How did you fare at the Fair?

 On Friday night I had take-away chinese (which was delicious) and went with the BF and our good friends to our annual rural town Show. You can tell it is Show season because our town gets hit with a sudden, sharp cold snap the weekend before. So by the time the show rolls around, about an eighth of our community has a severe cold, but still goes along. Come the end of the Show, the whole community at large has a raging case of the Flu. But I still go anyway because I love it.

When I was little my whole family was very involved in the show. My mum was a Steward in the cookery section for a few years in a row, so we would get there early on Thursday morning - before the show is even open to the public - to put our entries in. Dad would enter his hay and sometimes a selection of grains he grew on our farm; Nan would put in her amazing scones and other assorted cookery, along with my Mum; My brothers would put in little craft items and pictures they had made; and my sister and I would enter little flower arrangements, cooking and sewing projects (that we had most likely finished around 12pm the night before).

How fun then, to skip around the whole show on a Thursday and look at everything with Dad before anybody else got to! Because we were home-schooled, we were allowed to take the whole day off when every other kid in town had to go to school til Friday, which was a public holiday. We would go around and look at all the animal and tractor displays, pat the prize bulls and wait while Dad talked to other farmers from the district. Then, at lunch, we'd sit up the top of the hill at the Eatery (which mum and I would go on to manage for a few years in a row), eat sandwiches and drink Orchy orange juice, and watch the carnival people set up the ferris wheel.

My favourite part of the whole show is being there so early that you can sit up on the hill and just watch the show wake up. The pony club people start to trot their ponies bareback around the paddock, the carnies start to trickle up to the Eatery for bacon and eggs, birds start to flit around excitedly, and vendors start to set up their tents and displays for the day. The fresh, crisp start of another show weekend.

A Carnie's Life for me. xx OTIG