Steaming summer

Dave and I are interested in words, and interesting wording on some of the notices we discover on our travels often attracts our attention.

I found this example as I wandered around a splendidly organised summer street fair, held in the Dorset village of Owermoigne. The place was so named because the Moygnes family lived there for three centuries, dating from Norman times.

This clarion-clear proclamation seems quaintly out of place today: I doubt if there have been many steam-driven tractors clanking slowly though Owermoignes’ narrow lanes recently, but a local ruling must, I presume, continually enforce itself, a lack of vapourous locomotion notwithstanding, until either someone revokes it, or the paint peels away.