It's showtime! (Part deux)

Part Two - The Aftermath

Well I think I’ve kept you in suspense for long enough…. I’m sure you’ve all been losing sleep worrying whether the result was so disastrous that I decided to end it all, or so impressive that I took my winnings and skipped off to Acapulco. The far more ordinary excuse is that we escaped to Scotland for a few days (motorised hen door and automatic greenhouse watering systems duly installed) for a wee holiday. I did in fact take my laptop with me fully expecting dismal weather but the lure of bizarrely sunny days on the beach and some (drastically toned down) drinking in old student haunts meant that it never actually got out of the bag. Right, enough - stop your weecht as the Scots would say…

I am extremely pleased and maybe just a tad smug to inform you that you are now looking at the Broad Bean Champion extraordinaire of the parish. Yes, I only went and did it…. First prize in the broad bean class (novice section *she muttered barely audibly under her breath* - but a win is a win regardless of the category and you’ve got to start somewhere after all). I also took home a second with my six pea pods in a pretty strong field (even if I do say so myself) and a second in the onions (*out of two she mumbled*).  Potatoes – nul point. Ditto the rhubarb but I did commit the rookie mistake of accidentally snapping my potentially prize winning stem en route to the show. Doh.  I came first with my roses, sadly as the only competitor in that class, but it’s not my fault if the other competitors took one look at my stunning entry and backed slowly out of the tent again clearly mortified that their entries were utterly outclassed by mine and therefore not worthy of showing. I felt I was slightly robbed with my second prize in the ‘vase of garden flowers’ class as mine were blatantly better than the rest (for ‘better’ read:  bigger, more of them and took up the most space on the table) and it was clearly an inside job for the winner (but I’m not bitter). Our eggs didn’t even get off the starting block. I’ll be having words with the hens before next year. A full programme of identical egg laying practice will be instated six months out. You mark my words.

Turns out bigger isn't always better...

On to the children’s section and we fared far better than I expected. I think we were lucky in that the judge clearly went for the entries that had actually (apparently) been created by a child under 5 rather than some of the very polished entries that even I would have struggled to make given two clear weeks of time. We took home first prize in the ‘house made from Duplo’, a triumph made all the sweeter by the fact that we only had scrappy bits of various packs that had been hand-me-downs over several years, the other entries blatantly having been built from dedicated sets.  Somewhat ironic now that one of the family has just started working for Lego and presented my daughter with a Duplo Farm set not three days later! We also managed a third for our cress caterpillar made from an egg box and Highly Commendeds for our cress grown in a pirate boat and our teddy made from playdough. Chuffed does not even cover it! My daughter, God bless her, even seemed to share in my giddy triumph commenting gratifyingly within ear shot of the other show-goers that “I made that! Look Daddy I did it!” Ha, take that other cheating parents…

Our prize haul - I don't think we disgraced ourselves...

So all that translated into the princely sum of £9.00 of prize money. OK so I can’t quite yet retire on my winnings but it more than covered the bottle of Prosecco that was consumed later that evening. Plus a few rides on a lovely donkey called Jenny sparking what I fear may be a costly  lifelong equine love affair. What I was not perhaps aware of beforehand was the less tangible cost of entering a show. On paper it’s 15p a class, a pittance I hear you scoff. But the actual cost goes a lot, lot further. For starters our veg patch, once burgeoning with ripening veg and pristine plants, now resembles a desolate wasteland as I, at 5.30am on the morning of the show, armed with secateurs and garden fork, turned the whole place over in pursuit of six identical pea pods and three perfect potatoes. “Just one more plant, just one more plant” I muttered to myself like a woman possessed as I went hammer and tongs at each bed, leaving a trail of destruction in my wake.  The rhubarb bed now lies in tatters and the once beautifully symmetrical lines of onions are now a ragged mess as most have been wrenched from the earth before being cast aside like a Tesco’s EU regulation reject for not being quite the right shape or size. That’s before you take into account the irreversible damage inflicted to the inside of the car (worth a fair few grand) as I transported vases of flowers between by knees and pots of cress-filled compost on my knees across a bumpy show field. Oh but it was worth it, boy was it worth it, just to see my name on those cards as I entered the marquee. Every last cent. I’m already plotting and planning my strategy for next year’s competition…

Post-show apocalyptic scenes of desolation on the veg plot