Good glorious food festival

The Sunday market is such a good-natured occasion, generally blessed by fine weather, when families can stroll about, tasting and testing, spend a bit more than they meant to, and enjoy a glass of beer or wine in the open air without having to witness displays of drunken yobbery.

And what a great way to teach children that foodie treats don’t have to mean chain restaurant burgers and chips.

Best of all, the event feels blessedly free from the dead hand of officialdom.

Even the traffic wardens seemed to be keeping a low profile this year.

We were accompanied by a visitor to Salisbury (my mother) who exclaimed delightedly how different it all was, and forgetting to lean on her walking stick, positively skipped round spending her pension on some early Christmas shopping. Not to mention buying chilli paste for the first time, so she can experiment when she gets back to her own kitchen. Not bad at 82.

I’d like to see one of the city’s more inventive Indian restaurants setting up a snack stall next time, to add to the variety on offer.

And I do wish the organisers would try to tempt members of Salisbury’s Gurkha population to cook up a few of their specialities for us to try.

Otherwise, no complaints. None at all. Not often you’ll hear me say that!

n THE strange lights seen lately in the skies over south Wiltshire seem to me to have an obvious explanation.

They’ll have been spacecraft crewed by aliens who’ve been looking in vain for signs of intelligent life on Planet Trowbridge.

I can just imagine how the poor souls felt as they drifted silently southwards, baffled and disappointed, in the hope of finding more sense in Hampshire or Dorset.

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