Country comes to town

I love three-day weekends. All weekends should be three-day weekends, I reckon. Unless they're four-day weekends, because that's even better. The week just gone was Canterbury Cup and Show week. It's a week full of important horse-racing and trotting race days that are traditionally surrounded by posh frocks and drinking heavily in the scorching sun, which overlaps the National A&P Show in the second half of the week. And then Friday is the provincial anniversary day for Canterbury which means we get a day off. Hence the three-day weekend.

And it's been a busy one. Joanne's not been to the A&P show before (I went last year with work) so I thought it might be nice to take her along on Friday. It gets pretty busy there on the Friday (the day the townies all go - whereas Wednesday and Thursday tend to be the business days when farmers mostly go) so we went along in the morning. We're glad we did too. It got mental around lunchtime. Absolutely heaving. Joanne almost couldn't make it to the strawberries and icecream stall it was that busy. You'll be pleased to hear that she fought her way over though and a potential fruit-and-frozen-dairy-combo catastrophe was averted.

There really is loads that goes on there. As well as the trade tents and carnival rides and food and farming machinery, there are animal competitions (biggest bull; curliest-horned ram; wooliest alpaca etc etc), axemen competitions, show-jumping, stunt horse-riding, sheepdog trials and even souped-up V8 tractor pulls. Dragstar tractors. I was really sorry I missed that. Oh, and OpShop played too.

To be honest, my first thought on seeing the huge bulls at the show was not to go and pat them for a photo opportunity as one Asian kid did. My first thought was also not to fulfill a desire to climb aboard and ride them. No-one at the show was silly enough to do this, at least I didn't witness anyone silly enough. This was saved for Saturday night and the International Rodeo that came to town. I've not been to a rodeo before. Rodeo-related opportunities in Grimsby, Coventry or London save a mechanical bull in the back room of a pub or at a Uni end-of-year ball are quite limited. It seemed like something to be able to tick off.

Arriving at the Westpac Arena yesterday evening the country had definitely come to town. Bus loads of folk adorned in check shirts, cowboy hats, denim and jeans spilled into the venue. You definitely got the feeling that many of them weren't dressed up. I was really looking forward to the whole event while was not so keen. I think she was just humouring me and was more keen to spend an evening with Ruth & Al who we were going along with. In the end though, I think she enjoyed it too, although she won't admit as much ;)

It really was quite a spectacle. It was quite Americanised, unsuprisingly, and Joanne compared it to a WWE event (where only half the competitors realise it's scripted!) but you really had to admire the skills and the courage (or stupidity) of these cowboys. There was bare-back bronc riding, saddled bronc riding and bull-riding for the men, and barrel-racing for the ladies. In the first two of these the cowboys are marked for technique and leg movements in time with the horse's bucking, or something. In the bull-riding you're not expected to display as much finesse and just holding on for eight seconds qualifies you for a score. Bull-riding. What a mental idea. Can you imagine the look on the rest of the cowboys' faces when, sitting round the campfire one night, one bored (and slightly mental) cowboy suggested they might all like to sit on the back of one of those bulls tomorrow and see who could hang on the longest.

In domestic matters, we finally bought a table and chairs set for the garden on Friday and I finally, finally put our barbeque together. If only the nor-wester would stop blowing we could actually make use of the garden. I still can't get used to a very strong wind with temperatures in the high twenties.