The contemporary agricultural fair is an event which has its history in ancient festivals, markets and carnivals, but which really only took on its current form (livestock exhibitions and sales, special displays of rural crafts and sports, trade in machinery large and small, eating and drinking) in the early eighteenth century. At this point agricultural societies and breeding clubs began to organise their annual marts to coincide with the more important traditional fairs and festivals. These days the agricultural fair, usually the largest social gathering in a region's calendar, is augmented throughout the summer by numerous game fairs, specialist livestock fairs, equestrian shows, steam fairs and smaller county shows; at the same time, many of the older fairs have transformed from purely agricultural events into more general festivities (bouncy castles and burgers for the children, cider and burgers for the grown-ups). There are now more than 400 annual agricultural fairs of one type or another across the UK and Ireland.

The first 'show' I went to regularly as a child was not actually held in the country, since I am a city boy, but the Lambeth Country Show, held every July, is no less an event for taking place in the inner city of south London. Of course, the area has its rural roots but these are by now fairly distant: for the best part of 200 years this has been part of the metropolis, so the survival of a fair of this type is all the more noteworthy. Whilst it would be reasonably nonsensical to have a full range of competitive livestock categories, and thus the Country Show doesn't qualify in this sense as a full 'agricultural fair', it's still the closest thing that most Londoners get to a taste of the bucolic. For one weekend in July, traction engines and other steam-powered monsters, displays of horses, pigs and poultry, crafts such as sheep-shearing and bee-keeping, a large produce show, aerial displays, brass bands and a funfair are cheek by jowl in the grounds of Brockwell Park with the local political agitators, reggae sound systems and Caribbean food stalls.

Such an urban setting, and the metropolitan values of those attending, mean that some of the elements of a real country fair are omitted: there are no red-jacketed huntsmen parading on their mounts (the Countryside Alliance, regular features of any genuine agricultural fair or game show, would be unlikely to court much sympathy here) and no gundog or air-rifle displays. Perhaps these absences are worth examining a little. For whilst the Lambeth Show is a well-meant attempt to forge a contemporary communal expression that can 'bring people together' in our disparate and multi-dimensional society (a worthy effort at making the word 'multicultural' apply to more than just race), ultimately it reinforces an urban stereotype about the rural, where cider, pretty chickens and quaint customs are preserved for our benefit, because after all, it's alright for a weekend, but we wouldn't want to have to do it ourselves, all the time, would we? There are no DJ bars in the country, remember.

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(Ironically the largest and most important agricultural fair in Northern Ireland, the Balmoral Show, is also held in the city, at Belfast's King's Hall; however this event is more a sort of ritual transhumance, a case of the country coming to Belfast for three days, than an attempt to implicate the city in rural ways.)

The point about a real agricultural fair is that the animals aren't there for petting, they're there as the finest expressions of a way of life that is about rearing animals for food. Often the townie cannot hold these two thoughts in his or head at the same time: "this is a fine beast" and "I am going to kill it". This is really what people who live in the countryside insist is at the root of all misunderstandings about them: a refusal by the perceived 'urban elites' to recognise that agriculture is not some neutral, natural force, but the industry that supports all those who do not themselves work on the land. The countryside is typically viewed as the polar opposite of the city: green fields, distant vistas, open space, trees, a few animals, a beautiful place to escape to from all the grime and noise of the city. But the unspoilt landscape that we get so excited about when we alight from our trains or cars in some beauty spot or other is the result of hundreds or thousands of years of human technological intervention. Recently there has been much greater interest in both Britain and Ireland in standards of food production and of animal husbandry; organic and free-range produce are prized by those with the disposable incomes to purchase them. The greatest irony may be that the intensive systems of agriculture, now so despised by the townsfolk, are the very things that have made possible, for so many, a life completely divorced from the production of one's own food. That we've finally been alerted to the unsustainability of such farming methods doesn't just mean that we ask the nice farmers to do it differently from now on, it means we have to ask how sustainable our own lifestyles are too.

Hold on a minute, you ask, what's this rant about, surely he was meant to be writing about the charm of the country fair? Well, yes, but the thing is that the agricultural fair, while being a good excuse for a piss-up and a nice place to win a teddy bear, is primarily an extension and expression of some people's whole way of work and life. Those who live in the countryside will continue to disagree amongst themselves about what the best methods and practices are, whether they support hunting, whether they are in favour of organic production or GM, whether Tom Archer should have gone into business with Brian Aldridge. The myth perpetuated by the Countryside Alliance that everyone who wears wellies likes killing foxes is obviously untrue, but so is the notion (which one might get from an uninformed glance at the local fair) that rural living is all fancy bantams and jam.

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