Best in show follows an unusual pattern
This advice applies equally to male and female competitors and exhibitors right across all the show classes, and I issue it out of pure kindness.
Indeed, please, if you know the aromatics of the interiors of confessional boxes since childhood, then instantly leave here for your own peace of mind, or you are almost certain to be either hurt or shocked, or both.
You didn’t go away, did you? I know well you are still here. This curiosity about the forbidden and the darker eddies of the Celtic psyche kept you here, of course. That is your problem now, because I have absolved myself by the above warning for any culpability in relation to what follows.
And what follows is as near as dammit unique, because it is a fulsome and belated litany of praise for the small corps of very special people amongst us who, though they know nothing about the murky innards of confessional boxes and never ever go to Mass, quietly, year after year, prove clearly to the rest of us that they set all the highest standards in relation to all the elements of competitive farming practice.
Read between the lines what you wish, but all the facts I am about to now state are based upon many decades of attending and covering agricultural shows in the four provinces, and I know what I am talking about.
And this is my tribute to all the members of that small corps of excellence whose achievements are not fully enough recognised or appreciated by the majority. Indeed they are often the targets of the greenest of jealousies. And that is the pure truth.
Go to about any show anywhere in the country, and the facts are there before your eyes, hallmarked by the red rosettes of victory.
And those facts show clearly, year after year, show after show, the magnificent performances and abilities and skills of the special folk I am praising today, who know nothing at all about confessional boxes.
So, the situation is that the prize-winning apple tart is always baked and exhibited by a lady likely to bear the name Elizabeth or Myrtle or Gwen or Heather or Caroline, or Mabel, maybe.
Not alone that, but her magnificent floral arrangement dwarfs and trivialises all those competitors around, submitted by ladies likely named Mary or Bridget or Theresa.
Nearby, in the next section, Elizabeth’s bunch of carrots are longer and straighter and more clearly succulent than any competitors, and Gwen’s half-dozen organic brown hen eggs are in a class or their own.
Just like her blackcurrant jam, huge vegetable marrow, golden honey, and sticks of rhubarb as thick as the thigh of the bold Thady Quill himself.
I ask ye if that is the truth or a lie, and I know the answer to that one already.
It does not stop there either.
Leave the hall where the fruit and vegetable and culinary classes are housed, and go out into the field where the big livestock classes are being judged by wise-looking men with tweed sports jackets, and twill slacks running down to immaculate brogues.
Here, at the end of the day, you can be guaranteed that the truly magnificent champion bull, a mighty sire altogether, has not alone been shown by a farmer named George or William or Clive or Ivor, but has also been bred by the exhibitor himself, and is a full brother of last year’s champion, which later sold for a truly extraordinary price at the big show and sale. Am I right or am I wrong?
And is it likely enough that Clive’s youngest daughter Daphne will win the big show jumping competition, as the evening ends.
I wish to repeat my unstinted praise for all the members of this special corps of high-achievers who quietly and discreetly set the standards at so many of the shows.
I do not have the intellectual artillery to figure out exactly what role avoidance of confessional boxes plays in the story, but I figure it has some significance somewhere along the line.
Probably some of you can answer that one...
