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Back to Menu No More Royal Show Dumfries and Galloway Standard April 2009 What a week this has been! I awoke last Friday morning to find that there has been a call for all sheep farmers to revolt against the dark side of Brussels and that the Royal Show is to come to an end after this year. The Royal show’s demise is a serious affair and one that I would put on the same level of gravity as the axing of Crossroads, the TV series, in 2003. So let’s all just keep calm, have a nice cup of tea and we’ll soon forget about it. I would happily walk over broken glass to get to the Royal Welsh or to The Great Yorkshire shows but if the Royal Show at Stoneleigh was held at the bottom of my garden I think I would stay in and watch the telly. It had no heart no soul and ultimately no hope. The only memorable thing, for me, that did happen at the Royal Show was my stay in Warwick University when my wife and I attended the show in 1992. It was memorable because I was involved in some three-in-a-bed action there, the night before the show, and also because I caused an International incident at breakfast the next morning. The incident at breakfast was spawned when three different cultures collided and ended up in a bit of a stramash. The items in the cultural mix were an English breakfast, some Japanese business men and a well meaning Scotsman…that would be me. I found myself in the queue at the breakfast bar behind three very smart suited Japanese gentlemen. They stalled the queue and gave in to much pointing and chatter when they were confronted with the vast array of plates that were on offer on the counter. In order to be helpful I reached forward and picked up a dinner plate and nodded approvingly, at the stack of plates, in my very best Japanese. They nodded back in appreciation and each picked up a plate. The next sequence of events will haunt me till my dying day. All three of them headed straight for the Rice Krispies! I did my best to head them off but they had had enough of my interference and dismissed me with a scowl as they each placed a scoop of the cereal onto their plate. The Rice Krispies looked like a precarious enough load on the dinner plate but, horror of horrors, they each proceeded to add milk. I had to admire their skill and dexterity as they made their way to their table whilst, taking care not to jebble their milk and Krispies. As for the three in a bed thing, the night before, it’s not what it might seem. My room had been booked for me by the secretary of Scotch Mule association, who didn’t know that I was taking my heavily pregnant wife with me to the show. The diminutive single bed that we found in our room was thankfully up against a wall so at least there was no chance of anyone falling out of that side through the night. I’m pleased to report that Janet could tell me in the morning that she never fell out once from her side. Finally, there is the call for solidarity amongst sheep farmers by Jim Walker. He is urging everybody in Scotland who keeps sheep to defy the new sheep tagging rules that are to be implemented over the whole of the EU next year. Standing shoulder to shoulder, in an act of mass civil disobedience, we will bring our government to heel and they will ultimately be forced to face down the might of Brussels and make them abandon this foolish nonsense which will require us to put electronic tags into our sheep. Aye right and there’s a new series of Crossroads starting in the autumn. |