Peter Hoeg wrote a novel called Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow. Miss Smilla is half Danish/half Eskimo and her innate knowledge of snow (coming from Greenland) helps her solve a murder mystery. If Miss Smilla had been half Midlander/half trout and her feeling had been for water in all its forms, she might have been able to solve the mystery surrounding the death of my commercial hopes for the Land Rover Show at Billing near Northampton. On the other hand, it’s not really that complicated. A blowy but dry Friday during which trading was good was followed by 6 hours of rain on Saturday. That amount of water is enough to ruin any trading day. But, to their credit, the Land Lovers (clever, eh?) took time off from becoming sexually aroused by chassis numbers, leather seat restraints and original trim to persevere with their shopping. The result surprised me. Despite the torrential downpour, the show was well worth doing. A large number of chassis number/original trim perverts also appear to be shooters or followers of other (as yet) unspecified country sports. It’s often the case that shows that at first don’t appear to offer a market for leather goods turn out to be good events. The crowd there were also very friendly and ready to offer a helping hand and I shall be going back in hope of better weather next year.
To prepare my mind and body for the Blenheim CLA, I subject myself to several days of mind training at the hands of Mrs Moss. Hours of nagging about the amount of alcohol in my diet and the general lack of exercise in my life harden every nerve-ending and sinew for the trading marathon that was to come. My son comes along with one of his friends to do the heavy lifting and tent erection leaving me free in mind and body to concentrate on the challenge of being polite to the buying public and consuming cider.
Passing Cheltenham, a good forty miles away, I break the Zen-like silence in the cab as we pass a yellow signpost proclaiming ‘CLA Contractors Straight On’.
‘Is this a record?’
Have any of our readers seen CLA signage further off site than this? Surely it must have been picked up and placed their by some Jeremy Beadle wannabe. Or perhaps not. Next year, Irish visitors to the show may be guided from their very doorsteps to the CLA by a plethora of yellow signs with helpful advice like ‘Caution: Wet Surfaces. Irish Sea Ahead’. Yet still, many customers on my stand complain about the signage and the difficulty they have in accessing the show.
True to form, the rain starts as soon as we arrive and continues until the tent had been set-up. It then stops. The first cider is consumed at around 1500hrs and the consumption continues whilst catching up with friends and colleagues at various tents around the site until well after nightfall. Walking back along gunmaker’s row, I’m overtaken by Mr Paul Newell’s Redneck Jaccuzzi. This comprises of a re-chipped Dodge Ram pickup which has had the back sealed with a tarp and is then filled with carefully calculated measures of soap, water and drunks (normally clad in their underwear). The festive spirit is often heightened by the consumption of homemade cider before the trip dispensed by son, Falla or Mrs Newell, Romy . Paul tells me that this vehicle is particularly popular in his home town as a rented venue for Tupperware parties, Round Table meetings and Masonic get-togethers. Moab Zoab!
Paul Newell tests the redneck jacuzzi in his trademark fur hat
For some, the Redneck Jaccuzzi is as close to personal hygiene as they get in the three days of the CLA. After the CLA’s majestic offering of facilities at Ragley hall last year, facilities at Blenheim revert to their default settings of no soap, hot water in name only and queues for the showers that make a Gaza refugee camp look commodious.
On the first morning, operatives are everywhere in evidence erecting small yellow signs offering helpful advice ‘Caution: Shower Queue Ahead’, ‘For Men’s Showers Follow Signs to Chipping Sodbury’, ‘Beware: Congestion After U Bend 0.25 miles’ and, right by the door, after you have queued for an hour so, the ever popular ‘ Warning: No Toilet Paper’. How hard did those attendants work at keeping the facilities in a useable state but it was like trying to holding back a tsunami. It was too much for some by the close of the second day. Many fell on their own mops.
Frankly, that’s as far as the complaining goes this year. The strange, crepuscular entities who organise the CLA have done a great job. Gone are the annoying little pen-pushers and overly keen security staff of yesteryear, sticking their noses into traders’ business. You are given your stand site and left to get on with it. Gone is the horrendous traffic at the end of the show when the straggling public….
‘Will Mrs Edna Phobes who left her mother, Mrs Evadne Tremble, in the Ladies please come to the collection area where her mother is waiting for her. She says she wants another gin…’
…and traders all try to leave at once. A half hour wait at Row P and then the traffic just flew out. Admittedly the route was long and tortuous but it just kept moving. Congratulations on this.
And what about the trading., I hear you ask. Well, more traders told me they’d had a record show than told me that they had done badly so it looks like a thumbs up on that score as well. However, Blenheim is seen as the prime site for CLA and the show may not be quite as good elsewhere next year. I certainly had a record first day and days two and three were not bad either. And the mind-training? Did Mrs Moss’s nagging therapy work? She appeared on day two with my daughter in tow to check on progress and seemed satisfied. Sad then that on day three one putative customer ruined it all on day three by becoming the 301st visitor to my stand who felt that they deserved a discount.
Customer: So what’s your cash price?
Me: The same as all the other prices? What do you do for a living? Let’s see what your ‘cash prices’ are like, shall we?
He left. I lost the sale. I regret nothing. I don’t want cheapskates wearing my kit. It’s bad for business.
It would help matters if tannoy announcers resisted the temptation to advise the public to ‘look for bargains’ and ‘discount prices’ on the trade stands. It only encourages them. It’s either that or renaming the business so that customers are left in doubt at all about the discount question. Welcome to the Absolutely Definitely No F****** Discount Belt Company!
