WHAT DO COUNTRY shows/game fairs and dogging have in common? They both involve getting completely screwed by total strangers in the middle of a muddy field. How do we know that this is true? The 118th Cranleigh Country Show. I freely admit I was keen to attend this event and booked early. I didn’t even haggle (see under Wikipedia ‘Gordon Brown’ and ‘Gold Reserves’). After all, it’s a few miles down the road from Bisley and, so I thought, was likely to attract the same crowd. So imagine my confusion when on arrival I found myself halfway down an aisle populated at nearly every step by charity stalls which, as they lost no opportunity to remind me, had paid nothing for their pitches. The South Georgia-like temperatures and glowering cloud threatening rain at any moment, plus a reluctance on the part of the good folk of Surrey to part with their money, led to a miserable event.
I am still at a loss to understand why organisers feel obliged to put first-time attendees like me on the charity (or ‘secret’) aisle. What is the logic behind show organisers thinking like this?
Trade Stand Secretary: ‘Now we move onto Moss Leather Goods. I see that he hasn’t had a stand here before. Now, how can we turn him from a first-timer into a regular? What’s that, vicar? Stick him in the charity aisle so he has a crap day’s trading? Brilliant!’
Even getting away from a waste of a trading day was tortuous and aggravating. As soon as the end of the show was in sight, hordes of vintage tractors appeared on the roads in every direction. Narrow lanes, blind corners and hills in that part of Surrey ensured that most people trying to leave the site were stuck behind members of the Tonka Toy Brigade for 20-odd miles in any direction. Surely these people cannot be stupid enough to believe that a seven-mile tailback of road users will share their oddly induced tumescence at the sight of a fully restored Massey Ferguson or Fordson Major belching out acrid clouds of carcinogenic diesel fumes? It cannot be, surely, that a hoisted middle digit and a mouthful of purple-faced abuse is seen as a sign of appreciation among these, the tractor restoring classes?
How different to the Honiton Show the preceding week. Despite the equally miserable weather, the organisers managed to keep the traffic moving, allowing a relatively simple escape from a slightly windswept and difficult day’s trading. Even during set-up, the slightly stressed show secretary was helpful and positive, realising that traders earn their living from these shows and are not just there to fill up the gaps between the charity tents.
And so to Lowther, up there in the scenic (rainy) and historic (rainy) Lake (rainy) District (rainy). Yes, it’s no coincidence that places like the Sahara and Death Valley do not have areas called the Lake District. That would imply the presence of rain. Neither the Sahara nor Death Valley have any water because the Cumbrians stole it all in 4th Century and took it back home where it remains today, occasionally being deployed to ruin summer holidays, dash traders’ hopes of any business or to show us ‘soft as shite’ southerners what mud really looks like.
The climate has not been kind to Lowther as a showground over the years. ‘Mudfest’, ‘Water Gardens’ and ‘Municipal Rain Testing Site’ have all be used to describe events here in years gone by. Is there a show organiser that can meet this difficult challenge? Step forward Countryman Fairs, aka the A Team. Headed up by their fearless Colonel Ian ‘Hannibal’ Harford (not the cannibal, the other one with the cigars – do try and keep up), this grizzled band of loveable eccentrics raided the MOD’s surplus stock depot in scenic Kettering to deploy enough camouflage shooting suits and steel tracking to establish a Normandy bridgehead. Lieutenant Dominic ‘Face’ Smith is the team’s smooth-talking appropriator of tradestands or ‘gap preventor’, and part-time babe magnet. Then there’s Captain David ‘Howling Mad’ Clausen, who has been declared insane and lives in an institution (Derbyshire) from which he regularly escapes to ensure that stand layout discipline is maintained. Finally, there is the team’s mechanic, Sergeant First Class Jerome ‘BA’ (that’s ‘Bad Attitude’) Roberts, equally at home with a Snickers Bar or at the bar (but mostly at the bar). Yes, if anyone can turn the Lehar known as Lowther into a game fair, they can.
In years to come, Lowther may become a good trading show. This year, the A Team at least made it happen and got the public through the turnstile. Sadly, it wasn’t the same public who used to come to the old driving trials with spending in mind. Again the weather didn’t help, but few of the visitors seemed to want to buy. On the Sunday afternoon, I sold nothing despite there being a good crowd around the main ring. I started to pack away only to be berated at half past five by a local for doing so.
‘It’s disgusting! People have paid good money to come in here and people like you pack up early,’ she announced.
I thought it would be churlish to cause a scene during the finale of the Knights of Middle England in the arena, so didn’t point out that I too had paid several hundred pounds to be there plus diesel and had had a variety of perfectly good leather goods displayed and available for sale for the last 48 hours. I also noticed that even though her partner was on crutches (perhaps he’d tripped over her mouth), he was several times bigger than me, so I decided on discretion. I told her I was still trading and if she wanted to buy something she could.
‘I don’t want to buy anything!’ she replied with a level of disgust usually reserved for invitations to partake in unlubricated sexual deviancy.
And that just about sums up the Lowther trading experience. I don’t know whether it’s the economy or the people, but it’s easier to get an apology for war crimes out of a post-war Japanese government than it was to get cash out of the punters at Lowther. What will happen next year? Will the A Team come up another death-defying wheeze to make everything better? Is that the faint whiff of a Cuban cigar on the breeze? It’s not just Colonel Ian ‘Hannibal’ Harford who ‘loves it when a game fair comes together’ – the traders quite like it too.
