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Chilli Fayre<br />
Some like it hot<br />
“It rained on my first Parade, in 2006” remembers<br />
Adrian Orchard. “I’d taken up growing chillies,<br />
after seeing how beautiful the plants looked<br />
on TV, and they did rather well, and I thought<br />
I’d sell some pods and some plants, standing<br />
under my umbrella on the village green. I called<br />
it the ‘Southease Chilli Parade’.”<br />
I’m sitting in Adrian’s Southease kitchen with<br />
Nick Carling, talking about how very far the<br />
event has moved on. Current organiser Nick<br />
is again expecting a good turnout to the latest<br />
edition of what Adrian’s ‘parade’ has morphed<br />
into – The <strong>Lewes</strong> Chilli Fayre, now held every<br />
<strong>September</strong> in the Paddock Fields.<br />
“From that first event in 2006 the attendance<br />
doubled year on year,” remembers Adrian,<br />
who significantly stepped up his chilli-growing<br />
game. Pretty soon another Southease-based<br />
chilli grower, Ian Barugh, “a lovely man,” joined<br />
Adrian, which upped the ante. The name was<br />
changed to the ‘Southease Chilli Day’, a pop-up<br />
bar was set up, dishes of ‘Southease sizzler’ chilli<br />
sauce were dished out, DJ Nick started spinning<br />
tunes, and before long it had become one of the<br />
social events on the <strong>Lewes</strong> calendar, the village<br />
green jammed with punters enjoying the chillirich<br />
fare and the last of the summer sun.<br />
It became, however, a victim of its own success,<br />
and by the end the village green simply wasn’t<br />
big enough for all the people who wanted to<br />
participate. “In the last year (2013) we ran out<br />
of booze halfway through the afternoon,” says<br />
Adrian. “We knew that it had gone too far.”<br />
In stepped Nick, who decided that a move to<br />
<strong>Lewes</strong> would be better for all concerned, and<br />
the event continued to grow. “It’s not like all<br />
those other chilli events you might have been to,<br />
though,” says Nick. “There are no macho chilli<br />
eating competitions, and we’ve turned away<br />
loads of bands, and bouncy castles, and suchlike.<br />
We want to keep it as a real chilled-out community<br />
event, for local people, and families, helping<br />
raise money for local charities.”<br />
As ever Nick will be providing the musical<br />
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