Absolutely Seamless. And I Take My Hat Off To Them With Knobs On.X

And this is the kind of real reason in my heart of hearts that I felt compelled to take over organising our OWN local village show to keep this part of village life alive for maybe one more year.?  When you get invited to come visit someone else's Show, and you get to learn New Tricks, at even the shortest of notice (last Friday evening)...this is just what you want to find........... something to aspire to.


 I learned an incredible amount from each and every one of those Judges, learning what they look for in a Photograph, an 8 year olds' Seedtray Garden, a Weird Shaped Vegetable, and why it isn't dead good to put a cake with icing on the schedule!

 No word of a lie, I walked into their Village Hall, and my jaw dropped to the floor.  I'm going to sound 'bitter and twisted' here now, obviously, but their Village Hall is magnificently spacious, and does justice to the sheer amount of entries that they have staged, and our modest hall couldn't support that number of entries, surely?  (See Wellie look at her newly bulging files, and deduce that we were only about a hundred Entries less?!  High Five Babe!)  And have I not always said to you Children, it's not what you've got, it's what you do with it.....

Which definitely brings me onto how hard my predecessors have worked over the last twenty years to make The Itton Village Show what it is today.  Particularly, in terms of our Photographic Section of The Show, with its popularity growing year on year to the extent of needing a whole kind of 'Cool Wall' of The Hall to accommodate them all, and I said to these lovely people today: Just watch this category grow..... it's a subject very close to peoples' hearts these days.  On a purely personal level, after he'd finished judging here with Leslie,  I was delighted to find that their Photo Judge and I shared so many constructive comments on what makes A Good Photograph.

Medina, Marvellous Marmalade Queen, and myself, will be touching base this week here at The Funny Farm, and I can't wait to show her the photos I took, and get her thoughts on where that might lead us in our endeavours for next years' Show.
I'm thinking, just hearing the excitement in her voice on the phone this evening, that we're going to be like two kiddies in a Sweet Shop?!

Anyway.... Life..... not always being The Box of Chocolates that you want it to be, Wellie had to take BC cat to the vet, with her having had fisty-cuffs with one of the local farm cats of an afternoon t'other week.  (The Cat - Not The Vet?  Pay Attention Children.......)  And not being a parent myself, I've always favoured not letting your baby girl out till they were at least 35?, but with a cat, I think you'll find that she's only about 10, and sometimes you have to cut a bit of slack now and then, and let them kick their 'Kitten Heels' off?
Now that I look back on the event, I think the biggest mistake I made was actually waking her up out of a deep sleep in The Shrubbery, and shoving her unceremoniously into a plastic Cat Basket.  Because not only did she have that very serious medical condition of 'A Hurty Paw', but it doubled up into 'How Very DARE You!', and she just 'kicked off' once we got into the Vetinaryaryary Surgery, actually 'ROLLING' her cat basket on the reception floor in anger.  (see normal people don riot gear, and 'Mummy Blob' just raise her eyebrows?)
Naturally, given that it was a £50 vet bill for the two injections, being intolerant of accepting tablets from anything that resembles a human hand, there's been no Sweets, nor Pocket Money since her Tantrums and Tiaras began, and it's just a boring old salty foot-bath for the hurty paw, but still acres and acres of love and cuddles, then another boring old salty foot-bath, cuddle, bath, cuddle, bath, bath, bath, bath until she pays Trousers back the money?


Do you remember now when Wellie told you she  used to walk across The Severn Bridge and back again Kids?
Well Wellie's just about to have to do the very same sodding thing again now due to her own stupidy.
Having suffered pain for a year or so, and my doctor, qualified osteopath, completely and utterly put me back on the road for good with Prolotherapy Treatment, Lumbar Injections, because of dodgy sacro-illiacs, and then I horticulturally 'cocked it up' the other week with a four and a half hour digging session.
To say that I feel like A Complete Tit, would be an understatement.
I expected the cold shoulder from my doctor, and for him to deny me a second chance of Therapy.
Instead, we talked about the variety of maincrop potatoes that we were growing whilst he did the Lumbar injections.

And that kind of 'takes your mind off' when you've got an important 'OUCH' happening....

In terms of  'Ouch', him and I now know every single variety of 1st Early, 2nd Early, Early Maincrop, and Late Maincrop Variety that the both of us are growing this year.  AND whether we've harvested and stored them, or if we've just cut the haulms off and buried them in the ground for now.., which isn't normally the kind of conversastion that you HAVE with your Doctor.
If I could botttle that thought, I'd make a killing, and no mistake.