Mel steps forward and gets a cheer. Patti and the girl raise the jump and duck slightly as Mel crashes sideways over it, landing with a roll and flattening her elderflower again. Patti takes Mel’s wrist and holds it up in the air and the crowd cheers more loudly. Mel notices the Cakes and Ale barman in the midst, nodding and applauding.

The hay bale blazes behind the women. Patti holds up a finger, then relights the torch. She touches it to a fresh bale. A man puts his arm up and comes forward. He takes a step and leaps the burning bale. Another follows.

Mel pushes Pete in the centre of his back. ‘Are you bloody mad?’ he says. ‘I’m not doing it.’

‘Oh go on, I’d try it myself but I don’t want to singe my DMs.’

The flames dance higher. The lavender boy pushes through the crowd, takes off his hat and jerkin, gives them to an audience member to hold, rolls up the sleeves of his shirt and splashes his hose and britches with water. He wets his hair with his hands and tucks it behind his ears. He looks at the bale.

‘Go on then,’ shouts someone. ‘Get on with it.’

Lavender Boy looks at the heckler and smiles. He goes back to the bucket and splashes some more.

‘That’s polyester,’ hisses Mel. ‘It’ll go up like a Christmas tree. Someone’ll have to stop him.’ And she looks around her.

But the crowd cheers and eggs him on. Pete puts a hand on Mel’s arm as Lavender Boy jumps the bale, well above the flames, and then jumps back again, just before the hay dissolves into fire. He reclaims his hat and jerkin, raises his hat in the air for further applause before putting it on, and then jogs damply back to the maypole.

The crowd begins to jostle and push men forward as Patti raises her torch high above another bale.

Pete hoists the picnic rucksack and gestures to a clear and sunlit spot of green towards the hedgerow. As they spread their lunch out on the rug and finish off the coffee they can hear the sound of near misses over at the balefires. At one point there is a commotion of buckets and shouts. They stand up to get a look but can’t see anything.

‘They’re probably used to it.’ Mel unlaces her boots and lets the cool breeze onto her feet.

Across the field she spots some of the costumed dancers going in and out of a trailer near the beer tent, loitering in the doorway with cups of tea. One of the hoop-skirted women is pacing around the back, cigarette in hand, making a call on a mobile.