city?