Editorial: A fantastic week for all to rememebr

Grass area on Marine Parade where the Pask harvest lunch will be held on Saturday 20 February, Tremains Art Deco Festival. Photo / Hawke's Bay Today

The buzz is most certainly in the air as Napier prepares to step back in time.

The Tremains Art Deco Festival arrives with a slight moviedom touch, in terms of the way it sort of recreates that intriguing film called Brigadoon, where for just one day a small town from the past would appear on the landscape.

It's a colourful concept but compared with the remarkable colour that our imminent step back into the past generates, it may as well have been made in black and white.

Here we are, on the cusp of a population explosion.

It is not only thousands of people who turn out for the great Tremains Art Deco Festival — the crowd is today measured in the tens of thousands.

Last year it was estimated about 40,000 people took part in one way or another, and the spread of nationalities was as remarkable as the spread of spats, hats, canes, scarves, wraps, frocks and braces.

One of the most heartening comments I heard during last year's festival came from one of the sons of Dilmah founder and Deco ambassador Merrill J Fernando, who had arrived in the Bay's own Brigadoon to take it all in.

"How do you do this?" he simply said as the soapbox derby was on the roll, as a couple of old bi-planes soared overhead, as steam engines chugged and burbled nearby, as people of all ages dressed in attire of the 1920s and 30s laughed and lounged.

It was, he said, the most memorable event he had ever attended anywhere in the world — and he'd been to a few.

Not surprisingly the Fernando folk are back again, which is great.

They, of course, will be joined by about 40,000 others.

As the event bookings show, there are a good number of Australian folk who dust off the dashing duds to take part in a once-a-year holiday with an unbeatable difference.

And they come from as far afield as Europe and the United States and, as it has been in the past, on the Monday when Brigadoon dissolves back to 2016 they will book more than just flights home — they will book flights and accommodation for 2017.

For the people, it is special. For the economy, it is golden.

What-ho, and here we go.