The Runaway Fair was set up today, Sunday, and will be open tomorrow, Monday.

I’ve been writing the same thing for nearly twenty years now … ‘It takes place one week after Abingdon’s Michaelmas Fair. It was once a hiring fair where farmworkers and servants who left their jobs after Michaelmas could find new work. By the late 1800s, the hiring aspect had faded, and now it’s a small funfair, mainly for children, through the afternoon and early evening.’

The world has changed in those twenty years – phones have become pocket computers with cameras better than cameras once were. Blogs can use bigger pictures because internet speeds are faster (from 2-5 Mbps then to 100-220 Mbps now). Banks, Newsagents, Photography, Clothes, Flower and Card shops have been replaced by coffee shops, cafés, nail salons, and men’s barbers.

The only change in twenty years of the Runaway Fair is that, to reduce traffic problems, it is now held only in the Market Place and not along the High Street.