New Vision for the Village Show

 

These things often start over a meal and a few drinks don’t they? So it was with the village show. We were having a meal one night in the old Traherne Arms and about to tackle the extensive dessert menu they used to have when we somehow got onto the topic of cake and veg. What about, a show where the village could come and display the fruits of their labours? Genius idea – we both agreed, probably well into our second bottle by now, and as we talked more and more ideas popped into our head. Ooh, what about misshapen veg? How about, your three best eating apples and don’t leave out cookers, yes, we’ve got an old apple tree, we can enter some of those. And CAAAAKE categories, which we will be able to taste. Yes!!!

We left the pub with a half formed plan. That was quite a number of years ago now, I forget how many and yours truly has entered something most years. Generally, I have gone for the blitzkrieg approach, entering as many categories as possible and have actually won the produce shield – once I think. Over the years we have had enormous fun. I cannot forget Mr W coming home from scouts one night (9pm) and announcing that he was going to make bread (this was before we had a bread maker) and frantically raiding the cupboard for flour. The resulting ‘brick’ was proudly conveyed to the show and roundly trounced into last place.

And how we giggled the first year watching the cake judge putting on her white coat and getting her note books out and tasting spoons. Oh my god, she is taking this seriously! We peered at this spectacle through the hatch from the old kitchen, trying frantically not to laugh out loud like a bunch of kids.

Although the show has been run by the scout group it has never been run as a fund raiser for the group, in fact it more or less breaks even. It was always intended to be something for the village and over the years I think it has become a feature of the village calendar. We have however found that we seem to have less time available to organise it what with one thing and another. Our pool of kids, who have often been drafted in to help on the day have grown older and are disappearing off to university and, well, life just seems to eat into our time despite our best intentions.

At our last scout executive meeting we decided that we would really like to hand the running of the village show over to the village. We would envisage a small number of people who could be brought in this year and perhaps gradually over the following years, a new group of people would take over. It is not hard to run, mainly thanks to the brilliant programme that Al has written to handle the entries on the day. It is simple, and easy to use.

So this is where you come in. We are inviting anyone interested in running the village show to come forward, contact us and we can arrange a meeting when we can all get together. We could do with some new ideas and fresh blood and who knows, perhaps it can branch out to, ‘cutest puppy class’ and ‘village dash’. It’s up to you but it would be a real shame to see it fade away into a distant memory. Let’s keep it in the village calendar and make it bigger and better. If you are interested, please contact any of the scout leaders in the front of ‘What’s On’. It would be lovely to see you!

  SW