Farming life

Today, despite the terrible weather, I headed with a couple of colleagues to the A&P Show at the Canterbury Agricultural Park. As the website puts it - "The nationally renowned Royal New Zealand Show brings country to town and offers an experience that makes you feel like selling up your eighth of an acre block and heading to where there's not a neighbour in sight." Well, I'm not quite sure I was persuaded to sell our house and buy a big remote farm, but it was interesting.

My company have a big stand at the show and the basic agenda for today was to go out to see what goes on. There was talk of having to 'be on duty' and talk to customers but in the end there weren't enough customers to warrant it. I think that may have been down to the weather and the fact the show has two more days to run. The way I saw it, so long as there were Account Managers free and able to talk to customers it made a lot more sense for them to do that rather than me just tell the customers how little I know.

I wore my wax jacket today to try and feel a bit more 'rural'. I think I almost pulled it off. Only the amount I was bothered about getting mud on my shoes ruined the facade. And there was a lot of mud. There's a time and a place for mud and it's when you're dressed for it, not when you're in office clothes. Who ever thought of having an Agricultural and Pastoral Show in a field, eh? It would have been ok if it hadn't rained for the previous 12 hours.

I think the highlight of the show for me, other than the excellent burger off the barbecue in our tent, were the Belted Galloways. If you're too lazy to click on the link, imagine a cut and shut job on two cows, one black and one white, or maybe a black cow in a white boob tube and you'll be close. There were some pretty sizeable bulls too. One of them was just huge. If it had wanted, the little blonde lass holding its rope would not have been able to stop its rampage.

Ooh, and Grimsby won this morning (NZ time, of course) to reach the Johnstone's Paint Trophy northern area semi-finals. Bit of a mouthful, I know, but reaching the final eight in any competition is worth being cheerful about, however unwieldy its name. Now all we need to do is get a run going in the league.

Right, better go and pack. We leave for the church family weekend away right after work tomorrow.