‘These are special cakes. Best not sampled if you’re driving.’

‘Gotcha. I’ll have the other sort.’

‘Keep hold of your cup for refills and bring it back to the bins at the end. Enjoy.’

They wander back out to where the hobbyhorses are, spread their travel rug on the grass, still damp with dew, and drink their beer. The procession is now at the bottom corner of the field, enacting some ritual. Some of the celebrants are rolling in the dew. Others are taking off jackets and jumpers and shirts, turning them inside out and putting them on again. The blonde presides, her arms aloft, repeating an indeterminate chant. A few obvious tourists bring up the rear, watching the proceedings but not joining in. The children continue to work their way down the field, battering the hedges.

A young woman riding a hobbyhorse circles Mel and Pete, whinnying and nickering. ‘Hello,’ says Pete.

More visitors arrive, settling down with rugs or investigating the drinks tent, emerging with plastic quarts of cider and cakes of one or the other variety.

The procession makes a diagonal towards them. The blonde is wearing a tall crown of hawthorn, a girdle belt of meadow flowers and a sash appliquéd with the legend ‘Queen of the May’. The train of her long white gown is muddied and her hair frizzy. Her eyelids are caked with blue shadow.

The horses stop their capering and back into a circle as the Queen approaches, only rearing occasionally.

The Queen raises a hand and the maypole bearers come forward, adolescent boys in satin britches and jerkins and tricorn hats in varying shades of blue. They raise the maypole, as the mast of a sailboat might be raised. The pole is topped with a crown of flowers.

A recorder quartet, all in Elizabethan costume, steps out and begins to play. Dancers in hooped skirts and floral coronets leave the procession and station themselves around the pole, alternating with the satin boys. The oldest boy, dressed all in lavender, hands out the streamers.

The women dance clockwise and the boys anticlockwise, weaving in and out of the ribbons, which plait as the dance wears on, red and white, red and white, pulling them in to the pole.

The lavender boy looks like he stepped off a village green in 1560. His hair is worn long in a pageboy cut, the same as the other boys. They are clearly all siblings, or cousins.

The dark-haired middle boy is in turquoise and the youngest and blondest in baby blue. Now they are plaiting a kind of tent, some of the dancers standing still and the others weaving between them.