Stall of the Wild
The tent is huge. It sits on the pavement of Manchester Street in two vast, green canvas bags, skulking in the doorway of the Youth Hostel, being conspicuously ignored by the other people waiting in the bus queue, equipped as they are with smaller and more practical equipment. The taxi driver dusts off his hands and Diana pays him sheepishly.
"It's a bit bigger than I was expecting." She admits.
The plan had begun as a relatively straightforward one. Our bus was to leave at half past six, and given that neither of us owned a tent of our own, one of Diana's work colleagues had offered to lend us hers, rather than have us shelling out forty dollars for a tent which may only be used once. While I had run ahead to delay the bus if necessary, Diana had dropped into her office to find the tent waiting for her, and upon seeing it taking up half the floorspace, she realised that a taxi would be a more practical option if we were ever to catch the bus at all.
We are heading to the Wild Food Festival, an annual one-day event which takes place in Hokitika on the West Coast. When I first moved into the house on St Asaph Street, I had been educated in the wonders of the event, a festival where people from all over the country (all over the world!) would gather to eat things that once walked, crawled or slithered and which would normally - with good reason, no doubt - not be found on conventional menus.
"It's supposed to be one of the absolute highlights of a trip to New Zealand." Diana had enthused.
At that time, everyone in the house had seemed keen to attend, but as the weeks passed, our numbers thinned and so when the weekend of the festival finally approached, only Diana and myself had the appropriate days off.
And now we had a tent.
I had been to Hokitika before, it had hosted a brief supermarket stop during the trip I had taken down the West Coast with Tamsin in November. I had not seen much of the town then, we ventured into a handful of Jade wholesalers and peered through the window of a kiwi sanctuary but the most memorable part of the entire visit was probably when I walked face first into the plate glass door of a camera shop in the misguided belief that the it was already open.
The town has not changed much since then - although I notice that the camera shop doors are wedged firmly open when I pass. The sun is particularly strong and the heat reinforces the frontier atmosphere of the place, with the broad, dusty streets and low-rise colonial architecture looking particularly wild-west.
We drag the tent bags out of the bus and lug them across the road to the information centre where the woman on reception regards them with amusement.
"What is that, a marquee?" She asks. "Are you one of the exhibitors?"
She then takes much delight in showing us on the map where our camp-site for the evening is located.
For the weekend of the festival, the two local schools have opened their playing fields as camp sites. We are booked into the grounds of the primary school and now we discover that it is on the other side of town.
"Should be a fun walk." the woman says with a smirk.
Diana and I exchange glances. The tent is not just big, it is heavy. Made in a time before the invention of poly-carbon flexible poles, when the mere idea of a lightweight dome tent was tantamount to witchcraft, the pole bag itself is a tight bundle of steel legs and brackets which rattle and clang like an iron foundry in an earth tremor. Even the short walk from the bus to the information centre was enough to the threaten a hernia.
"Is there a taxi?" we ask innocently, and the woman chuckles.
"Oh yes." she says, "There is that."
The taxi is quick. In fact it is waiting outside the information office by the time we have staggered back out into the sunshine. The driver opens the boot and gives a long, low whistle as we drop the tent inside with a hefty clang.
"What is that?" He asks, "A marquee?"
The driver's name is Ross, and he explains that he arrived in Hokitika seven years ago.
"They didn't have a taxi service then," he said, "I write archaeological books for a living, but they asked if I wanted to stay and so here I am. Just an Otago farm boy making good."
I don't quite see the connection between one job and the other, but I do not get a chance to pursue this any further.
"Any competition?" Diana asks instead.
"None." Ross says with satisfaction, "Just me from Greymouth to the glacier. Do you know any dirty jokes?"
"Sorry, what?"
"Why did Pinocchio get thrown out of the ball?"
"Uh, I don't know."
"He made Cinderella sit on his face then told her he'd always be faithful."
"Anywhere around here would be fine."
Ross ignores us.
"I've got lots more." he says, and he has.
The tent, shed of its green canvas wrapping is one of those buff-coloured box-shaped things complete with plastic windows and extended porches. It's the sort of tent which is probably incomplete without an elderly couple sitting outside it on folding plastic chairs, looking as though they're on a camping holiday to celebrate the completion of their electro-shock therapy.
To make matters even worse, it was obviously last packed up while slightly damp and has clearly remained folded ever since. There are patches of black mould clouding its surfaces, and the interior has a smell which is musty and stale. We struggle a little with it, attempting to apply our knowledge of easy-to-erect dome tents to its numerous square miles of mouldering canvas and arsenal of poles. The thing is approaching something of an appropriate shape before our neighbours in the camp-site, a small gang of goateed youths who peddle over from the other side of the camp-site on BMX bicycles with cans of beer clamped against the handle bars, slink over to assist.
Any concerns that we might have had about the tent being laughed off the camp-site prove to be unfounded. Our neighbours, it would appear, have exactly the same model that we have - only they also have a truck to carry it around in. They point out the error we have made, indicating across the field at how their own tent stands proudly as an example. Once done, they about turn and peddle back across the fields where their stereo plays quiet songs as loudly as possible.
"How very kiwi." Diana says, "Friendly and helpful, only... with BMXs and beers."
The festival takes place in a large grassy space near the town's centre, which is not quite a sports field and not quite a park. Cordoned off with fences, we join the queues and exchange our tickets for wristbands.
The layout of the festival is much as you would expect. There are stages and stalls and the space in between gradually fills with swelling crowds. As the day progresses, they loose momentum and the initial exploratory zeal gives way to satisfied sloth as the morning's shifting crowds give way to the afternoon's beer-cup-accumulating sun-worshippers, firmly taken root throughout the site.
The stages host various live music acts ranging from an awkward looking chap with an accordion and a set-list of sea shanties and lullabies, to - bizarrely - an all singing all dancing tribute to Joe Cocker. But the meat of the festival - and with only one, lonely looking vegetarian stall that I could find, meat is undeniably prevalent here - are the food-stalls themselves.
The ethos of the festival is simple. Small portions for small prices. Thus, everything - conceivably - can be tried and judged and no-one will be left with a plate of a meal which ceased to appeal after one or two nervous forkfuls. Essentially, it is like a giant, varied, tapas bar, the pleasure lies in trying as much as you can and the wheat for one punter might be the chaff for another.
Inevitably, being the Wild food festival, the more popular stalls are those with the least conventional food on offer, and while there are outlets selling the more familiar food and drinks - coffee, bread, doughnuts and the like – the larger crowds gather eagerly instead around the odder produce on offer. Trust New Zealand to come up with a festival of extreme eating.
The man wears a T-shirt with a picture of a cheerful looking cow on it. He offers me a cocktail stick.
"Help yourself," he says, "Pick a cup-size."
He pushes a large plate across the counter towards me. It is stacked with assorted sized nodules of gristle, fried brown, edges crisped, doing their damnedest to look appetising and failing ignobly. I gingerly prod my cocktail stick into one of the smaller portions, the stick jabs the edge of the thing and it tips and spins out of my grasp. I try to reposition it so that I have a better grip and find purchase on some trailing matter.
The man sees this and feels the urge to commentate further.
"Oop." he says, "Going for a small one. You wanting sauce on that, or are you going to leave it virgin?"
Diana is poised with a camera.
"Hold it up a little higher," she instructs.
I pose dutifully with the cocktail stick upraised before me, its burden hanging limply from it, looking even more forlorn now that it has been separated from the plate.
"Ready?"
In it goes. I don't really taste it. It rolls around on my tongue for a moment before I swallow it down whole.
"How was it?" Diana asks.
I shrug. I spent two dollars on this and only now that it has gone - presumably (hopefully) never to be seen again, I wonder if I should have made more of an effort to taste it - chew it maybe? After all, it's not every day you get to sample one of the 'Tasty Titties' stall's fried cow udders. I wonder if I would have got better value for money if the weather had been colder.
Shockingly to some, cow udders are one of the more innocuous delicacies on display and to prove this, Diana tucks into a large cricket squatting incongruously on a small square of toast. Elsewhere, there are pies made of possums, sushi made with worms and stir-fried (spicy) intestines. One stall even relishes the opportunity to proclaim the world "Offal" without the usual revulsion it might incur, while France and Scotland are represented by snails and deep-fried Mars bars respectively.
It's true that part of the appeal here is in sampling the otherwise unappealing and the festival's slogan reads like a dare. The merchandise too is of the "I survived" variety and it's a wonder the whole enterprise isn't sponsored by Immodium. One available souvenir which might raise questions once the festival has been forgotten, is a stuffed toy representation of a huhu grub. That is, a white maggot with a black face - not the most interesting looking soft toy it might be admitted. Think a furry tube or a very small draught excluder.
The real grubs appear to be the highlight of the festival. Available either barbecued or 'fresh from the log', a sizeable crowd has gathered around the stall, where a bunch of men are hacking into some flaking tree trunks with axes.
A girl tramps about the mass of splinters and debris holding a plastic box in surgical-gloved hands. Every now and then, she stoops and picks something up, holding it aloft to the onlookers pressing against the barriers.
"Four dollars." the girl says, holding something fat, white and wriggling.
"Let me see that," says one of the axe-men, lowering his weapon.
He frowns as he inspects the creature.
"Five dollars." he says.
"Five dollars!" the girl corrects herself, holding up the specimen for all to see.
From around the stall, the mob lean forward as one. Folded notes in out-stretched hands, like the desperate patrons of a Friday-night bar.
The girl picks a petite American woman beside me, who carries out the transaction in silence then - with the plump, still very much alive creature in the palm of her hand looks beseechingly up at her boyfriend.
"Why did I buy this?" she demands of him, "I don't want it now!"
He grins, fiddling with his camera, proof needed for the folks back home.
"I'll video this," he says, "Look at the little guy move."
The woman holds the grub by its tale, it curls around her fingers and the woman grimaces.
"Okay," her boyfriend says through the viewfinder, "Go on, eat it."
Eyes clamped shut, she drops it in her mouth. In it goes, then out it comes. Landing in the grass at her feet arching itself first one way and then the other: open bracket, close bracket, open bracket.
The boyfriend is desperately pushing buttons on his camera.
"Pick it up," he says, "We'll try again."
"But it's been on the floor, now!" the woman wails.
"They just picked it out of a log!"
The girl with the box is holding up another grub – this one, considerably smaller.
"Fifty cents!" she calls.
"That's more like it," Diana says and waves one hand, while rummaging in her wallet for change.
“I've only got a dollar,” she says, “I will get change, right?”
Despite the drama which had been going on beside us, Diana downs her grub with little or no hesitation. She looks almost disappointed.
“Any good?” I ask.
Diana shrugs.
“So so.” she says, “A bit like peanut butter.”
She pockets her change.
“Bargain.” she adds.
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