Cheese Shop Sketch Proves Prescient

Well, this gives the words "intangible heritage" a whole new meaning. Apparently, the Gloucestershire cheese-rolling race (est. 1826) has been canceled due to over-crowding concerns. It's paradoxical, isn't it? Anachronistic practice gets popular, thus boosting people's interest in the local colour and flavour, and then gets cancelled due to administrative concerns, ending 200 years of tradition. [For those of you confused as to why cheese-rolling would even be invented, it dates back to the practice of putting on races at county fairs for things like expensive foodstuffs and clothing, thus giving poor people an opportunity to both win a luxury item (to use or pawn for cash) and to simultaneously provide entertainment for the masses. See here for a discussion of smock races, another popular entertainment of the 17th/18th century.]