Royal intrigue at the Cherry Fair

Every summer Cove hosts the Cherry Fair. The fair marks the end of cherry season with music, arts and crafts booths, food and a parade. Children under 10 are invited to be in the parade as cherry fairies.








All the fairies are assembled afterwards on a stage where a drawing is held. One lucky girl is chosen to be Queen Anne and a boy gets to be King Bing. All the fairies are given glittery fairy dust which they hold in their hands and then toss in the air to lend a little magic to the people gathered there.




Beth's marimba band, Kupenga, is a fixture at the Cherry Fair; so too are our kids who love putting on wings and riding on the hay bales on the cherry fairy float through the main drag in Cove.








This year Colm was named King Bing and he was given the king's royal hat to wear. He was as surprised and pleased as anyone, well almost anyone, and therein lies a short tale.











After the naming of the King and Queen when all the ruckus had died down, I took the kids and Sammy to play across the green field to a place where a spring runs under a large oak tree. While they practiced jumping over the creek in ever wider spots, I watched Colm sporting his very large and very warm hat and his even larger and warmer smile.
When he came nearby I said to him, "Wasn't that great that your name was chosen this year to be King Bling?"
Colm just kept smiling but Tess who overheard me piped up. "Yeah, I picked Colm's name out of the hat."
She said it matter-of-factly as if she were preoccupied with something else, that something else being teasing Sammy with a stick.
"You what?"
"I saw his name and I picked it," she explained.

I rewound to the moment on stage 20 minutes earlier. I hadn't registered that it had been Tess who had been given the task of selecting a name out of the hat. The man who had read Colm's name aloud had so badly mispronounced it that Colm didn't recognize it. Colin, he said. I did however. In our excitement to get the word out I shouted out the correct pronunciation. "Colm!"
Colm looked at us. The man seemed to grasp dimly that an error.
"Coleman." he said into the microphone.
I saw Beth say something like O my God, Colm won?
"Colm!" I yelled again.
Tess began pointing at Colm. Then the hat came down over his head, then the smile set in, then the King and Queen were posed side by side and then the cameras started clicking. Everyone cooed and clucked over the cute couple neither one of which had the slightest idea who their partner was. It had all been miraculous and hilarious at the same time.



Now, however, all those warm fuzzy feelings were being displaced by a new kind of wonder. I was looking at Tess aka the King Maker. She was looking at me like, "What?"
K