Smash hit

That cold, sunny January day in 2001, I suppose I touched Cambridgeshire and came back whiter — save around the nose, which went an interesting cherry colour as a result of the unbelievably potent fenland winds.

Because if there’s one reason why the Whittlesea (as the organisers insist on spelling it) Straw Bear Festival continues to be a small-scale affair — I would estimate no more than 300 people line the route, or wander off to watch the dancing displays held in front of pubs across the village — is that it’s unbeoffthescalelievably cold.

This isn’t Glastonbury, with the odd spot of rain in an otherwise idyllic setting in the middle of June. This is the fens in January. You know how, when you see a winter-blooming flower in a normal part of the country, you think: “Oh dear, that looks very vulnerable to the cold”? In Whittlesey I thought that about a potato dropped in the road. When a pie from the chip shop proved not to have been heated right through to the middle, it precipitated an almost calamitous loss of heart in our group as it was the family’s only heat source.

Indeed, all mystery as to why the Straw Bear Festival had originally come about — it was first mentioned in newspapers in the 1890s, and nobody knew why it occurred even then — are quickly resolved when one reflects on the insulating properties of straw. My reading of the festival is that the Straw Bear is the only warm man in the fens and he is flaunting his warmth at a collection of villagers who are trying to keep warm by dancing.

The music the bands play — stomping, hearty folk, a great deal of it very fast — is designed so that the musicians lose as few fingers as possible to frostbite. And the dancing — stomping, hearty, ramshackle — is basically a slightly more organised version of people hopping from one foot to the other to keep warm.

And I suppose this, above all other reasons, is why the Straw Bear remains a very special event in the British calendar. For, while all other festivals — Harvest, Glastonbury, Christmas, Easter, Solstice at Stonehenge and the Cheese Rolling Festival (May 30, Cooper’s Hill, Brockworth, Gloucester) — are products of surplus time, abundance and celebration, Straw Bear is conceived of necessity. It’s culture as a survival tactic. It’s art as central heating.

• Whittlesea Straw Bear Festival www.strawbear.org.uk (01733 208245)

  HOW TO BE A PAGAN IN 2005

  READ Julian Cope’s The Modern Antiquarian, the rock star’s painstakingly researched gazetteer of Britain’s Neolithic sites.

  EAT Raw meat, pease porridge and mud with straw in it.

  WATCH The when- paganism-goes-very-wrong- for-Edward-Woodward classic The Wicker Man (below).

  WEAR All those nice corduroys and chunky knits in the sales at Top Shop. Or Damart thermals if you’re going to Whittlesey.

  VISIT The 2005 Green Man Festival (Aug 19-21). Book on thegreenman- festival.co.uk for three days of modern “scary folk” just outside Hay-on-Wye.

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