Every year on August Bank holiday weekend, which is roughly the equivalent to Labour Day weekend in the States and in both cases it marks the end of summer and the imminent beginning of the school year,the Bellingham Show takes place rain or shine. No raindates in the UK!
It has been going on for decades and possibly centuries.
Philip Larkin wrote a poem on Dec 3rd 1973 titled Show Saturday about the Bellingham Show.
First stanza:
Grey day for the Show, but cars jam the narrow lanes.
Inside,on the field, judging has started:dogs
(Set their legs back, hold out their tails)and ponies(manes
Repeatedly smoothed, to calm heads); over there, sheep
(Cheviot and Blackface);by the hedge, squealing logs
(Chain Saw Competetition). Each has its own keen crowd.
In the main arena, more judges meet by a jeep:
The jumping's on next. Announcements, spluttering loud,
In the thirty years since much has changed and then again not so much.
There are dirt bike competitions and quad bike races instead of sawing logs perhaps. There are many more breeds of sheep represented e.g. Leicesters and Swaledales.
The Dry Walling demonstration caught my attention. I would like to learn this dying art.
The beer tent is still there of course, and always will be.
The entrance fee has gone up by 1000% however and I spent my spending money just getting in to the show! Had a wee bit left to buy bulbs for the garden.
The vintage cars and tractors are always a hit with the public and the kids seem happy with their Teacup rides and Magic Bouncy Castles. The candyfloss is sold ready- made in plastic bags-yuck!I used to love watching the spinning of the sugar. That is how my uncle started out in business as a kid with a candyfloss machine!
The weather was grey and deterring no-one. Picnickers, fish and chip eaters,beer swillers, tea drinkers...
The Industrial Tent always amuses me mainly because of the name. Industrial as in industrious I suppose. Strange looking at cakes and bread, scones and flapjacks under clingfilm with first and second prize tags on them!
It is a great chance for folks to meet their friends and neighbours and catch up.
I walked around enjoying recognising the baker from the village, the new young woman from the Country Store, the organic meat farmers, locals, plus our local hood with his old mother no less, sheep farmer McCracken and his illustrious family.
I tasted a delicious lemon cake and had a cuppa in the tea tent before setting off home and just by the bridge over the North Tyne to Bellingham at Bridge End Cottage (a former toll house)around a table in the garden sat people playing banjo, maracas, guitar and singing together with a bbq smoking away. That was magical.
Last stanza of Philip Larkin's Show Saturday:
To winter coming, as the dismantled Show
Itself dies back into an area of work.
Let it stay hidden there like a strength, below
Sale-bills and swindling;something people do,
Not noticing how time's rolling smithy-smoke
Shadows much greater gestures; something they share
That breaks ancestrally each year into
Regenerate union. Let it always be there.
If you want to come next year look at the map above to find it!
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