Creature Feature No 7

I promised more from Carters Steam Fair, and these wooden horses do the trick. One of the now rare places where genuine popular art can still be seen, the traditional fairground gives up many treasures in handcrafted decoration. Noel Carrington and Clarke Hutton's King Penguin English Popular Art gives many superb examples from canal boats to gypsy caravans, and I expect the often itinerant artists would be just at ease painting a merry-go-round horse as the odd inn sign. Carrington thinks that fairground horses 'have something too of the medieval knight's charger or lady's palfrey as seen in paintings of the sixteenth century' and mentions that King's Lynn in Norfolk was once a principle centre for circus and fair outfitting. And how often do we say "That horse has got my name on it?". A closer look at this picture revealed that in my case one of them certainly has.

The Quiet Caravan

Gamekeepers leave some odd things lying around. Old oil drums and plastic dustbins for keeping feed in, mouldering timber sheds and somewhere to have a stiffener on a pheasant shoot. I'm not quite sure what this caravan was used for, slowly succumbing to lichen and moss in a woodland clearing in a lonely Northamptonshire wood. There is something very eerie about the curtains still up at the windows, and the neat bow of net on the door has chilly undertones of Miss Havisham's wedding dress. And it's hardly a love nest for Mellors and Lady Chatterley either, although round here you can never be quite sure. Somebody may recognise it from long gone holidays- perched on a clifftop at East Runton perhaps, or holding up the traffic on the Fosse Way. Nearby is a Zetor tractor that is virtually indistinguishable from the surrounding trees and undergrowth. Nature takes over quite quickly when left to its own devices.