Another month and it’s time for another show. This time it is much closer to home and sees the return to the calendar of the Keighley show, last held in 2019 and cancelled for a little thing called Covid. It should have happened last year, but catering issues prevented it going ahead.
Though it’s closer to home it’s always an interesting journey as google maps seems to pick a different route every time. We have definitely been down some narrow, strange lanes during our visits there. This time we stuck to the A59 and seemed to make the journey alright. Though weirdly, google maps brought us back via a different route. I just think “Sally SatNav” likes taking us on tours of the Yorkshire countryside.
Being a little bit closer means theoretically, we shouldn’t have to get up as early. Alarm was set for 7.00am for us but when we got up, we found that Indian Mick had been up since 4.45am. Now I know he lives a little bit further north than us, but I still think that was a bit extreme. Must be his lorry driver training kicking in, need to stop several times for bacon butties etc.
Arriving at the show everything was set up already by the team. They’d found it a little difficult to get the drawing pins into the tables but somehow, they managed. We’ll put it down to Barney’s piledriver fingers.
After coordinating the set-up Andy had obviously worked up an appetite. Which is a normal state of affairs for him and his tapeworm. Heading out to the burger van to check out its wares he soon returned ashen faced after seeing the prices and was witnessed storming around the hall muttering “8 quid for chips and gravy, that’s scandalous.” Luckily, we were able to confirm that these were the prices for festivals and once we’d explained this to Walker he quickly calmed down. As it turns out I bought two bacon cheeseburgers and chips and gravy for £12.50. A decent price to be honest and after all “Northern lads love gravy”.
One thing that was pleasing about the way the clubs were organised was that we found ourselves in the same location as the other clubs from the North Yorkshire area. And along with some associated sigs we formed what looked like a Waterloo Square in the middle of our hall, which provided us with all round defence and was successful in repelling all invaders. In fact, it was so successful that sometimes I couldn’t get in to get to my flask. One group that couldn’t get a space in the defensive square was the Leopard SiG, who had found a little corner to hide in. This later became known as “Old man’s corner.”
As well as being ensconced in their defensive square it became apparent that there had been a certain amount of coordination going on with regards to the dress state for the day, as there appeared to be an abundance of camouflage on display, in particular, camouflage shorts. Not sure if this is a fashion statement or just a lack of fashion style. Rather than a coordinated military response it was more like a bunch of coordinated camo queens! There were some manly legs on display for the ladies, though one set in particular looked more like a pair of pipe cleaners dangling out of the shorts. I’ll let you all decide who they belong to.
A trawl around the stalls showed a few bargains to be had, but a disappointing aspect was the lack of traders selling incidentals/consumables such as glue, paint, and tools etc. I really wanted to stock up on a few items but there was none to be had. The traders only had kits etc, and I had enough of them! Hopefully this will be corrected next year.
One place where there were bargains to be had was the under-table sales. I managed to sell a few items and Walker demonstrated his selling techniques by knocking a whole fiver off a kit that he sold to a young lad! Generous to a fault. Mind you, I managed to convince another young lad who didn’t have enough money, to borrow a fiver from his dad to buy one of my kits. Either that or send the money via Paypal as suggested by Chris.
Lots of entries were made by club members into the competition, even I tried my luck with an entry. I only entered the one model though, unlike Mark, who went for the scattergun approach and entered half a dozen into the one class. True to form, I was unsuccessful in winning anything, but I didn’t mind as there were some excellent models in that class. In the end I lost out to an excellent cutaway Shackleton that had failed to impress the judges at the Stoke show the previous month. Mark also failed to impress the judges with his abundance of fine builds. Two people who did impress the judges though were Gav and Greg who both came away with golds. Well done lads. Though it was a tad inconsiderate of Greg to flaunt his trophy in front of Mark. They almost look like twins, though Greg must be the “mad, crazy twin.”
The show over it was time to wend our way home and see which way “Sally Satnav” had chosen for our route home. For some reason she didn’t fancy the A59 and Blubberhouses but chose a different route. Some more Yorkshire villages ticked off the list. Can’t be many left to tick off now!
