A Grand Day Out...

for Knots in the String.

I love rural shows.

If I trawl through my memories, some of the best have been at local shows where the ambience was so foreign to everyday life and there was a fluorescent brightness to the noise and sights of the day. It was always as if the gypsies had come to town.

I love Oscar Wilde’s words: ‘Memory is the diary we all carry about with us…’ because that’s essentially what sustains us through the tough times, after all, don’t you think? And certainly my memories of showtime are some of the best.

Despite that my Dad was a city man, he learned all he could about the land, passing that love onto me. My most abiding memory of Dad was watching him tie his plaid woolen tie and slip on his beautiful tweed jacket, throwing on a splash of Old Spice and pinning the membership badge of the Royal Agricultural and Pastoral Society to his lapel. He would take me by the hand to give me the day of my life at The Launceston Show and therein lies the dearest memory because in that clasp, I felt so special, so secure. His palm was wide enough and his fingers strong enough for me to know with childish confidence that they held me safe from everything.

The Launceston Show was held on the river- and willow-encircled Elphin Showground and surrounded by the green farming lands of northern Tasmania. When we would alight from the car at the start of the day, there would be the heady smell of flattened pasture, of cattle, sheep and horses. What more could one ask for?

Dad taught me all the British breeds of sheep, horses and cattle (apart from the merino, Tasmania thrived on such breeds at the time) and all the breeds of dogs (Dad showed beagles for awhile). He and I would sit in the fret-worked old grandstand and watch the Grand Parade of gleaming, ribbon-bedecked stud beasts and on the way home, we’d grab showbags filled with Cadburys’ and Nestles’ chocolates.

Thus was my love of country life seeded and nurtured.

When I became a rural researcher/reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, as well as a competitive horse-rider, rural shows across the island became part of both my professional and private life. Perhaps then, I was predestined to meet one of the top journalists and documentary makers working nationally for the ABC Rural Department.

He became my husband.

His family had been Victorian show exhibitors from his birth. In fact, my husband graced the cover of Australian Womens’ Weekly as a toddler, cuddled up in a stock-pen to a Large White sow at the Royal Melbourne Show. Best of all, by the time I met my future in-laws, my future father-in-law had been working for some time with the Australian Wool Corporation, presenting a Wool Show around the nation at many of the top agricultural shows.

With the help of international guest-models and designer clothing from the International Wool Secretariat, he would extol the virtues of wool fibre.

(Sophie, the guest model from France in the 70’s, wearing a superfine wool dress and feeding a calm Kelso Park Border Leicester ram)

The programme would feature ravishing clothes, a fabulously choreographed fashion parade, superfine Uardry merino rams and lambs and so forth. Via marriage then, agricultural shows became a part of my life (and subsequently my childrens’) which is probably why showgrounds resonate, why emotions tingle and I flip back through the cards in my memory catalogue.

I loved Elphin Showground in Launceston. No doubt because I was a child and it was such a special experience. The grounds are now a beautifully landscaped suburb and coincidentally, my daughter had a stunning home there a couple of years back; probably right where the horse-stabling once was and where I used to spend hours of equine-scented longing. She has now moved. But then so did the Launceston Show – many years before, to a site that has none of the romance and pastoral beauty of that original location.

Whittlesea Showground in Victoria is within the historic domain of my husband’s family.

They farmed in the shire from the 1830’s, and over the years had a huge part to play in the Whittlesea Agricultural Society.

My husband was the ring commentator for many years and on a recent visit we saw that his commentary box is still standing next to the age-old pine and that the grounds, velvet green against the smoky blue of the Kinglake hills, still retain their olde-English village-green appearance.

But the last of my three favourite grounds is a miniscule place in Tasmania that we’ve visited annually for years.

This weekend, after a Covid hiatus of two years, we attended Bream Creak Show in southern Tasmania which is run as most shows are, by enthusiastic locals and filled with home cooking, with craft and horticultural displays, bullocks, sheepdog displays, an animal nursery – all the usuals.

But the setting for me is the thing – a green oval carved out of rich, productive pasture and ringed by eucalypts and the trumpeting calls of parrots and kookaburras.

To be honest, I could’ve just sat with a cup of tea, an orange and poppy seed cupcake from the Dunalley Primary School’s stall and just watched the puffed wheat clouds, the autumnal blue sky, the people passing by while listening to the native birds calling above the show’s hubbub. (I often wonder how someone who is essentially an introvert and who eschews crowds and society often, could find such joy in a busy show scene, but there you go…)

We met friends and acquaintances. I even met two authors. We passed the time of day with those we chatted to, pootling on our way to see the next thing and the next and I sat with a dear friend and swapped news arena-side, as we haven’t seen each other since before Christmas. My adult children met a few of their friends and my three year old grandson watched the arena, completely overawed with everything, just like I used to be.

Ah…‘Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose…’

That’s the beauty of an agricultural show – the district comes out to relax, to chew the fat and pass the time. It’s the way it’s always been from the very first show ever till now, and how wonderful that against global odds they continue. It’s part of the fabric of rural living for sure.

A grand day out…

Bookshelf:

I’ve finished the crime novel, The Ruin, on audio. It sustained my interest to the end. Depressing of course as most crime novels are, but well-constructed, enticing in that whodunnit way and beautifully read.

That’s now been replaced by Bernard Cornwell’s Stonehenge. I’m slowly reading through Cornwell’s huge backlist – oh that I could be as skilled, prolific and loved!

Still, I remind myself that my own novels helped me pay for a renovation once, so I must only focus on the positive.

In print, I’m still reading Marillier’s Song of Flight and it reads like like a bard’s performance by a medieval hall fire. Beautiful wordage.

On Kindle, I’ve finished Against a Crimson Sky about Poland in the Napoleonic Wars. Well written and I want to conclude the trilogy – always a good sign.

Currently, I’m reading Anne of Avonlea – gentle words in troubled times.

‘I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.’ Anne of Avonlea.

I still take immense joy from Substack’s Letters of Note, cherishing a desire to leave a box filled with bon mots that have been crafted and written from the wisest and wittiest part of my little brain. Maybe they can be tied in a pithy bundle with a grosgrain ribbon and placed in our old black leather sea-chest.

Joy too from Tom Ryan – a newsletter that chimes like delicate bells. Tom often starts my day in the most gentle and mindful way.

Screentime:

Monty Don’s Garden World streamed on Britbox. I’ve died and gone to garden heaven. I have plans, people. Many plans!

Also watched Tolkein, the movie. This didn’t seem to rate well globally and yet my writer friends all loved it. So did we. A totally dimensional young man with a profound intellect, and whilst it only grazed the surface of his life against the awful theatre of the war to end all wars, one can see how The Hobbit and LOTR emerged.

Boredom Breakers:

Always stitching. Some cooking. Ballet class. Walking my dog, a bit of swimming. And writing. Keeping the artform ticking over. In fact, as I wrote this newsletter, I wondered why I’m focusing so much on memories. And then I thought of the book I’m currently writing – Oak Gall and Gold.

My latest protagonist, 12th century scribe Brother Bruno, has lost his memory. He has but two things he can recall – his name and his skill. There is nothing else. Writing from his POV makes me realise that we are the fabric of our memories and without them there is nothing but a terrifying void. Poor Bruno – and in a time without the specialist neurological and psychiatric care of today to help him find his way back.

So that’s it ’til next time.

This has proved an extra, longer and an earlier newsletter as I wanted to write about the shows while they were as fresh as daisies in my mind. Thank you for subscribing, for reading and please feel free to share any and everywhere.

Till next time – take care and stay safe…