On With the Shows

What I’ve been thinking about this week:

• Agricultural Shows.

• Fitting in.

Although I wasn’t at last week’s Highland Show, it has got me thinking about the three agricultural shows I’ve been to in my life. 

Around 1985 I attended the Yarrow Show in my Selkirk High School Band debut. That's me on second horn. I was very proud. 

Some 20 years later, I went to the Highland Show, which I’ve now been to twice. They were very different experiences. 

The first time was with my mum. It was a grand day out, with men shimmying up poles very quickly, sheep and cows with rosettes and impressive caber tossing. And a life-sized haggis…

Fast forward to 2019 and it was a completely different kind of grand day out. I’d just arrived back from a week in Majorca and was wondering how easy it would be to wheel my suitcase the mile or so from the airport to the showfield. Luckily, Ivie surprised me at Arrivals so we got there much quicker than if I’d had to find my own way. 

I have an appalling sense of direction, which is deeply ingrained in my DNA. There is much family folklore of Giblins being in the very wrong place at the wrong time but those are for another day. Suffice to say, I was once in Ohio when I thought I was in Pennsylvania. 

Anyway, we Ivie found the car with no trouble, I dumped my suitcase and in we went to the Show. 

Well, nothing had prepared me for being at an agricultural show with an actual farmer. I had assumed that he would want to have a close look at machinery at some point but I hadn’t bargained on going to each stand and being plied with free booze. They sure know their audience.

And then there’s the bumping into people. Obviously, I’m used to us bumping into someone Ivie knows wherever we go (including Tokyo, for goodness’ sake) but this was on a much larger scale. We couldn’t walk 50 yards without stopping to talk to someone about machinery, spread rates or something else farmery. There also seemed to be a lot of jokes without punchlines. 

Entrance to the market where we heard, "Hey, Ivie!" 🙄🙄🙄

Knowing people or in some cases, being related to them, also meant being led what felt like ‘backstage’. It was a whole new world of people rushing backwards and forwards while huge Clydesdales awaited their turn in the ring. I was hastily introduced to lots of people and handed another glass of wine. And then asked where I was from. 

There was some initial confusion that I wasn’t from a farm or from Wigtownshire but no-one seemed to mind and I kept being handed alcohol. (I may also have suggested that Ivie had exhausted his romantic opportunities locally so was forced to look outside the Shire for his next attachment…).

The story was much the same at Wigtown Show on the couple of occasions I’ve been - meet people, look at tractors and drink. It’s Ivie’s perfect day out, really, and these days, I don’t feel I have to stick around when the chat gets too farmery.

I even joined Wigtown Agricultural Society this week. I’m not entirely sure what it entails, to be honest, other than I won’t have to buy a ticket on the day. And now when people ask where I’m from, I can say The Spittal and they’ll know exactly where I fit into the world.