I know about the Hand of Glory. 

I know about Borley Rectory. I know all sorts of arcane folklore which sadly doesn’t help me with a smooth transition through life- despite my referential treatment towards single malign magpies. 

Scarecrows are things that should not really exist in today’s hyperdrive of flashing over-stimulation, AI and VR.  They are a fragment of olde times when a crow knew its place and hadn’t been proven by real science to be more intelligent than most people’s first born children and thus not likely to be shaken up by an immobile stick in a creepily flapping cast off Primark raincoat in the middle of a blasted pesticide coated wasteland. 

Scarecrows have their place in  folk horror, in their oversized rigid rictus grin, those glaring garish painted white eyes, the lumpen sack bodies, the emptiness at the end of a sleeve. Then there is  being surrounded by actual Nature- lowering skies, hulking wind-bent tree silhouettes and all that unnatural creepy malarky you would prefer to ignore and be scared by on a screen inside.  Worzel Gummidge has more in common with Pennywise than anything from the Ladybird Guides. 

So Wray Scarecrow Festival.

 Held every year in a quintessentially English village- swirling carving above old doors proclaiming  houses to be from the seventeenth century, home-made soup in the Village Hall and a gentle river which very occasionally rises and destroys. 

  Every year it has a theme. I personally like it when it is politically based as you can see the personal  fury put into every scarecrow masterpiece, a personal fuck you to a neighbour they KNOW voted the ‘wrong’ way. Passive-aggressive scarecrow antics should definitely be more of a thing. 

This year however is Sci- Fi. I know nothing about Sci-Fi. I like Victoriana, seances, and graveyards. Thus these scarecrows are somewhat more discombobulating than normal. Meaningless (to me) effigies from the future with a vague sense of menace. So many plastic ET heads I think there must have been a communal bulk-buy from Temu. Much rustling of bin bag Darth Vaders in the cold implacable  fury of an English spring day. 

 A paper-mache  figure with pursed whorish lips and Turkish surgery eyes stares over a wall. A beautiful bulging old wall. I have no idea who he is meant to be. I wonder if people put scarecrows out to intimidate their neighbours or convey hidden meanings. I then realise I am reading too many shit crime books on Kindle Unlimited. 

I’m not getting Sci-Fi from this- I feel like they are maybe using an old scarecrow from the Wickerman themed scarecrow festival which is all local and super-secret and definitely does not end in a car boot sale. 

Think someone just loves to make everything somehow about Elton John. 

Again no idea but suspect that image will come back to haunt me around 3.30am. Is that a cuddly fluffy bunny rabbit under his crotch? Why has he got no face? Is that a gun? 

Hurrah- another one for that pre-dawn terror when somehow your brain is singing that ‘Upsy Daisy’ song from ‘In The Night Garden’ and you can’t remember your own name but have a crushing terror about Something and it is work again  tomorrow. An almost creepy amount of love has gone into this scarecrow.  No idea (again!) about the Sci-Fi element but would not be surprised if this scarecrow sleeps in the bed of whoever delicately, lovingly, tenderly made it. 

I love the fact that the Scarecrow Festival is for families. My child used to skip around it with golden curls, joyful delight and abandon- now he has been forced to come here under sufferance and skulks around lank haired and frowning in Adidas like someone on the forefront of County Lines.

 But the Scarecrow Festival is for Families! So someone has thought long and hard about whether they can make a scarecrow with the Sci-Fi topic and somehow also make a joke about paedophilia. Whoever they are, I salute them.

Apologies for the poor picture. This deserves better. The frankly astonishingly brilliant premise is ‘Alien Vs Predator’.  The alien is another little ET, the Predator is Micheal Jackson and to add to the wonder is the text underneath-’ RIP MJ- he touched generations.’

England scarecrow festivals at their finest. 

If you go down into the woods today…

Just your everyday forensic dead body  pinned against an ancient tree in the woods scarecrow.  The mind boggles of what would happen in Wray if there was a Horror theme. 

Unusual in its dedication to actually using scarecrows, this other Predator based scarecrow is pleasing from the look of sheer delight on the cheery face of the scarecrow who has just had another scarecrow burst from his ruptured straw intestines. 

And this is what an English Bank Holiday should always be about. 

Good night.

 And sleep well. 

If you want to go further down the scarecrow route may I recommend the excellent writer, Tom Cox who also has a pleasingly morbid fascination with them.

SCARECROW