Great Yorkshire Show
On Wednesday me and Batman went to see the Great Yorkshire Show, which is the major agricultural show up here. It's got animals, it's got all sorts of commercial stalls, it's got entainment, and is well worth going to. It's a chance to walk your feet down to the stumps, which I did, much to my surprise. My injured foot held out wonderfully, so things are looking up on that front. Managed to get sunburn despite using sun-screen - I kept missing a couple of bits, plus the parting in my hair got burnt (only found out when I combed my hair this morning - ouch!)I've chosen the type of sheep I want to get when we have a large field to put one or two in. It'll be a Shetland. It's the type that has spindly legs, a kind face, but a naughty look in its eye. When we walked round looking at all the different breeds, it was the Shetland and its Hebridean cousin, that showed some interest in its surroundings. I could almost see the Shetlands thinking, whereas virtually all the other sheep breeds just sat or stood in a very bored manner. Admittedly, the sheep were hot and probably tired, but the Shetlands still had a buzz about them despite all that.
And I got a bag of candy floss. They don't seem to have those machines which show it being spun anymore, and where they put a stick in for the stuff to adhere to. On the upside, it's actually easier to eat - a pull from the bag, rather than trying not to shove your face into the floss to get a bite.
posted by Alex Bordessa @ Thursday, July 13, 2006
6 Comments:
How does it feel to go to one of those show things and not have a re-enactment to, well, re-enact?
Glad the foot held out. :o)
You're right; it was weird not to be re-enacting. Instead we watched some chaps from the Royal Armouries doing Elizabethan sword fighting (they were the only re-enactor types there)
Will your sheep be Buddhists, as per the book, Buddhism for Sheep, you mentioned on my blog? I really will have to get a copy. The Shetland on your link looks more intelligent and lively than other breeds (the stuffed Cotswold with the corkscrew curls we saw last summer at the Corinium Museum was obviously a blonde bimbo).
I love agricultural shows. We have the South of England Show a few miles down the road at Ardingly in June and a Kentish one at Edenbridge at the end of August. The Ardingly Show is too big and commercialized for my taste, though. The best one we ever went to was the much smaller-scale Bellingham Show in Northumberland when the kids were young. As well as the livestock judging, there were sheepdog demonstrations, proper country crafts, competitions for best fruit & veg, best jams & cakes, a children's gymkhana straight out of Thelwell, Northumbrian pipers and Cumberland wrestling (men in trunks and white tights but all taken very seriously). Philip Larkin wrote a poem called Show Saturday about the Bellingham Show which captures it beautifully.
I think my sheep will be what they darn well please, if the barmy look on the Shetland sheeps faces were anything to go by :-)
The Yorkshire Show is huge and quite commercialised really; lots of farming equipment on show, but there are also organisations like English Nature. Still enjoyable because of all the animal shows (watched some pony showing, for example). I can remember going to small local shows as a child, and they were always fun - tug-o-wars, steam engines, etc.
Love your icon (or whatever it's called) btw
Just as it should be -- free-thinking sheep!
Re the icon - I found it on the Google picture-finding thingy that you mentioned in one of your comments recently. The pic only popped up on my blog this morning!
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