We got up this morning to recollect that it was the occasion of a local event called Cartmel Show.
This is a sort of Appleby Fair for the middle classes, and normally it is the sort of event that I would avoid with enthusiasm. However one of my friends from my schooldays was going to be there with her travelling olive stall, and my friend Elspeth was exhibiting her flower arrangements and cakes in the hope of qualifying to join the middle classes if they did well enough: so of course we went.
The children expressed a decided preference not to attend on account of the rain. Also they have a pronounced lack of interest in farming or country crafts as produced by people trying to find an alternative to proper employment: so in the end Mark and I went by ourselves, which was actually rather splendid, a bit like having a holiday from your children.
Of course it was every bit as thrilling as you might think. One corner was occupied by the Pony Club, where lots of Barbour-clad mothers were trying to encourage grumpy-looking ponies not to mind being sat on by over-excited eleven-year-olds. There were interesting-looking stalls everywhere, and pens and pens of everybody’s best sheep.
Mark thought the whole event was mildly disappointing. His childhood memories of farm shows include huge prize bulls and competitions where some local farmer does a poo in a shoebox for his neighbours to guess the weight, and sporting events where children fight one another with bunches of stinging nettles.
If that sort of event is your personal gold standard I had to admit that it might be considered a bit dull. There were no prize bulls, and it seemed that everybody on the site was visiting the toilets rather than making use of shoeboxes. Certainly this appeared to be the case when I went. There was a queue a mile long of damply patient ladies and far less patient children, and to my irritation there was no loo roll, which cost me my handkerchief and I had to sniff for the rest of the afternoon.
Apart from this inconvenience some of the prize sheep were the biggest I had ever seen. Mark is a good person to have as a companion for this sort of event because he knows things about sheep, and was able to say learned things like: “That one is likely to be a Suffolk crossed with a Texel, goodness me, could be some Swaledale in there.” This means that people think that you are really a middle-class rural person and approve of you, and I nodded sagely and made suitably interested noises, so nobody ever guessed that I could barely tell the boy sheep apart from the girl sheep.
There was a tent with cages and cages of prize chickens, and an event which looked like a pet show, which we ignored: and a tent full of everybody’s finest garden and kitchen produce.
We tried and failed to guess which cakes had been produced by Elspeth, and admired the monster onions and flower arrangements, some of which were very fine indeed: and then we went to find our friends and their olive stall.
They were in a tent lined with food stalls: pies and honey and fruit flavoured mustard and a great deal of sloe gin. I like sloe gin but wasn’t tempted to buy any because I usually get a bottle from Elspeth for Christmas. This is a good arrangement because I just return the empty one in the summer and she refills it in time for the festivities.
This was without doubt the most splendid part of the day. It was really, really lovely to see our friends, who live miles away and are too busy travelling about selling olives to catch up often: and their stall was absolutely enchanting. They weren’t just selling olives, but nuts and dried tomatoes and stuffed peppers and interesting things made out of flaky pastry: and we bought loads, which was a lovely feeling when we got home, a fridge full of wealth, nice things to feel pleased about at dinner times.
We caught up with Elspeth then, and made her come and admire the travelling olives, except she doesn’t like olives and so had to buy some interesting bread instead. After that we went to the beer tent for a plastic glass of red wine, which made me very giggly. We went with Elspeth to investigate the judging in the produce tent, and Elspeth’s cake hadn’t won, so we ate it, and agreed that it jolly well should have.
We were happily tired and damp when we set off for home, and decided not to bother about going to work because of the wine.
We are about to have dinner. We are going to have Cartmel cheese and baby peppers filled with cream cheese, garlic-stuffed olives and thick doorstops of floury bread, and some raspberry flavoured mustard.
It is a wonderful world.
