The app suggested that the next Meetup was in a town called Rochester. I paused for a moment, wondering whether this broke the London centric rule, but then realised that there were some implicit and interesting connections with my new home; Rochester was once the home of Charles Dickens, London’s most famous chronicler.
I pushed a button and pulled up a map. The meeting place was at a pub on the high street. I faced a dilemma: I could either go by train, or by motorbike. After a few moments of looking at different travel options I opted for the bike, and after five minutes of prevaricating over my choice of trousers, I hauled the weatherproof cover from the definitive symbol of my mid-life crisis.
Rochester was a relatively short half an hour ride away, along Watling Street, an ancient Roman road that led into the beginning of the Kent countryside and onto the port of Dover. I picked my way through London’s South Circular road and onto one of its intersections and cheekily weaved my way onto the dual carriage way.
A couple of hours earlier it had been raining. Spray from the dual carriage way hit my denim biker’s trousers, causing me to curse my choice of biking apparel, but progress was good, and twenty minutes later, I took a right turn towards the Rochester Cathedral car park. Five minutes later, I had found my destination: The Eagle Tavern.
The group had a subtitle: ‘singles who want to have fun again!’ The event description was entirely baffling: ‘sweeps and chimney boys festival!’ I had never been to a festival about chimney boys before, but I was willing to join the celebrations, whatever they might entail.
The Bounce Back Club seemed to be going strong with over six hundred members, and had hosted an astonishing eight hundred and sixty events since its inception three years earlier. A later glance at the group calendar showed that over two hundred events were scheduled.
‘Are you here for the Meetup?’ I asked two women were chatting outside the pub. I introduced myself to Mary and Elsa, who fired a few questions towards me about where I had travelled from. Mary and Elsa were both in their late forties to early fifties and obviously knew each other well. We were soon joined by Gary, our event host. Gary was also in his fifties and had what I took to be a faint scouse accent. I asked about the group.
‘Well, basically, we’re a bunch of alcoholics’ chuckled Elsa, before going on to say that it was a social group. ‘You can easily get into a habit of staying in; it’s better to get out and have some fun. Look; the pub has opened. I want a pint of cider’. Elsa led the charge inside. It had just turned eleven in the morning.
‘The group was set up by Tracey.’ Elsa continued when she was fully armed with her pint. ‘She’s not coming today; she’s at another event. I think she set it up so she could get a boyfriend.’
For the next fifteen minutes, I chatted to Mary. Or, more specifically, we swapped stories about the trauma of heart break. I told her about my treacherous ex-wife, and Mary told me that she had left her long-term partner for another man. Eighteen months later this other man had left, leaving her to try to piece together what remained of her life. She told her story with eyes which gave away a level of sadness that her words didn’t directly echo. Five years on, Mary was still putting a brave face on everything, trying to put one foot in front of the other; trying to live her life as best as she could.
With Elsa’s pint gone, it was time to explore the festival. I really like Rochester high street. It seemed to be a mixture of Victorian and Georgian architecture, hosting a mixture of charity shops, pubs and local businesses. It had a cosy feel to it; it radiated age and history. After leaving the pub we were confronted with our first sight: a troupe of ten Morris dancers had blacked-up to look like chimney sweeps. Many of the dancers wore a head dress and carried big sticks; all of them wore sunglasses. Two drummers thumped out a regular rhythm, accompanied by an accordion player. Dancers yelped and hopped, whacking their sticks in time to the music. Bells attached to their costume rattled, accompanying their every step.
‘They’re nutters!’ said Gary, who was smiling, clearly enjoying the spectacle, along with a large appreciative crowd. When the stick whacking had finished, they were rewarded with a gentle round of applause. The ‘blacked up stick dancers’, as I call them, then made space for another troupe, who were dressed in a blue and white costume. Rather than having sticks, they carried handkerchiefs. It all looked jolly good fun, but I have never seen the attraction of Morris dancing. I had no idea what was going on, or why they are doing what they’re doing, or where the dances come from, or what they’re dancing to; Morris dancing is a significant and confused blind spot in my understanding of British culture.
Elsa had managed to find a leaflet about the festival, which although informative, left me none the wiser: ‘Medway’s annual Sweeps Festival recreates the joy and laughter enjoyed by chimney sweeps at their traditional holiday. It was the one time of the year that the sweeps could leave the soot behind and have some fun. Local businessman Gordon Newton, a keen historian, revived the festival in 1981. Rochester’s Sweeps Festival is in its 35th year and is the largest May Day celebration of its kind in the country’.
We made our way through the crowds, peering in various shop windows, before finding our way to a funfair situated in the grounds of Rochester Castle. We eyed up a carousel and the stalls where you could give money in exchange for not winning a cuddly toy. Our collective middle age cynicism protected us from the obligatory ghost train which would have undoubtedly been terrible.
After a bit of chatter we found our way down an alley that was filled with a wide variety of different stalls. Gary tasted some chilli sauces, Elsa tried some ciders and Mary bought some artisan bread. I caught up with Elsa again at a cocktail stall, where she opted for a cheeky gin and tonic.
After munching our way through organic sausages and French crepes, we found ourselves back at the high street, where I finally managed to have a chat with Gary. Gary worked in the recycling business; he connected together businesses that wanted raw materials (such as plastics), to businesses that needed to dispose of waste materials (such as old double glazing frames). He told me that there is hardly any landfill space remaining in Britain, and there is good business to be had shipping rubbish to Scandinavia.
Our amble down the high street consisted of ogling yet another set of Morris dancers, listening to a blues band, and finally ending up at a local Wetherspoons pub. Inside Elsa ordered another glass of refreshing cider. After a quarter of an hour of random chatter, Gary said that he had to head off to do some shopping.
After saying our goodbyes, I negotiated an obstacle course of dogs, small children, chimney sweeps and morris dancers to return to my motorbike. After donning my crash helmet, gloves and zipping my self up to protect myself from the elements, I left the car park, and then the Roman city of Rochester.
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