Gallery: July 2006 Bedfordshire County Show
Report by Liz Goodyear, Cat Section Team Leader
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Kevin Hastler & Lucky ............... Our Stall ................ Misty & Her Rattly Tin
The start of the weekend is a Friday night - Steve (my husband) and Philippa go over to Shuttleworth to erect the tents. By the time I get home from work at 8.00 Nikki and Barrie (two badgered co-helpers!) are at my house starting to load their van. Les has been over in the morning to bring paperwork, tables and last minute things such as Helen's marmalade.
Saturday morning, and up at 5.00 to walk dogs. We have decided to take the younger dog with us as they are a good crowd-puller and do quite well with the rattly tin. The sun gets up at 5.50 - I have put my order in for not too hot or wet, so we will see what happens.
Nikki, Barry and Pip arrive at 7.15 and off we go with the two cars and van well loaded with goodies. By the time we were finished setting up the stand looked nice, all we needed was customers. It was very disappointing as it was absolutely dead, very few people at all. Helen and Les came just after lunch to allow us a walk round the other stands and they said that there were not as many stands as on previous years.
One thing that we always enjoy at shows like the Bedfordshire County Show is the amount of people who come up to us and tell us all about there animals which were re-homed with them in previous years. This year was no exception. Kevin Hastler from Biggleswade came up to our stall with Lucky. Lucky was the RATS Dog of the Year 2000. As you can see from the picture Lucky is still very much enjoying life, especially if it includes playing ball, and will be 9 in August. We would also like to thank the gentleman who came up to us to tell us all about the dog that had been re-homed with his mother (we think!). He told us that the dog in question is now living a wonderful life and is a much loved member of the family.
Unfortunately – one of our dogs – Poppy, managed to get under the table and upset not only the coffee but tip it over all of the handouts and we missed writing down his details and of course, we cannot remember them now. So, if our kindly gentleman is reading this, perhaps he would like to get in touch with an update and we could then publish this in our next news letter under a letters section.
Anyway – back to our day… Went home a little disappointed, but Sunday is normally the busier day, so fingers crossed.
If you look back to the start of this report you will see that I placed my order for the weather - not too hot and no rain. However, I forgot to mention very strong gusty wind!! It rained over night and was rough on Sunday morning. We did wonder what we would find when we got back to the site. When we arrived there we passed several collapsed tents, some with buckled metal and our hearts sank.
We were very lucky, our tent was still standing and only one glass vase had broken. At these shows, especially the two day events, a great atmosphere seems to develop between the stall holders, many of whom travel great distances and obviously stay on the site at night - in caravans etc. Luckily for us the man on the stall next door had got up in the night and hammered in our tent pegs or else I think we would have been coming home on the Sunday morning as various others did.
There were many more people that day and we sold quite a lot of things and all went quite well until the afternoon, then the weather went very strange. The sun came out and it was really hot, but then very strong gusts of winds started. The pegs came out of the ground and the front of the tents flew off the ground by three or four inches. Luckily we had some nice young, strong men nearby who grabbed the tent and managed to partly put the pegs back in. Unfortunately, due to the very dry weather the ground was so hard that it was virtually impossible to get the pegs back in.
Our animal boards crashed down twice, narrowly missing potential customers, so they were put to one side as insurance probably would not cover death by photo-board! I hung on to the back of the tent, Nikki one of the corners and Pip tied one of the front corners to her chair and sat on it to anchor it down. Not very good, so we had to admit defeat by 5.00 and pack up - everyone else had the same idea and the less substantial tents were by this time flying around.
We enjoy doing the three shows that we do, a good day is had by all, we meet nice people, have managed to house two cats through leads and made some badly needed cash. We always hope we will make more, but as the old lady says every little helps!! Misty got forty pounds in her rattly tin, so she did well and we bought her and Poppy (who came as well on Sunday as we thought two might have more impact) some liver treats from the dog-deli!!
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