'Sure ya wouldn’t get an airlock out of it as quick’

“On a scale of one to jamboree, how excited are you today?” asked Killinkere GFC via their official Twitter account on Sunday morning. Well, with a marketing slogan like that, you couldn’t but take them up on their offer, so off we set for deepest Killinkere to see what all the fuss was about.

The verdict? It was brilliant, a festival forged by community spirit and with 36 years of history behind it, held at what is arguably the most picturesque GAA grounds in the county.
And if it was characters you were after, sure they were all there, too. Stepping into the fray, we were confronted by the sight of a grown man in a full-length cartoon pig costume, standing in a trailer being towed by a man in a cowboy hat. On a quad bike.
The swine was, we quickly discovered, the mystery guest. Put down your euro, have a guess. Short on hints, we were wary about taking the six billion to one odds on offer, although loquacious MC Martin McGovern quickly clarified over the microphone.
“Just to confirm,” dead-panned Martin, “it’s the identity of the man in the trailer we’re after. We all know who the lad in the quad is!”
From there, we picked up 99s (if there’s a better hangover cure, I’ve yet to see it) from Mr Curly Top, a Navan man named Hugh Mulligan who has been attending the jamboree for 31 years.
“Maybe there are too many of them [festivals] on today,” bemoaned Hugh, who was happy to see the sun. Because if the farmers are dependant on the weather, imagine how the ice cream men must feel…
From there we negotiated a fashion show, teams of men pulling tractors and sheep shearing, via a penalty kick competition, and found ourselves leaning on the fence of a pen watching four women build a tractor, of 185 parts in all, in eight minutes and 38 seconds.
It was impressive stuff. Beforehand, when taking bets as to how long it would take “the Heather Angels” to complete the task, one wizened gentleman joked that he had called Matty Reilly, “and Matty says it’ll take a month”.
Job completed, the cheers rang out and another onlooker announced to nobody in particular “shir ya wouldn’t get an airlock out of it as quick!”
From there we hit the bar, side-stepping a man carrying a poodle on his shoulder in the style of a camera operator. A boy halfway through a chicken burger roughly similar in diameter to his own skull came careering out of the main hall, as Martin asked for volunteers for the ducking stool.
There was face-painting and cow-milking, bumping cars and “knock the balls to win a teddy” and a hundred other diversions.
While numbers were down, with estimates of about 500, the craic was good, as two of the organisers, Killinkere footballers Liam McCabe and Pat Clarke, explained when we caught up with them.
“It’s going well Liam, isn’t it?” smiled Pat.
“The weather’s good, the sun is out, we have an U12 football blitz and a host of other things. It’s more that we’re providing a service, we won’t make much money out of it. It’s going so long [36 years] that we want to keep it going. This is the first year that we reduced it to one day but everyone is enjoying it.”
And what more would you want? There’s a quaint charm and genuinely good buzz around. We’re already counting the days until next year. Now to brush up on the old sheep shearing…

For lots more pictures, see today's Anglo-Celt print edition.