I ROCKED up to Staveley Carnival, on Sunday, straight from my swim at Torver.

I was still significantly damp. I smelt of seaweed, or whatever you call the plants that buoy you up in a lake, and I could feel silt between my toes.

Luckily, the procession was the sort of mind-boggling spectacle that makes you forget your wet feet.

One of the organisers stressed to me that the event was ‘insect’ themed. “That’s insects, not incest,” she said.

I would have loved to have seen the costumes from anyone who heard her wrong.

Luckily, the magnificent creations I witnessed made the event’s connection quite clear.

There were towering wasps and beetles, locusts and fairies on stilts. If Pixar had seen what they were up against they would have given up with A Bug’s Life.

The glee on the faces of the kids reminded me of summer fairs at primary school.

My home town fetes were not quite as fancy. We didn’t have a Brazillian-style parade, we had a whack-a-rat where you swung a cricket bat at a limp beanbag rodent.

We had a coconut shy that I was sure was rigged and we had 100 kids getting sunburnt on a field.

As children, we all had Total Euphoria Breakdowns. There was so much colour, loud noises, sugar and cake.

For me, the best bit of the extravaganza actually took place before the event – my Dad, me, and a handful of others would go strawberry picking at the crack of dawn.

I would trudge up and down patches on the local estate putting one in the basket, one in my mouth, another in the basket, another in my mouth. Another in my mouth.

By the time we went home, to get ready for the event, I had so much red juice on me that I looked like a five-year-old Jack the Ripper.

We would wash off the fruit and present it to all the old ladies at the fair, with cream or ice cream.

And I would look over the fruit and point to the biggest strawberry of the lot and tell my friends: “You see that strawberry there - the massive one? I picked that.”