Elizabeth Elder: The best country shows remember their communities
Every year we mark the end of summer by spending August Bank Holiday at Glendale Show at Wooler.
We always have to arrive early as Jake has a job at the show – hosting the bar for the judges and sponsors in the secretary’s tent. Jake is very good in this role as he can chat away to anyone, at any time, on any subject and simultaneously make a coffee or pour a drink. Who said men can’t multi-task?
We get to the showground at 9am – but, of course, the equestrian events have already been under way for a couple of hours. Horses and lie-ins don’t seem to go together.
We go to the ringside members’ tent where you can sit and have a coffee until everything else is open and also – and here is the clinching reason for being a member of the show – gain access to much nicer loos.
The area quickly fills up with others who had to arrive early to put entries into the industrial tent. There appears to have been a three-line whip among committee members to boost entries. Many parents are stressed by having had to supervise/cajole/assist/outline first in pencil their children’s efforts in painting, writing, baking and making small animals out of vegetables.
We watch the horse judging, which goes on in the main ring all morning. As a spectacle, this really is something for the hard-core fans, or equestrian “tragics”, as the Australians might call them.
Here’s how it goes:
1. Horse and rider trot around
2. Horses line up
3. Rider A dismounts
4. Judge has a jolly good look at the horse and the tack
5. Judge mounts and has a ride
6. Judge dismounts
7. Rider A takes the saddle off
8. Horse is led round
9. Rider A puts the saddle back on
10. Rider A remounts
11. Repeat 3-10 for all competitors.
The whole competition takes hours. I secretly wonder if this is really necessary. After all, most people don’t give this level of scrutiny to choosing a house, a car or a partner for life.
As we witness another unsaddling episode, Margaret (in the members’ tent) tells me that “it’s easier to judge a horse naked”. I think I know what she means.
We go and see the industrial and horticultural tent. I am struck by the huge amount of work that has been put in. Some of the exhibits are seriously impressive – the flowers, baking, handicrafts and dressed sticks.
Stick-dressing is a traditional activity of hill-shepherds during the long winter evenings. However, Jake prefers to sit with his headphones on listening to 23-minute album tracks by the Grateful Dead. No entries from us then.
In the afternoon, the main ring entertainment brings back memories of Blue Peter in the 1970s, with a double header of the Red Devils (parachuting) and the White Helmets (motorcycles).
It has become a tradition over a number of years that the Red Devils are billed to appear but always cancel due to adverse weather. I had begun to think they were mythical creatures. But, lo, several members of the Parachute Regiment jump out of the aeroplane, hold hands, carry flags and let off smoke, before landing in the stubble field, some of them at a rather alarming rate.
The White Helmets do that human pyramid trick they used to do with Peter Purves. At the end they give a salute – first to the show president, Michael Walton and then to the show chairman, Nick Hargreave. Both look suitably serious.
I gather that Nick generally likes to avoid the limelight in his role at the show. He has tried to achieve this through the ingenious paradoxical device of walking around in a high-visibility jacket. Brilliant thinking: It’s like a cloak of invisibility – nobody looks twice.
Glendale Show has grown substantially in the past decade, with a record crowd of 15,000 this year. Yet it still retains the best characteristics of a proper country show, where you keep running into friends and relations.
It seems to me that the core of the show is not the headline acts but the bewildering amount of work that people put into taking part in all competitions. I don’t have the mentality for showing, but you have to respect the efforts of those who do.
On the farm, we’ve started selling the bulk of our lambs and cattle in our main marketing period. The prices so far have been the strongest for many years and Jake is displaying an unusual air of optimism.
Unfortunately, in this busy time, we had bad news from the garage, delivered in damning tones: “Your big end has gone.”
I have to report that this is considerably less hilarious than it sounds. Our car is currently having a new engine fitted.
The garage has lent us a very old and very small courtesy car, of a type which is probably reserved as a punishment for negligent customers. It is emblazoned with advertising in garish colours and parts of its catalytic converter appear to be extruding from the exhaust. People have turned their heads, pointed and laughed.
I feel suitably chastised and have resolved to look after our car better in future… if I can only return the courtesy car in one piece…