Village Life: Village Show and Puppy Dog Trials

 

The Village Show took place last weekend.    I will admit that I was rather less than enthusiastic about entering compared to previous years, mainly because I have been so tired from the demands of life with the dear and wonderful Winston.  More of him later.

I had planned to enter a Victoria Sponge, nice and simple, what could go wrong?  Nothing, until I made a rubbish job of turning the second half out of the baking tin.  Disaster! It broke into so many pieces that it was impossible to stick it back together.  No time/energy to make another.

Scones, then.

Fruit scones and then a batch of triple chocolate scones, just for fun and because they are unusual.  I was so caught up in following the recipe for the chocolate scones that the fruit scones were left in the oven for far too long.  They looked good, but I thought they would probably be more like rock cakes. 

The chocolate scones looked wonderfully decadent although rather large.  No idea what they tasted like because they contained quite a lot of cocoa powder and that is something which triggers migraines in me.  I drizzled them with a top coating of chocolate and entered them anyway.  Let the judges find out at their taste test.

The sour cream bread loaf was a little better, not quite as puffed up as normal, but it still looked reasonable.

Three entries would have to do for the Baking classes.

Produce classes were out of the question, because we have had a really bad year, everything is either late or just not up to standard.  Fresh garden herbs and garden flower arrangement, then.

As you can see, I am just a cut and squish into the vase type or arranger, no finesse at all!  I don't have the patience to actually 'arrange'.

The flowers got bunged into an old pot and the herbs I simply tied with string to turn them into the requisite bunch.

The herbs, a huge variety from all around the garden, the smell was simply wonderful.

Done!  

A quick trip down to the hall to fill in the entry forms, hand over my money and then I had time to  have a quick yarn with everyone and a sneaky peek at the opposition!  At 11am the hall had to be cleared ready for the judges to do their work.

Just as I was about to return to see how badly I had done, we got the opportunity to have a video call to see our lovely little grandson, William.  No contest.  William wins every time.

Later in the afternoon we had a surprise visitor bearing my vase, some award certificates and a plaque.  To say I was stunned is an understatement.  I won first and second place with the scones, first with the bread loaf, first with the summer arrangement of flowers and a first for the bunch of herbs.  The plaque was for best in show for one of the categories - either the baking or the flowers/herbs section.  I haven't checked.  

Winston has had another bout of ill health.  A very tricky tummy.  No need for details, but it has meant a huge amount of vigilance and cleaning up, despite getting up to let him outside every couple of hours through the night.

I followed all the advice, he would seem to recover, then the problem would come back.  After almost a week of this we decided that another trip to the vet was required - quite tricky to arrange given the state of his digestive tract.   

That was three days ago and, touch wood, things are calming down.  I may even risk only letting him out once tonight...still debating that one.

We still don't know what caused the problems, could be something he ate, some green stuff snatched and gobbled which irritated his tummy, perhaps, or it could just be the hotter weather, or an allergy.  For now, all is almost well and I am thankful.