Long preparation for show

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33067, 7 November 1972, Page 6

Long preparation for show

An A. and P. show, especially a Royal show, does not just happen; its smooth running depends on much preliminary] work. Miss Margaret Poff and her assistants from the Canterbury A. and P. Association have! been preparing for the] three-day event for the! last year. This is Miss Poff’s third; Royal show, and the biggest with 5715 entries. She hasi been working for the Canter-] bury A. and P. Association! for the last 15 years, gaining an enviable reputation for —] in the words of one of the staff — keeping her cool. I In September last year she! and two staff members began! the administrative work. Theyj have been joined by two more women to assist with cataloguing and final details. From the close of entries] at the end of September until the show is over the pace is hectic. Compiling the show catalogue for the printer is one of the biggest tasks. Entrants receive a schedule from which they fiill in the appropriate forms and the staff put together the catalogue from the entry forms. It sounds straightforward, but things can go wrong.

“Oh, yes, we get people who fill in the forms wrongly and then can’t understand why they are in the wrong class,” said Miss Poff. When the catalogue comes back from the printer there is the laborious job of careful checking. And, of course, there is all the equipment of the show ring — prize tickets, show ribbons — that must be ordered in June or July. Preparation of the schedule gets under way then, and the schedule is sent out in the middle of August, giving exhibitors six weeks to make their entries and return them to the office. The show ribbons are ordered from a firm in Levin, and there is a special Royal champion ribbon with bold bands of red, white, and blue. Prize cards have a special design. In Miss Poff’s experience ] there has never been a ribbon lost, “but we have had to look for them, sometimes.” JUDGES’ PACKING An important part of the routine is th’ packing of suitcases for the judges — about 80 for this show. The necessary prize cards, ribbons, and official award book each judge will need are placed in suitcases so that they are at hand when judging is complete. During the show the staff keep an official catalogue of awards. For the next three weeks they are kept busy writing out the prize-money cheques, dealing with lost property, and receiving subscriptions.

Although shows are no novelty to Miss Poff, she looks forward to the three days that are the culmination of her work. So does the rest ]of the staff. Yesterday work was going on smoothly amid stacks of ribbons, wall-to-wall files, and innumerable telephone calls. “It’s very exciting,” said Mrs P. B. Dwyer, who is working on her third show. “From the time the entries come in the excitement builds up.” Miss Poff is shown second from the right in the photograph. Others preparing for the show are, from left, Mrs J. Goulden, Miss M. Manning, Mrs E. A. Buckner, and Mrs Dwyer (far right).