Springfield Road and Riverside in Wellington were buzzing with activity on Sunday morning. People rushed about setting up tables outside houses, pricing up potted plants, and hanging red, blue and white bunting across the street as housemartins zipped overhead.

This was no ordinary day. At 10am precisely, the town’s Honorary Freeman and long-time Springfield Road resident Richard Fox invited Georgina and Andy Disney to cut the ribbon and formally declare the fair open. It was the Disneys who organised the first street fair in 2012.

People strolled along the car-free street, and children played in the road, as most residents parked elsewhere for the day. “Not having any traffic around really transforms the place,” said Anita Roy. She and her family sold home-made Indian snacks from their stall.

Up and down the street, people put out their wares – home-made jam, secondhand toys, clothes, retro and vintage items. Newcomers to the street, Paul and Christine Bunyan, had spent weeks preparing for the fair, and their art stall featured many original watercolour paintings and acrylics on slate.

As the ukulele band played on, fair-goers headed to Riverside to Gibby Swaine’s pop-up cafe. Her rock cakes, tea and coffee, and scones were a big draw, and the tables were packed with customers all morning.

Next to her pretty pastel bunting and table-top wildflowers, Martin Caley’s stall had a pirate theme, with bunting made out of a motley collection of hats held up with clothes pegs. “There’s a story behind each one,” he said. There’s the sombrero, from when he and his friends took part in the No-Shave November for charity and grew handlebar moustaches. The one he wore on a sponsored walk through the Jordanian desert in 51 degrees heat. A bright green wig he wore for a stag do. A Jack Sparrow hat. His grandmother’s hat from Canada…

We all wear many ‘hats’, he seems to be saying. All we need to do is talk to our fellow human beings. Be interested and dive into conversation. Share thoughts and emotions. Help one another achieve a more content state of being.

With technology and global discourse thriving in the world, more barriers than bridges are being built between people. “With the politics of today, it is getting harder and harder to build a community,” says Kitty Swaine as she stood with her husband Tom and their friend Emily Southall, outside Emily’s stall on Riverside. “Days like this remind us that we are all friends and neighbours.” The street fair demonstrates that, at least in this small corner of the country, community feeling is thriving.

Roshan Adve