Competition!

I promised more about the competition I was judging yesterday.  It was the final of the Rose Bowl competition for the Welsh WI Federations, each of whom had held a “county round” earlier in the year – or so I thought.  Chatting to competitors later, I discovered that there had been only one entry in Clwyd-Denbigh, so they came straight through without the benefit of first round advice.  Very impressive!

The theme was “Space” and the schedule went as follows:

“A free standing display on a SQUARE base measuring a maximum of 30” x 30” when covered, placed on a table and to be viewed from the front only.  The combined exhibit shall consist of 5 items to depict the theme, items to include:

• Produce   one item of preserved food/foods and one cooked item (no meat or fish)
• Craft     two items showing a variety of skills
• Floral Art     one exhibit”"

Marks to be awarded as follows: Each item 20 marks, Staging and display 20 marks and Interpretation 20 marks (total 140) “

I was responsible for the judging of the staging and interpretation and found 11 entries awaiting me.  Of course, I have no idea whose is whose at this stage, but here they are, in no particular order.

Great use of colour, don’t you think?

Sorry, my photo doesn’t show the detail in the darkness (there’s a rather lovely felted necklace in there)

A young boy’s dream of space?

A different interpretation of the theme.

This is how the exhibit was when I started my deliberations.

And this is how it was when the steward spotted the sticky fixers had given way and replaced the rocket

This entry attracted a great deal of attention.

Battery-powered lights are very popular with exhibitors these days.

The papier mache base was a great feature!

Clever to use those glass spheres, wasn’t it?

Another interpretation of Space – “My Space”.

And finally, an exhibit featuring a moon and stars.

The results?  The winner was the exhibit scoring the highest total of marks for craft, cookery, flowers, staging and interpretation. 

1st Sir Gâr/Carmarthenshire Federation     (the display with the papier mache base)

2nd Glamorgan Federation  (the one with the glass spheres)

3rd Gwent Federation (the young boy’s dream of space)

What a great competition!  Congratulations to the winners

Whatever the weather

I’ve been keeping an eye on the weather these last few days, with a couple of outdoor events in my diary.  Our friend James shared a brilliant new weather app with us which has proved remarkably accurate.  So, when we set out for Wales on Friday morning, where I was judging a competition in Glamorgan and saw what we were heading into, we took a deep breath.

Rain.  Lots of it.

Not that we needed an app to tell us about five minutes later!  I was glad my Hero had offered to drive, needless to say.

The thing is, when the time came to go home, we had to go back through it all again!   

Thankfully, on Saturday morning, the storm had passed through for the village festival which we’d all been looking forward to for so long.

Or had it?  We took refuge in the bar for a short time as the rain pelted down again.  Oh, don’t we love an English Summer?

Thankfully, it cleared enough for us to enjoy watching our friends on stage (they were on before Dick and Dom) and having had the forethought to bring our picnic chairs with us, we didn’t have to crouch!

And the cheese and leek toastie from Hobbs was the best!

You wouldn’t believe what time this traffic jam formed in Wales yesterday morning!  Sometime around 6.15am I was making my way to Llanelwedd for the Royal Welsh Show where at least the sun was shining.

The car park had wonderful views but was a little far from where I needed to be.  I spent a few minutes editing my kit, thinking it might be a good idea to take a smaller, single bag down with me, but better not forget anything!  As I did, the woman in the car parked next to mine was doing the same.  She had the added challenge of dressing the part too, for she was an equestrian judge and confirmed that yes, she judged classes where she needed to ride each horse herself as part of the judging process, as I’d seen them do at Moreton Show.  Oh my goodness, riding an unfamiliar horse in such a public arena must be tricky at times – at least I don’t have to prove my capabilities beyond applying my wit and wisdom to my comments!

Thankfully, just around the corner, I came across a chap in a pickup truck, providing a shuttle service to the showground, so I hitched up my skirt and hopped into a vehicle far better suited to jodphurs and wellies!  Never mind…diolch yn fawr!

I didn’t need to report in until 7.45am, so I had time to wander about and watch the goings on.  I love this time of the day, when there’s so much happening and yet the place is so quiet.

I knew where the kettle would already be boiling, too!

Fuelled by tea and ably assisted by excellent stewards, we worked our way through the entries and identified the winners.  It was a busy morning but so much fun working amongst friends, catching up with their news, sharing stories and admiring the marvellous work in front of us.  I’ll share more of that in another post, but for now, suffice to say I love what I do!

By lunchtime, I’d completed that part of my work and went out to enjoy the sunshine.  It was a glorious day and lovely to see so many people enjoying the show.

I always enjoy watching the livestock judging and hearing a few squeals coming from the small ring nearby, I walked over to see what was going on.  Shall we say the pigs were having fun?

Normally, the judging is a stately affair with beautiful animals being led calmly around the ring by their owners.  Today though, a few of the pigs had other ideas!  Once one decided to scamper off, then so did another…

It was only when seeing these very pigs on the BBC last night that I returned to my photographs to take a closer look and sure enough, yes, there is Kate Humble and the BBC crew filming the fun too.

After lunch (the most delicious roast Welsh lamb!) I went over to the DyfedPowys police stand (family connections there) and as I did, found myself walking alongside a heavily armed officer from the South Wales Police, looking rather out of place in such a countryside setting.  As we walked, I chatted to him about his role there, though actually I found it more interesting observing the reactions he provoked from the crowd.  Clearly many were uncomfortable at the sight of three such armed officers, some were upset and they provoked a few yobbish shouts and verbal aggression from a few.  I dislike seeing armed officers in such settings, however much I appreciate the work they do, so I thanked him and moved along, wondering what my father in law would have made of such a presence?

The trade stands were there in force but I can’t say there was a lot to interest me.

Though some of the visitors were wearing amusing T shirts.  Don’t you love rural humour?

Keeping an eye on my watch – I needed to return to the hall at 2.30 to chat with competitors who might want further information from me – I heard a cheer from the crowd by the main ring, so went over to see what was happening.  Surely, those sheep (however cute) were not the cause of such a reaction?

Hmmm…what was going on in that smaller ring though, to the left?

It was Lorenzo the Flying Frenchman, warming up his act for the main event at 1.30! 

Loud music, a full house in the grandstand and a real showman working up to sixteen horses at times, no wonder the crowd went wild!

It was time for me to return, though and having fulfilled all my obligations, I was ready for home.  As I went, I spotted these fun bits and pieces in Adra.  Not sure about the camping logo but I liked Barod am Antur!   No, I don’t speak Welsh but thankfully, I had a translator by my side

I went off in search of a man with a pickup truck then, passing a few competitors getting the final touches to their beauty treatment.

Actually, around the corner there was a bit of a salon!

The work goes on from dawn till dusk – though judging from the noise coming from the Young Farmers bar, it’s not all about work here!

Thankfully, I found the man and his pickup truck and returned to what must surely be the car park with the best view around.  What do you reckon?

Time for home.

Just thinking

I’m not sure if there’s cause for my Hero to be worried or not.  I mean, when a blog post of mine begins with a diagram of …well, have you worked it out yet?

It’s OK.  Until yesterday, I wouldn’t have had a clue.  Still haven’t, really. (The answer is here)

As I caught up with a few blog posts yesterday, I came across this Waterstone’s article.  Unusually, instead of simply hitting the tick box and moving on, I began to read.  For some reason, something which would normally hold no interest whatsoever for me piqued my curiosity.  Was it as a result of our visit to Lambeau Field recently, where the business side of football proved surprisingly interesting?  I don’t know.  But the theory of the game, the influence of a handful of characters and the analysis of what I regard as “just kicking a ball about” gave me food for thought and perhaps altered my perception of what goes on in a game of football.  Somehow, the presentation engaged me and I wanted to read further, learn more and maybe give it a bit more consideration than I’d have expected.

Do you think a game is really all planned out like that, or is the analysis simply worked out afterwards by a few pundits, like parsing a line of Shakespeare?  And do you agree that Pep Guardiola will have a significant impact upon the English game?  (No need to answer )

A similar thing happened to me this morning, as I was driving home with Radio 4 switched on the radio.  I’m not generally much interested in history, though I know Horatio Nelson to be a figure of huge interest and admiration generally and the reading of RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR this morning just happened to be about a visit to HMS Victory.  In particular I loved the descriptions of the Admiral’s hat, which gave me a reason to listen again when I got home.

I learned a new word too.  Chelengk.

Of course I wanted to know more, if only to check that I hadn’t imagined hearing that there was a clockwork mechanism in there somewhere which caused the diamonds to vibrate slightly and shimmer in the light!   Such details are key to setting me a’googling. 

Not only that, but a visit to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich just moved a few notches up my wishlist. 

Further research on the advantages of the positioning of Messi and Alba in the recent Real Madrid vs Barcelona match, when the former ran the game as a conventional number 10 and the latter was able to become involved in many promising Barcelona attacks might follow.  In the meantime, I’ve got a few pictures to stick in my journal this afternoon.

Heading home

We always want to make the best use of every moment of our time in a distant place, especially one we love.  So, with flights not leaving until late afternoon/evening, we had a morning to play with.  What should we do?  Go to the beach? hardly the weather for that.  Go for a jog?  Ha!

The challenge was to find somewhere close-ish to the airport, where we could relax and not worry about traffic conditions later in the day.  The thing is, having been here on several previous occasions, there wasn’t that much we felt we hadn’t seen before.  We wanted a simple, neatly packaged, worthwhile “experience” to keep us occupied for half a day or so.

But internet searches proved fruitless.  My Hero identified a couple of small towns which might be interesting, but we didn’t want to shop and in our experience, aimless walks at this stage of our trip prove frustrating and not that enjoyable.   More by luck than skill (though I’m going to claim the credit anyway) I hit upon the Chicago Botanic Garden which met all our criteria and fitted the bill perfectly.

Just 45 minutes from O’Hare airport, I can’t understand why it doesn’t show up in any lists of suggestions about what to do on a long layover there.  The lists are full of casinos, bowling alleys, shopping centres…and yet an hour or two in a gorgeous, year-round garden seems to me to be the perfect pre- post- or inter-flight activity.

We began with an orientation tour of the whole site on board a trolley, which made stops by the highlighted areas.  We had no time to see everything.  Really, I doubt that anyone could on a single visit.  Suffice to say that it whetted our appetite.

The garden is huge and features a couple of large lakes and several distinct areas, including this Japanese garden.  Our guide emphasized how different it looks as the seasons change, especially when the snow falls.

A large area of the park is a natural prairie through which there are pathways cut and guides to follow.

Non-native plants have been removed and what remains is the natural landscape as the settlers would have seen when they travelled through this region.

It wasn’t at all how I expected.  I think of “prairie” as grassland, but this was so much more.  Gorgeous!

The next stop was near the bridge to Evening Island.

There’s a bell tower over there and occasionally, there are evening concerts when people are invited to come, bring a blanket and sit on the grassy slopes opposite to listen.  Nice idea.

Our tour returned us to the visitors centre, from where we set out on foot to explore the gardens closer to hand.  It was warming up, the earlier rain shower had passed through and we were enjoying our morning.

The water gardens were just lovely.  We are having ongoing problems with our pond at home and were so envious of the immaculate presentation and gorgeous flowers in this one.  Mind you, we don’t have a chap in waders to maintain it by removing individual leaves…

I loved these peculiarly textured leaves!

All around the garden, there are sculptures.  I’d have walked right past this one had there not been a couple of people taking a photograph.  It conveys movement really well, don’t you agree?

I’m not a gardener by any stretch of the imagination, but I knew immediately that this was not an English garden!  Isn’t it lovely, though?

The waterfall area was a popular (and cool) place to be.  Interesting to note that this garden is affected by blanketweed too.

My Hero was rather envious of the means of dealing with it!

There was time for a closer look at the Japanese garden, then, so we crossed the Zigzag bridge and followed the pathway.

Occasionally, it’s reassuring to discover that we don’t have the exclusive rights to hooligans on this side of the Atlantic.  I always think of American people as being more “up front” than we British, so it was interesting to see that although there was a distinct air of disapproval, just like us, no-one said anything.  We tutted and moved on!

There remained one distinct area of the garden which we had not seen.

Sitting by the entrance was a chap wearing a fun T shirt. I think my Hero needs something similar, don’t you agree?

The landmarks of America in the Model Railway garden were all created from natural resources and I was especially impressed by the accuracy of the lettering on the Seattle market sign.

We enjoyed spotting a variety of features from previous road trips!

One of us might just have felt a little homesick

It was getting near to the time we ought to leave.  The planes flying overheard were a reminder of the rest of our schedule and with the “just one more photograph” thought, we made our way to the car.  We’ll certainly be back here, possibly in similar circumstances, for it was an ideal place to spend our last few hours of our time in Chicago.

Mary’s flight was leaving a few hours before ours, so we said our farewells at the Departures drop off and waved goodbye. 

On our way out of the airport area, look what we passed.  No, we did not stop!

My hero and I mooched around a local mall for an hour or two, people watching and trying hard not to buy anything.  OK, so the $10 Gap T shirt was simply too much of a bargain to leave behind, especially as I’d looked at it at full price ($29.99) just a day or so ago!

But it was soon time for us to leave as well.  We returned the car to the AVIS lot, marvelling as always how people arrive there with a car still stuffed full of all kinds of things (bedding, groceries, clothes) and proceed to empty what looks like their life out onto the car park.  Those who know my hero will not be surprised that we simply take out our suitcases and walk away, leaving an empty car

So ended our tenth road trip.  1743 miles through four US states (no new ones this time!).  What fun we’ve had.  What stories we have to tell!

How lucky we are.

We are home

Lest you think we are stuck somewhere mid-Atlantic, we made it to the airport last evening and flew home without any unexpected events.  Not on that plane, of course!

Washing machines are humming away in California and Gloucestershire right now and tomorrow, when I’ve got my brain into gear, I’ll share the details of our last morning in Chicago.    It got off to a great start with that stack of blueberry pancakes.

I even finished every last bite.