Village Show and Beer Festival

 

Ah! Its the day of the Village Show, to be followed by the Village Beer Festival! So glad we chose this village to move into!

0800 hrs

Our morning began early by creating the Twins Vegetable Animals. Twin 1 had decided to create a Turtle using a mango, grapes, and blueberries whilst Twin 2 had opted for a Giraffe using a Galia melon, carrots, peas, sweetcorn, red pepper, an apricot and celery.

We set to work. Cocktail sticks and glue gun prepped and ready to go! The Turtle was quite a straight forward creation whilst the Giraffe required slightly more structural work and balance! It sounds like it should have been an easy thing to do but as we progressed down the route of bringing life to this random collection of allotment dwellers, the Giraffe’s head was causing some issues!

The apricot which had been chosen as it’s head was really rather a soft fruit to work with (who’d have thought?!) It sat precariously on top of a cocktail stick which itself was stuck into the end of a carrot neck. Now, I can safely say that I have never glued vegetables together before. That is now one thing I can tick off my bucket list!!!! Twin 2 helped out gluing and sticking on pea eyes, carrot tip ears, sweetcorn horns (ossicones to be Giraffically anatomically correct! Don’t say I never teach you things!) and red pepper lips and a celery tail.  All things considered it actually looked very cute!

Twin 1’s Turtle also had a cutesy little look to it’s face and together they made a lovely couple!

We also had other entries to get up and into the judging tent – all had to be in place by 10am when the tent closed for judging. I had a photograph of the Twins jumping like mad grasshoppers in the long grass of the field under the category ‘Devonians at play’, and Twin 1 was also entering his a-mazing drawing that he had done of (swooooon!) Legolas. The trickiest entry was the sunflower going in for Tallest Sunflower grown in a pot. Hubs and Twin 1 set off walking up the road carrying this. We live at the bottom of the village…the ‘show ground’ was at the top!

 0915 hrs

Twin 2 and I loaded up the car with the photograph and picture and VERY CAREFULLY collected the vegi-mals. Giraffe’s head fell off!!! ARRRGGGHHHHHHHH!

RIGHT! We quickly removed the eyes, ears, ossicones (again, thank me later for your random fact of the day!) and mouth and glued them onto another apricot, gently placing this on the cocktail vertebrae. We also made a reserve head…(just in case!) loaded up the car, Bubs included and made our way into the heart of the village.

 0925 hrs

TRAFFIC CARNAGE!!!

CAR-MAGEDDON!!!

Unable to turn out of our road and make our way to the show. We waited…and waited…stationary traffic.

0945 hrs

There would not be time to pick our way through the traffic coming down from the show ground and negotiate the several horses that inevitably would also be there too. Drastic times…I decided to take the lesser driven route through several lanes – these can be hazardous and as is always the case for me, riddled with Sod’s Law. I was bound to meet a tractor, mobility scooter, lost DPD van on the tightest bend! But remarkably, I didn’t! Those vegi-mal Gods were smiling on me today!

0958 hrs

We made it with seconds to spare, deposited the vegi-mals, (luckily second Giraffe head had held itself together which was more than could be said for reserve head which now only had one ear remaining!!), placed Legolas, and photograph in the designated areas and admired our sunflower before the announcement declaring that all competitors must now leave the tent!

1000 hrs

Mission accomplished! We could now go home, shower (I had become rather stressed with the decapitation , lanes and spare apricots!) have lunch and then head up when we heard the Church bells announce the commencement of the Maypole dancers procession to open the show. (Usually I am one of the Maypole ladies, helping to run the weekly practice sessions which would invariably involve untying knotted ribbons, untangling random children from ribbons and hanging onto ribbons for dear life when a gust of wind came by! However this year having only recently given birth I was just an onlooker!).

1400 hrs

We entered the show ground, paid our fee and had our hands stamped and made a bee-line for the tent!  Success!!! The Sunflower had scooped a confident second place being only a few centimetres behind the winning exhibit! My photograph had also taken a second place and Legolas had won the category (freestyle art aged 10-16 years) for Twin 1 – who had seen off competition from many older entries, being just 10 years old himself. We made our way to the vegi-mals. Alak! No prizes here just our little creatures looking a little bit shrivelled and dehydrated!

Not being involved with the Maypole this year I leisurely wandered around the rides and attractions with the Twins and then had the pleasure of watching the Maypole dancers without the added stress of the possibility of things going wrong and needing to be unwound! They danced beautifully and the patterns created were spectacular. The show has now been going for 111 years and to think that for all those occasions generations of dancers have danced on this very spot is very comforting. Steeped in tradition we be!

1700 hrs

It was around this time that the beer festival kicked off and folk began to dismantle all the rides and stalls that had framed the edge of the field. We paid our fee, collected our pint glasses, bought our tokens and strolled into the vast  glorious beer and ale-kegged tent! Selections made from our programme of liquids on offer, we merrily supped our choices in the early evening heat, sat on the village field, with bands playing, children playing and families enjoying each others company.  It’s a very satisfying feeling, especially amid all the painful goings on in the world at the moment.

As evening drew in, Bubs was ready to head home and so we gathered up our clan and headed back home for some cream teas and beers in the garden. We gathered up our entries, collected our winnings and made our way home.   Hmmm, the Sunflower! None of us really wanted to carry that back home!  Luckily, Hubs Mother drives a soft top….you can see where this is heading can’t you?!!

She wasn’t drinking and so was designated driver to bring the sunflower back home! Hubs sat in the passenger seat cradling the pot and they drove down the hill. Of course, they got stuck waiting for a horse to pass by them…right outside the village pub! There was laughter, calls of ‘Where’m you buyed that boy?’ and a round of applause, before the car could move on again!

And that’s our village! On village show day at least…aka Limited Cash-back Day at the Village Shop! (They only let you have £20 as one year so many people took up the offer of cash-back that the store ran out of cash!!!!!)

Next year I don’t think we’ll attempt vegi-mals…longest dandelion root is sounding rather appealing though!…….!

 

The Aloha Mummy