94 LISTENER MARCH 10 2018
THE GOOD LIFE
I
n the weeks before the Masterton
A&P show, things got heated.
Insults were flung across the
sheep paddocks.
Me: “I’m going to knock you
off your bean pole, Queen Bean.”
Carolyn the Shepherdess,
aka Queen Bean: “You’re never
going to do anything with those
vegetables.”
I was never going to admit it,
but I feared she was right. I went
into the vege patch and looked,
gloomily, at the prospects. There
weren’t any. The tomatoes weren’t
ripe. The beans were as bent as a
shepherd’s crook.
Competition beans have to be
as straight as a soldier standing on
parade. There must be a trick to
this. Lead weights tied to the bot-
toms, suggested Miles the sheep
farmer, who must have done
something very bad in a previous life;
he is Carolyn’s boss.
I did have flowers: zinnias and
dahlias. To annoy Carolyn, I began
signing my emails to her Miss Zinnia,- Pah. I was getting ahead of
myself. She was entering zinnias.
The morning of the day entries had
to be delivered, an anonymous phone
message was left (hello Miles!): Caro-
lyn’s beans were rubbish; I should
consider entering mine.
I had four straight-ish beans. Four
tomatoes came ripe. No trusses, the
Neighbourhood
relations suffer
as a newcomer
enters the running
for best bean.
Bean there, done that
entry form stated, sternly. The conditions for entry
might have been penned by a headmistress in a
Victorian boarding school for wayward girls – an
institution that might have done Carolyn some
good. They come in a stapled A4 leaflet. On the
inside of the cover is an entire page of these instruc-
tions, many in BOLD. You have to be bold, if not
foolhardy, to dare enter.
It doesn’t explicitly say anything about cheat-
ing, so I am unable to dob in a certain person who
went out in the night hoping to pinch a particularbergamot for her herb arrangement. She didn’t
actually filch the thing, but only because “you
wouldn’t believe how many people are about at
9.30 at night”.
I was supposed to be entering Red, Miles’s kelpie,
in Best Pet Dog, but we got the wobbles. She
doesn’t like other dogs. I don’t think there is a prize
for Best Dog Biting Another Dog. Also, she had
a date with her new boyfriend, having arrived at
what that Victorian headmistress might have called
“an interesting condition”.
What a shame we didn’t have a terrier to enter inthe terrier race. The terrier race is one
of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
There is always at least one terrier
that goes backwards. Last year, in the
final, the dogs saw a rabbit and leapt
the fence to tear after it. They were all
disqualified, but protests were lodged.
The end result was that they were all
awarded a prize. I don’t know what
happened to the rabbit.M
eanwhile, back at the
Home Industries pavilion,
a certain novice won.
Ta-da! Three firsts: Best Climbing
Beans, Best 3 Medium Zinnia,
Best Dahlia Under 115mm. She
also got a second in Dahlia from
115-155mm and two third prizes
in Tomatoes and Dahlia under
115mm. Not bad for a beginner.
There was a lot of strutting
about in the pavilion, mostly by
me. Oh, look, there’s Carolyn.
We had never seen Carolyn with
her hair done. It was a big day.
She may even have been wearing
lipstick.
“Best zinnias! Best climbing
beans!” I crowed. She had won
best Dwarf Beans, again. She may
also have won what she claimed
was the “biggest trophy” – though
it looked like a salad bowl to me – for
Best Overall Fruit and Vege points.
She seemed to think this trumped my
wins. She emailed later: “Any fool can
win the runner bean competition –
they hang down and, of course, will
grow straight. By comparison, grow-
ing straight dwarf beans is both an art
and a science ...”
In the interests of harmony in
the sheep paddocks, I’m going to
graciously call it even. But next year,
I’m going to take that salad bowl offGREG DIXON her. She’d better get growing. l
Blooming winners: some of the writer’s triumphant A&P
show entries.There was a
lot of strutting
about in the
pavilion,
mostly by me.
MICHELE
HEWITSON