Nobody travels on horseback to the Ballinasloe Fair anymore, which is a pity, says Frank McNally. The horrendous tailbacks outside the Galway town yesterday afternoon might have been eased if a few people had chosen to leave their wheels behind and arrive on four legs instead.
lAs it was, land cruisers of vast horsepower were idling in first gear for the last few miles to the fair, many of them followed ironically by trailers containing one of the few forms of land-based transport that could have improved the situation.
The weather didn't help. It was Ballinasloe's misfortune that the start of its October festival should coincide with the end of the Indian summer.
As well as adding to the normal traffic horrors, the cold rain that fell from midday onwards made conditions miserable for horse and man alike, and the October festival looked more like a November one.
The organisers like to claim that the origins of this ancient fair are "lost in the mists of time", but the opening of its latest instalment was all-but lost in the mists of an Atlantic depression.
Still, an event that has already lasted centuries in the west of Ireland is unlikely to be capsized by a little rain.
And the difficulty of finding a parking space anywhere within the urban limits was enough to confirm its continued health.
In particular, Ballinasloe was the van capital of the world yesterday: from Hiaces to Loaces, via all the Aces in between, the town had more vans than the Dutch telephone directory. Maybe the weather was a factor, but the trouble feared at this occasionally rowdy event failed to transpire - at least on the opening weekend.
Gardaí said there were a few "minor" incidents on Saturday night, while the festival office reported nothing more serious yesterday than a broken window. There were numerous incidents of "flashing" and "lunging" around the fair green, but you expect that at a horse show.
Flashing, for the uninitiated, is a procedure favoured by members of the Travelling community, in which a horse is put through its paces for a potential buyer.
Lunging (the 'g' is soft, like the underfoot conditions) is not dissimilar, but the big difference is that it's official. In fact, one of yesterday's highlights was a lunging competition to choose the "Horse of the Fair", won in the face of intense competition by a filly owned by Noel O'Shea from Ennis.
Other competitions included a jumping event in which four-member hunt union teams raced each other over an obstacle course. It was no big surprise when one of them, Bree Foxhounds from Co Wexford, lined out one horsepower short of a full complement, a fact blamed on the traffic. But the event produced genuine thrills, and generated some much-needed excitement for the damp attendance.
Among the other entertainments on offer was Hector Ó hEochagáin, star of the TV series Only Fools Buy Horses, who formally opened the festival. The High Chaparral of equine event openings, Hector is rarely out of the frame these days. But even his extrovert personality was overshadowed yesterday by the heroics of a band playing "exotic Latin rhythms" on the gig rig as bone-chilling North Atlantic rain swept the street. The steamy conditions conjured up by the music were available only in the pubs, where many of the sodden fair-goers had already gone to dry out.