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‘The Festival’ is the seventh and final story in the ‘Orchard to Orchard’ series I created in collaboration in 2024, with photographer James Sebright. The series imagines lives interacting with one site in urban Sheffield over a 300-year period, combining creative writing, photography, photomontage and archival research.

Midsummer evening. It’s nearly eleven, and there is still some light remaining above the trees, but here in the orchard the night is falling. The blackbird has just abandoned his song for today. I’m sitting, breathing the air, when suddenly a bat darts past within an arm’s length of my face. It has gone before I can register any details of its body, but it is unmistakable. And utterly silent.

I sit a little longer, and a fox trots to within a few metres of me. A female, lean but not hungry. I’ve seen her before, but never this close. She stops, stares at me as I try to stay still, restraining a shiver, then she busily presses on, under the old gate and out of sight.  

Fara, my companion, is one the best orchard-keepers in the city. Fara loves this orchard, which is between the tramway and the Henry Bragg Towers. He has seven different varieties of apple, and also some gage trees, and the fruit is heavenly. At this time of the summer we spend hours observing which branches are fruiting well and which to trim, anticipating the autumn’s gifts, and collecting the gooseberries. We often bring Fara’s and my parents to the orchard, they are most excited in June, which begins in picking the pungent elderflower heads, and ends with baskets of gooseberries that go for jelly and wine. The orchards are also the best places to be during high-heats, because the trees give some shade and the misting systems make the air more cool and fresh.

I have been tending the goats for six years now. We move them around the run-down districts like Netheredge and Norfolk, where the old gardens make good grazing and the deadly bracken hasn’t spread. Most days I milk the goats and then take the milk to the yogurt house on Langsett. Sheffield’s goat yogurt is becoming famous now around the country.

Most families, like mine, moved here in the 2050s and 60s, but there have been Yemeni and Somali families in Sheffield much longer. You will notice that most of the gardeners and orchard-keepers in Sheffield are from the Yemeni families (we are also the best cooks!), while the engineering and technical jobs are preferred by people with Somali blood in their veins. But my, the Somali families know how to cook goat curry! The smell of it hangs in the air for days after the Festival has ended.

Festival week is the only time of year when the families from the different groups really mingle and socialise together, including the old Chinese folks who bring their wonderful oyster mushroom fryers. The Festival starts tomorrow, and as night falls now I can still hear the clanging and chatter of the crews setting up. It’s the highlight of the calendar, especially in Sheffield which is well-known for its parties. There are colourful costumes, music, and so much food, and everyone gets involved in some way. People work for months on their clothes, flotillas, musical shows, and when Festival week comes there is always a sense of great joyfulness.

Just beyond the edge of the orchard is the Ancient Furnace. I think the Furnace may have some magical power. It certainly feels that way in Festival week when the procession stops at the crossroads and the traditional singing begins. Apparently there used to be a huge road there, both sides of the tramway, with thousands of fuelled cars. There is a creaking woman who lives in our tower, and she used to drive a quarrying machine when the road was taken out. But how did the Furnace remain here when everything around it changed? It’s so hard to imagine. It conjures in me some idea of the people who built the old places. I would like to get a new job as a stone conserver, taking care of the historical buildings and creating new designs to re-use the blocks and lintels in the stone yards, from all the worn-out houses that have been demolished.  

Eleven-thirty, and it is finally dark. My mind turns to the the autumn evenings when Fara will bring home apples and pickled hops, and we’ll have them with fresh yogurt and some salt bread. I catch myself hoping that this is what paradise will be.