Bellingham Show 2014

Show day last Saturday, and it was the best I can recall. The elements ignored the baleful forecast, allowing perfectly tolerable weather, and the public turned up in force. There was the usual array of displays, amusements and entertainment. To get the only negatives out of the way first, I starved for lack of any gluten-free sustenance. And the music in the main bar was of a kind calculated to keep the likes of me well out of an exclusion radius of no less than thirty metres. Apart from that, all went endearingly well.

My daughters bumped into most of the people they know. The races were entertaining. The right people won the music competitions, including the endlessly talented Ian Stephenson, who is now devoting a fraction of his time to the Northumbrian pipes. The Farmer went under-recognised with a third prize for the rather handsome hound he entered, but fortunately a tup of his had won first prize earlier in the day, so he was safe to approach by the time I saw him. 

A favourite of the day was the Cumberland wrestling. Very interesting to see the parameters applied at different age and weight levels, the good humour, the mutual protectiveness between the competitors. Not for the first time, Jason Davidson came off unbeaten in his own category and in the all-weights.