GALLERY: Help… I’ve become a North Showaholic

Thursday 22 August 2024

I’m not sure when it happened.

But I’ve a confession to make.

I’m totally addicted to the North Show and all its wonderful and infuriating idiosyncrasies.

Where else can you get competitive over eggs, queen cakes, and marrows?

Where else can you watch a dog chasing a plastic bag around an arena and find yourself hypnotically compelled to watch and, somehow, enjoy it?

There are so many magical components and questions.

Like where do they get the speaker system from? You know, the one where you can hear everything with absolute clarity on the south coast cliffs but can’t make out a word being said when you are actually watching the arena?

The show brings hope and dashes it in equal measure.

As you place your entries down in the quiet frenzy of the Wednesday morning you eye up the competition, judging in your own mind where you stand. Counting, always counting and double checking, nothing is more embarrassing than putting in 11 tomatoes when 10 were asked for.

You’ll eye up the good, the bad and the ugly.

Maybe you’ll cast a wry glance at the competitive dads adjusting their child’s garden in a box knowing that the little one probably didn’t engineer the scale bridge that crosses the pond, but dad got to put his toolbox to good use. That, or we have some unbelievably talented seven year old engineers and artists.

And what of the walk back into the tent after it has opened post judging?

Have you ever done the nonchalant stroll, pretending you aren’t looking for your entry, diverting to the flower arrangements while surreptitiously taking a sideway glance for that elusive flash of colour by your pride and joy?

I don’t care what anyone says, we all want one of those little red, blue or yellow cards - they are life affirming in their charmingly simplistic way.

Then there is the aftermath.

All of a sudden you learn that plums need to have their stalks, that some cake plates need to be no more than 9 inches, and that no-one can agree on the difference between a tinted and brown egg.

Somewhere there is a rulebook that explains all this, but you can only speculate it is beholden only to those in some secret club that has decided on what makes a perfect onion, how sloe gin should taste and how ripe a tomato should be.

Last year I was beaten into the dust in the muffin class, so reacted how any right minded person would and refused to enter it this time.

I didn’t even have the reassurance that other people liked my muffins, the youngest in the family kept telling me they were too “healthy” tasting.

It was left to the eggs to do their thing, and given my only role in this is picking out six that look the same because, quite frankly, the chickens do all the hard work, I felt on safer ground.

Right until six speckled quail eggs came along to sweep the top spot and leave me and my chickens sulking a bit in second.

After perking myself up with an ice cream while watching some mad motorcyclists flying through the air upside down, my main (and very mature) reaction is that I can have breakfast with just one of my eggs and be satisfied, you just try dipping your soldiers into a quail egg. Totally inadequate.

Today it is the Battle of Flowers, I’ll be there, tutting at floats where the flowers haven’t been placed in perfectly straight  lines, or if anyone wins when there is more vehicle than intricate floral designs. 

It seems not only am I a North Showaholic, I’m also something of a North Show snob too.