Ruby Grimshaw revels in May’s festival frivolity

I think the amount of events offered in this year’s Brighton Festival has been amazing and the choice and standard have been excellent. There were also many exciting free entertainments going on in the streets, parks and halls throughout the whole period, and as if that weren’t enough, we had a Festival Fringe packed with diverse and alternative treats. We are so spoilt in Brighton. Hurrah!

Last year I was a bit slow off the mark and by the time I got around to deciding what I wanted to see it was all over. So, this year, when the programmes first came out I took time to look through them to decide what I really wanted to see. I am quite pleased with what a festival junkie I became but it has left me quite exhausted. I even took a teeny weeny part myself in a fringe event. This was at the free storytelling event at the Buddhist Centre, and after telling two stories to children in the afternoon and one story in the evening to adults, I am no longer a story telling virgin. I wasn’t very good but I can only get better.

“Bearing down on me at speed was this large metallic horse”

Pinter’s political play at the Town Hall, The New World Order, was chilling and compelling, setting the festival theme of freedom and injustice. Apart from this, the two events that stood out for me were free ones. The Forty Part Motet, Thomas Tallis’ choral masterpiece, was played throughout the festival in the Fabrica building. I nipped inside several times whilst out shopping. It was so relaxing to leave the noisy streets and just sit and be uplifted by this beautiful singing. What a pity the installation had to go. The second one was not an event but an object.

As I pushed through a crowded New Road one day, I heard a high-pitched neighing and immediately got on my high horse (oops, sorry).
I hoped that they weren’t trying to ride a frightened pony through the middle of Brighton when there, bearing down on me at speed was this large metal mechanical horse.
It had hooves at the front and wheels with a long rope tail behind, while the body and legs were made of pistons, wire and all sorts of junk metal. Astride it rode a jolly, white-faced beggar, a cross between a bag man and Dorothy’s scarecrow.

A young man, whom I now spotted walking behind with his radio-control box, told me it had taken him a year to complete. I thought it might make a welcome addition to my riding class on a Sunday morning.