Facing up to myself

Have you ever had that experience of catching sight of someone, maybe in a mirror or shop window as you pass by, and then realised it was you? In that split second before your brain recognises the unexpected sight and brings the shutters down, your normal filters are absent and you get the chance to see yourself as others do. Always odd. Like hearing yourself on tape. Is that how I look or sound?

Spurred on by a tweet from @Parlez_me_nTory I signed up for the chance to come face-to-face with myself as part of the Facebook Frome exhibition which will be on show during Frome Festival in July. And how fitting that I should be inspired to take part by someone I know mainly through a social network and have only just recently put a face to the name at the Frome tweet-up.

Some of Hans Borgonjon's work (borrowed from his website at www.hansborgonjon.co.uk)

The man behind the Facebook Frome exhibition is local ceramic artist Hans Borgonjon who will be showing porcelain face casts of 50 townsfolk. On his website, Hans explains the very modern idea behind his forthcoming exhibition: “In an age of social networking where we may not have even met our online ‘friend’ face to face, ‘Facebook’ Frome asks what it is to relate to another person, what our face means to us and what it can portray to others? What are the real masks we habitually wear? Through the process of taking the life casts, the artist himself comes into real life contact with people that he does not know. The anonymous faces on show may be people that we have seen locally but perhaps not really noticed or interacted with before. As Borgonjon says “It is easy to be part of the same safe group of friends and family but how do our thoughts and feelings change when we face another?”

All the faces on show during the exhibition, which will be on in the Silk Mill behind M&S during the 10-day July festival, will be anonymous. So will I recognise myself? In a sea of 50 faces will I see myself? And when I’m confronted with my own countenance how will my facade hold up?

It was a lovely and interesting experience to have my face cast. I felt some trepidation before I sat down, hair scraped back and swimming cap on. I thought I’d feel enclosed and claustrophic but actually it was like a high-class spa treatment. A quick slick of Vaseline over eyebrows and lashes and I was set. Cool and incredibly soft silicon paste was smeared over my eyes and around my face while Hans and his partner Lin talked through every movement. Once the first daub goes on you have to sit quite still but the experience was so relaxing it wasn’t difficult. I imagine it’s what mud mask treatments feel like, a light touch smoothing this cool, soft substance over the face. Then there was a light hairdrying to get the silicon to set followed by a layer of wet plaster bandages and more hair drying.

Then it was time to peel off the mask and reveal myself. Peering into the hollow I saw the left-behind traces of make-up I thought had all rubbed off earlier from rushing around shopping - the perfect brown eyelashes formed from mascara and the last traces of lipstick. Eerie.

So this is me.

It’s an interesting experience even to put this photo on here. I want to explain certain things about the way it looks but I guess the point of this is rawness and an inner side revealed. What is fascinating about the above photo is the optical illusion it presents. You’re actually looking into a concave mask yet the image looks convex. So I can’t wait to see what the exhibition will be like. Hans plans to have both convex and concave masks lining the wall, so will the inner and outer shapes produce a different look to the same face?

The whole experience took about half an hour from arriving to leaving. And just 10 to 15 minutes sitting quietly listening to the movements around me; the music playing quietly in the background, the simple explanations of what was going to happen next. I do a fair bit of yoga but still struggle to find the right head space for the meditation at the end – to find the stillness needed to clear the mind. But strangely I found a taste of it there, sitting on a kitchen chair covered in towels with the tight clasp of a swimming cap on my head. How often, in this frenetic world of constant stimuli, do we find stillness and the chance to tune inwards to the space inside our heads? Because moving could potentially have ruined the effect you have to become like a statue. That period of enforced stillness was worth it in itself.

A face cast in porcelain by Hans Borgonjon (again borrowed from www.hansborgonjon.co.uk)
Not one of the Frome 50 but gives an idea of what they'll look like. Promises to be a beautiful exhibition - hopefully!

Hans is well on his way to finding all of his 50 faces but if you’re interested there may still be spaces. He’s looking for a real cross section of our community – age and ethnicity in particular. Check out his blog here where you’ll see the face-casting process. There’s a contact form there as well or you could try emailing him at Hans AT HansBorgonjon.co.uk. And put a date in your diary for sometime between Friday 6th July to Sunday 15th July, 11am- 5pm daily to see if you can put a face to my name!

Roll on forging Frome’s missing cyclepath link

I have a new favourite thing. It’s free, good for me and totally lifts the spirits. It isn’t earth-shattering. In fact you could say it’s pretty mundane. But at the moment I can’t get enough of walking along the Colliers Way cycle path.

Sustrans Route 24 starts on a narrow back road that joins Buckland Dinham and Great Elm. You can park under the bridge beside its mouth and walk to Radstock and beyond on a lovely flat surface through some gorgeous countryside. You don’t need any fancy footwear or expensive kit. Just whatever you’re wearing and some flat shoes.

This 23 mile long route goes all the way to Bath, following the path of the Somerset Coal Canal which later became a railway line.

You can still see one side of the tracks as it slowly gets covered in moss and vegetation. What views to enjoy as you travelled along either by narrow boat or railway and now on foot or bike. 

Pedestrians, cyclists, runners, dog walkers, horse riders – all fresh-air seekers can be found sniffing out an easy walk at any time of the day. We all wander and manoeuvre around each other with ease and good humour, enjoying the egalitarian feel along the path. And everyone is so polite. It’s like a bubble of good manners, where smiles, nods, polite hellos, good mornings and lovely afternoons get exchanged as you pass along the tarmac path.

It reminds me a bit of a Californian boardwalk, only this time green fields replace the sand and sea although I’ve yet to see a roller blader in a bikini skate past me along the path.

As the tarmac slips by under my feet it begins to feel a little like I’m on an outdoor treadmill in an open air gym. Only here the treadmill is stationary and I’m the one who’s hit their stride burning up the miles, watching the countryside unfold beside me, lulled into travelling a lot further than I’d planned by the path’s easy-going nature. 

On one Sunday morning a little boy buzzed past me on his bike, his training wheels rattling on the concrete path. His mum slowly cycled behind, warning him to go round other people on the path, not just plough on through. I don’t think he’d completely grasped steering so he just determinedly kept on peddling in as straight a line as he could manage. And people good-naturedly made way for him, warned in plenty of time of his approach by the sound of his plastic stablisers.

Another time I was entertained by the sight of two dogs hurtling along by themselves, totally engrossed in racing each other. Until they caught sight of me and came to a halt in a synchronised comedy cartoon skid. They looked at me then turned tail and ran away, presumably in the direction of their unseen owner.

I hear there’s work to extend Route 24 which will provide the missing two-mile link to join it to Frome. It does sound quite a feat - three new bridges and a tunnel are required as well as the permission from several landowners to pass over their land. But there’s obviously an active group pursuing the dream and even planning to clear patches in readiness for a quick start if everything falls into place.

Now it’s my new favourite thing I’m impatient for it to open. It would be fantastic to avoid getting out the car to get started. I could nip down the road, pick it up from the Cheese and Grain and walk for miles without even noticing. So I’ve signed the petition – and you can too at www.fromesmissinglink.org.uk/

Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Getting into the holiday spirit at the Merlin Theatre

Walk through these doors into another world

I’ve had two lovely consecutive nights out to the Merlin Theatre in Frome in the run-up to Christmas which have really got me into the festive spirit. And it’s given me a New Year’s resolution – to go more!

It’s such a fantastic venue – there’s not a bad seat in the house. You can see the stage wherever you sit and it’s small enough to feel really intimate. Which worked a treat for the first performance I’ve enjoyed there this week. I went to see Pip Utton’s one man show about Charles Dickens. Unfortunately the theatre wasn’t full but the lights were low and the stage was set with just a deep red carpet, a wingback armchair, side table and a dripping, flickering candlebra. It created a really cosy atmosphere where you could lose yourself in the world created in front of you by actor Pip Utton.

I learnt that Charles Dickens had carried on a secret affair for 12 years which wasn’t uncovered until 60 years after his death. He left his wife and set up house with his sister-in-law – not the woman he loved. He made most of his fortune, which his family had dissipated within years of his death, from reading tours of Britain and America, rather than selling books.

And the audience was left with a special mission by the character Charles which has become another New Year’s resolution for me. Choose a Dickens and read it one chapter a week. That’s how the stories were read originally, published weekly in a magazine. And he suggested we choose our novel and notice the time of year in the opening chapter – and to start read it then. Because we should find the weather and calendar moves with the weeks we’re reading. It’s a novel approach to a novel I thought and well worth a try with a Dickens from my book shelf – so I’ll give it go in 2012.

What I also loved about that trip to the theatre was that it left me with an itch to read the new Dickens biography by Claire Tomalin. Her Jane Austen biography was a surprisingly cracking read. So I’m sure she’ll have worked wonders with Mr Dickens, whose life obviously has some stories to tell. Rubbing shoulders with one art form opens you to the possibilities of another – or discovering a new subject to get to grips with. It leaves a legacy.

My trip the following night was to enjoy mince pies, mulled wine and a screening of Holiday Inn. I was sure I’d seen this black and white golden olden with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire but it turned out I hadn’t. It was all new to me – yet very familiar. The Irving Berlin score includes at least two songs I guarantee you’ll know - I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas and Easter Parade. There were some dodgy moments when Bing and band blacked up to celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. You could palpably feel the current of unease pass through the audience as the musical number went on – heightened when the one black character (the housekeeper called Mamie) used the word darky. A shuffling, squirming moment in the 21st century.

But this clash of a bygone culture aside, I did come out of there with my festive spirit well and truly in place. Please have a look at the brochure to see what’s on this time next year – I would recommend it.

I’m not a big theatre goer but I feel I need to be more adventurous next year. Pip Utton is back for a Merlin fundraiser in April with his one man show called Adolf. While this doesn’t necessarily seem like the definition of a good night out I’m confident, having seen his Dickens rendition, that it’ll be excellent. So that’s definitely going in the diary. I do like theatre trips which open your mind to something new – and my two trips to the Merlin have certainly done that.

I confess to being a bit worried for the Merlin – along with other places in town that are struggling to replace lost funding. I may have heard this wrong but I think there is only one paid member of staff at the Merlin now and the rest is run completely by volunteers. Somehow this doesn’t seem quite sustainable to me over the longer term. And how does a venue trade its way out if it just simply doesn’t have enough staff to do what needs to be done to market it?

But if I’m troubled by that – and I am – then I need to do my best to support it. So my trips to the Merlin have left me with at least two very pleasant New Year resolutions. Go to the Merlin more and read a Dickens a chapter a week. How hard should it be to stick to those?

Manhattan meets Frome at the local museum – in my mind anyway!

Frome or NY?

I’ve never been to the Frome Museum yet I walk past it every time I walk into town.

I like to think it’s the town’s answer to New York’s Flat Iron building, pushing its wedge of knowledge into the town – albeit on a much more muted scale of course that the Big Apple landmark.

Ok this is the Flat Iron Building in New York - but see what I mean?

It amuses me as I trudge past it with my heavy shopping bag that – in my head anyway – there’s some mock Manhattan glamour right here in my home town.

And while we’re at it – I now have a new vision in my head after seeing pictures of its fabulous staircase on the Frome People website.

The winding staircase in Frome Museum

Again I know it’s all in my mind but, whatever, it’s my dream – I think it’s the town’s answer to the Vatican’s twirl of spaghetti staircase

The Vatican staircase - I know, it's all in my head!

I wrote an article recently for Frome Life about Home in Frome’s work capturing the voices of the town’s workers, part of its Frome Aloud project.

I learnt the town’s industrial past is very different to the other main conurbations in Mendip which have a much more rural heritage. And you can see it all in the museum. So for once I headed inside one foggy morning instead of by-passing the open door. It’s small inside – so a trip won’t take up too much time – and, for all my make believe fancys about the town,  I found some real home truths that were just as amazing to my mind.

The Achilles car for the man of moderate means

Did you know the town had a small part to play in manufacturing cars? Made in Frome by B Thompson & Company in 1903, the Achilles was described as ‘the car for the man of moderate means’. It was an open-topped beauty that looks a bit of tight squeeze for a family with shopping! Its price tag was between £145 and £300. Would that have been moderate at that time?

Frome was famous for its blue cloth which was used to make army uniforms. Apparently the Trinity area was known as woad ground because it was grown there. What I also know about woad is that it was mixed with urine to make a dye and woad workers smelt very unpleasant! 

Winchester's King Alfred's Statue

And a blast from my past – JW Singer cast King Alfred’s statue in Winchester. I went to school in Winchester so I have walked past that statue countless times as a child. I like the discovery of an unknown thread joining me to my future. Another fanciful flight of imagination I know but I now like to think the Wessex monarch was pointing towards my future in Frome, a place I love, away from a place I never really cared for.

JW Singer was a big part of the town’s industrial past. Famous sculptures crafted in this small Somerset town are familiar – and even famous – landmarks, captured on postcards and in photos that must have travelled the world.

The statue of Justice on the Old Bailey

Like the statue of Justice that tops the Old Bailey (now known as the Central Criminal Court). I loved the story I read in the museum about how townsfolk would line the streets cheering finished statues on their way as they journeyed from the Singer factory up to the railway station where they were loaded onto the train to their final destination. There was clearly a sense of town pride in these large structures going out into the world, taking the name of Singers and Frome all over the country. Imagine what that must have looked like – these huge burnished metal sculptures freed from the confines of the factory floor and travelling in all their outsized glory through the streets out into the big wide world. No wonder people lined the road to the railway station to wave them on their way.

Another big employer in the town was Butler and Tanner Printers. And I discovered that Delia (she’s moved into the only first name needed category a la Madonna) has been to Frome to see one of her many titles coming off the presses. Along with Anneka Rice, Terry Waite and Harold Wilson.

A cockey gas lamp and a thing of beauty

Another favourite thing to do is spy Cockey lamps around town. They clearly come from a time when beauty was still a pre-requisite of town furniture design, unhappily no longer the case unless you live in France. Cockey began casting for the gas industry in the early 19th century which is why Frome got gas street lighting as early as 1831. Now of course we have to keep an eye on them to make sure they’re not being taken down for ‘health and safety’ reasons by the very authority that should be protecting them. Marvellous what you can get away with if you’re a council.

Rossetti painting with a mossy wall and white calf but not painted in Frome

I did know this – Christine Rossetti moved to Frome in 1853 to open a school but didn’t much enjoy the town. I went to an excellent Frome Festival event this year in St John’s Church which mixed contempory music and readings from her poetry and letters. Her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti asked his sister whether she could keep an eye out for a mossy wall and a white calf at the local cattle market for a painting he was planning. It doesn’t look as if she was able to oblige though. The painting was started in 1854 but not in Frome.

And Frome fingers have helped keep millions of electrical appliances busy doing their thing, thanks to the fuses made at the Cooper Bussman factory, founded by Kenneth and Bob Beswick. More than 4,000 million fuses were made in the former factory on the Saxonvale site.

So if you fancy a quick trip round the museum it’s open Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 2pm. It’s free entry although it’s worth a donation because it’s all run by volunteers. And the exhibitions change regularly so there’s always something new to look at. Find out more at its website here.

Lastly thank you to Frome People website – I’ve pinched a couple of photos so I hope they don’t mind. There are some great picture galleries of items in the museum which are well worth checking out on its website. Search Frome Museum when you get there.

King of the Cobbles

If this blog is about what I love about Frome then the Cobble Wobble has to be up there with the Valentine Lamp lighting as one of those quirky events that sums up this town.

It starts here

If you don’t know Frome then the Cobble Wobble is a 179 yard bike dash up a cobbled street in Frome. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Until you realise there’s quite a gradient up Catherine Hill and the cyclists have to negotiate a bit of a 90 degree turn less than half way up as they come out of Stoney Street.

As someone who hasn’t sat on a bike since the mid-90s it looks an epic trip, akin to scaling Mount Everest. You are going to feel the burn. King of the Cobbles Lewis Lacey did it in 22.2 seconds.

What all those cyclists must be longing for - the finish line

Does someone even have time to break a sweat doing it that fast? If you want a flavour of the madness and the fun then watch this.

Pure blue sky after a morning of drizzle

The Cobble Wobble is held on a Sunday – this year the day after Frome Carnival. It was a beautiful day eventually, after dawning grey and drizzly. But they say the sun shines on the righteous and by the time the early afternoon event started it was pure blue sky.

Safety is paramount at this event

First up the hill were the course inspectors – health and safety jobsworths, complete with clipboards and feather dusters, making sure the cobbled race path was free from obstructions and hazards, like banana skins. It wasn’t real – just another fine piece of street theatre to entertain the crowds before the mayor biked up, with the jobsworths running in front of him with red carpet to line the way.

It’s a long event – it does go on for hours, so I’m afraid I didn’t stay to see the King of the Cobbles whoosh up the hill in less than 23 seconds.

The masked El Cobblo strides out to meet his public

But I did see El Cobblo pass by in his shiny blue wrestling outfit. I’m not completely sure what he’s all about. Something to do with being a Mexican wrestler wanting to revenge something to do with his brother. Quite what that has to do with cycling escapes me. But it makes for a comedy moment when you see him striding through the crowds in his shiny blue cape. I’ve no idea who’s under that mask but way to go!

I caught up with some of the highlights on YouTube, including the tandem pantomime horse having a minor crowd collision before determinedly pushing off again back on course. It’s well worth a watch here.

And once again there were plenty of businesses with the vision in these straightened times to see that sponsoring or helping out with this kind of event brings kudos to them – and the whole town. Big up to them for putting their money where their mouth is.

Andrew Denham is in the red top!

And how impressive is Cobble Wobble supremo Andrew Denham who organises the whole event in his spare time? He’s undoubtedly supported by lots of people on the day, and in the run-up, who also volunteer their precious free time. But I reckon if you could harness that man’s energy and commitment, you could power Bristol and beyond. It’s his third event and it just gets better and better. This town is lucky to have people willing to put so much effort into their ideas. Because it’s what helps to make this town special.

A heady mix on Carnival night

The house lantern from the 2010 Frome Carnival

I was bewitched by Home in Frome’s entry during last year’s Frome Carnival. That huge house lantern with the shadow puppets twirling sausages, dancing and scrubbing their backs in the bath was just breathtaking as it went past me, carried high on the shoulders of four people. It was such a simple idea and completely charming.

The moving shadow puppets were a very clever idea

It really stood out among the more conventional flatbed lorries pumping out chart hits and diesel fumes as the generators churned out the energy to power all those lightbulbs. Nothing against them – there are as many creative juices flowing on those entries but there’s no doubt those candle-lit lanterns packed a visual punch on the night.

So I jumped at the chance to get involved with this year’s Big Heads challenge from Home in Frome. This idea was bigger and better and what a triumph. I take my hat off to those people who can come up with these ideas and make them come alive with just some willow and tissue paper.

The workshops were full to bursting

I helped the group with its publicity, trying to entice people to come along and make heads. And I helped out in the workshops, making tea, clearing up and sticking on the odd bit of tissue and ribbon hair. It was lovely to watch the people who’d came along to make heads of family members. There was the girl and her dad who created an image of her, complete with blond pigtails. There was the mother and daughter who worked on a representation of the daughter’s husband. There was the Green Man, made by Sustainable Frome folk, and Jenson Button. And a fantastic head carried by a whole family – dad inside and kids working the hands on the crowd. There was the Somerset Griffin, fiery in red, as well as a pet rabbit and a meerkat made by children, helped by their parents.

Heads held high on the night

In the end there were around 20 heads, lit up with battery LED lights, hoisted onto shoulders and paraded through the town. They made for an impressive sight as the evening darkened during the half hour trek from the trading estate to the football club. It was clear that the crowds were again very impressed with the entry and I heard some very complimentary comments. It certainly turned heads! 

I was concentrating so much on the Home in Frome entry that the rest of the parade rather passed me by until we were over the finish line. I watched the lorries and majorettes coming up behind us and it made me realise Carnival night was a good example of the old and new of the town rubbing shoulders, seemingly very happily. 

Lighting up the night !

There’s a bit of a funny whiff in the air at the moment I think. An uncomfortable feeling of ‘them and us’ between Frome born-and-bredders and incomers, over the potential supermarket on the Saxonvale development site in town. You only have to read some of the Frome for All Facebook comments or letters in the local papers to get a feeling of incompatibility. All ‘these creatives’ coming to the town and trying to set it in aspic when the ‘ordinary’ folk want a town that moves with the times and encourages more high street brands to its streets so that people don’t have to travel to Trowbridge to do their shopping. And here we were on Carnival night – all these ‘creative types’ bringing new ideas to a big tradition of Somerset. And it seemed to work.

Tiger shining bright on the night

I’m not convinced we managed to attract a lot of everyday Fromers to the workshops. People seemed, shall we say, very similar. But the reception on the night from the crowds was very good. They seemed genuinely impressed and to enjoy something a bit different on Carnival night.

But watching the other, more traditional, floats drive over the finish line was actually just as much of an eye-popping, jaw-dropping sight for me, as an incomer. There was equal creativity in those entries, just expressed in a different way. As someone who’s not from these parts there’s a certain ‘shock and awe’ at the sight of a Somerset Carnival – all those lightbulbs, feeling the beat and the heat and watching those human tableaux pass you by.  And it made me realise we can all rub shoulders for the town’s sake, come together for a common cause of putting on a spectacle to entertain and entice the crowd to part with their cash. There is a place for everything and everyone on that night in Frome.

So wouldn’t it be good if we could harness and use that Carnival spirit of accommodation when it comes to the Saxonvale question, instead of seeming to draw these battlelines? And there needs to be accommodation on both ‘sides’. I’ve felt decidedly uncomfortable with some of the confrontational language used during a few of those Saxonvale meetings if people didn’t seem to agree with the premise of ‘no big supermarket’ on the development site. And equally the ‘them and us’ feel I’m getting from a lot of comments about ‘creative types’ on the closed Frome for All Facebook group don’t feel overly helpful either.

We need some Carnival spirit about the whole Saxonvale thing it seems to me.

Nothing cheesy about the Frome Cheese Show

Cheese as far as the eye could see!

So that’s another first ticked off the list for me – an outing to the Frome Cheese Show. I always seem to be away in September when the one day wonder that is the Cheese Show sets up camp a few miles outside of town. But this year the marketing worked on me. It must have been the postman who popped a leaflet through the door and for once I didn’t automatically tip it into the recycling. I am trying out Frome things I thought so why not the annual Cheese Show? So I forked out up-front for a ticket – and persuaded three other family members to accompany me. What swung it for me was the free bus which picked up just round the corner from where I live. It was Glastonbury Festival Sunday all over again where the ease of transport made all the difference. I am aware of how old that makes me sound!

It was all so simple. I booked the tickets online and even bought a voucher to get a programme. We stepped onto the almost empty transport outside the showground at 12.30pm and wondered why they’d laid on such a big bus. Then it stopped at the Market Place, filled up and by-passed Sainsburys because there were no more seats.

Once we arrived it was straight into the Fine Foods Hall where the lunch options were almost overwhelming. But the Davey family are no amateurs when it comes to choosing food so we carefully assessed what was on offer before all plumping for a jumbo Gloucester Old Spot hotdog and half a pint of Chucklehead Cider. It was a toss-up between that or an exotic meat pasty or burger. It’s fair to say the Fine Foods Hall was bursting with kangeroo and ostrich meat ready to be slapped between bread or served up in pastry.

Plenty of warnings not to be tempted!

Fully fortified we were ready for the Cheese Pavilion. And what a sight for savoury-loving eyes. Judgement Day had come for every kind of cheese. The hanging signs proclaimed it was a Global Cheese Show, with entries from across the world. And while the signs warned not to eat the judged cheese there was still plenty to pick at from the stalls lining the outer edge of the pavilion. Watching the crowds it was clear the real show troopers came equipped with a cocktail stick to spear all available samples. It was a bit hard cheese if you didn’t like hard cheese because that mainly seemed to be what was being sold. But you could certainly find yourself cheesed out by the time you’d worked your way around the edge of that marquee.

A chessboard fit for a Grand Master

Another favourite experience was the handicrafts pavilion which then segued into the horticulture tent.

There were some fantastic entries like a whole knitted chess set and a farmyard scene, complete with suckling piglets in pink wool.

How cute is that!

Just made me chuckle!

And I am seriously thinking of entering something into the handicrafts programme next year. I reckon some of my crotchet efforts would stand a chance in the scarf or crotchet item sections.

And I don’t know why but the Cake Incorporating a Vegetable part of the programme just made me chuckle.

Meanwhile in the horticultural tent it was giant vegetables a go-go.

These leeks are better groomed than me

Some real tender loving care had been lavished on some monster leeks.

Time and effort had gone into getting them ready – cleaning, combing and trimming the roots and plaiting the leaves. The winning leeks were indeed the show ponies of their class. 

 

That's a showstopping squash

And the children’s Tractor Made Out of Vegetables section was frankly nothing less than a triumph.

Some real imagination and knife work had gone into those creations!

It felt like a proper agricultural show – like I could have been in an episode of The Archers, although I confess I’m not a real country girl so I’m no judge of these things. It was fascinating to watch the mix of tweed and Barbour alongside hot pants and fancy gumboots a la Glastonbury.

There was terrier racing, horse stunt riding, beagle packs and axe and saw woodcrafts in the Village Green arena. Elsewhere there were jodphured showjumpers, tractors galore and milking machine salesmen ready to show off their wares. While I didn’t see the obligatory celebrity who opened the show – this year it was Countryfile’s Adam Henson – I did see Autumn Watch’s Simon King and – wait for it – my sister reckoned she saw Noel Edmonds. I mean what more could you want from a day out!