A fête worse than death

the long version

"It is one thing to expect a little weirdness when you're up a mountain with a flying saucer-worshipping religion but quite another to enter a perfectly normal Staffordshire pub and find a toe-wrestling competition where one of the contenders is dressed only in beer towels." "Yet when lain Aitch decides to spend the summer travelling round England in search of the English at leisure, he finds himself encountering the living embodiments of the phrase 'summer madness' at every turn. Planespotters, trainspotters, shin-kickers, crop-circle makers and the very British weekend Luftwaffe - Iain Aitch takes it all in his stride whether he's undertaking a Norfolk village fete crawl or receiving a marriage proposal at Stonehenge from a complete stranger." "From the Cornish villagers who float a giant pasty across a river each year to the predatory hen parties who stalk Blackpool dressed to kill, this is an insight into what it is to be English in the twenty-first century."--Jacket.