Tweed and children throng the show

Press, 12 November 1981, Page 24

Tweed and children throng the show

Tweed sportscoats and felt hats were the predominant garb above the throng of small children at the Addington Show Grounds yesterday on the first day of the Canterbury agricultural and Pastoral Association’s annual show.

Although . Show Day tomorrow is the city dweller’s main chance to have a day in country in town, the attendance was down from last year’s record first-day figure of 10,000. However, gate takings had risen from $B4Bl to $9568 because of a 25 per cent increase jn entrance fees this year, said the director of the association (Mr N. M. Woods). Mr Woods said it was impossible to get an exact attendance figure at this stage "because so may have passes, and so on.” Another official said that the cold easterly wind which swept the Show Grounds yesterday “might have driven a few town people away.” “But it is a good show, and we should get plenty of people in the next two days,” he said. Stock entries are down slightly on last year, but the number of trade exhibits rose by 15 to 165. More exhibitors had had to be turned away because of a lack of room, said Mr Woods. The trade exhibits range

from farm machinery "and farmers’ inventions to garden tools, and from spa pools to prefabricated glasshouses. Many Christchurch schools again took advantage of a half-price entrance fee for school parties on the first day. Excited children of all shapes and sizes were everywhere, bumping into each other and tangling in the legs of more sedate adults as harassed teachers tried to keep their charges together. Several schools had gone to some trouble to keep track of their own, and whole classes wore official-looking stick-on labels bearing their names and those of their schools. “When they get lost they are sometimes so overwhelmed that they can’t remember where they come from,” said Mrs Helen Cummings, a teacher at Addington School. Only one little girl — she was not wearing a label — turned up in the “lost children” tent run by the League of Mothers. A woman helping in the tent expects more “losses"

today and tomorrow. “We’ve got books and crayons and we give them a drink and a biscuit. The poor little things have to do something; sometimes they are here for half a day," she said. As usual, the gleaming new farm machinery on display, with its exciting knobs and levers, proved perhaps more popular with children than with the farmers who wandered among it, salesmen hovering solicitously at their shoulders. “Guess the liveweight of ‘Jodie’ and win $5O” was a popular competition, although Richard Start, aged nine, will have to hope that the giant Charolais steer is either hollow or on a crash diet. He guessed its weight at 329 kilograms. (At the age of 12 years, ‘Jodie’ is reputed to be among the heaviest of his breed in the world.) Also popular, as usual, were the pigs, reclining in fresh straw in their own tin shed, labelled: “Pigs.” Those animals who were not asleep managed to appear detached and even slightly disdainful as humans shrieked and

prodded at them over the pen walls. “Sideshow alley” was strangely deserted yesterday, many of the proprietors preferring to remain closed until show attendances build up. Fewer than half the rides were working, and only a smattering of parents and children were enjoying the sideshows which were open. Canterbury Court is packed full of working exhibits and displays of arts, crafts, and wares, including spinning, pottery, weaving, photography, and painting. The heats yesterday of a building competition for twoman carpentry teams attracted keen interest. There are many non-com-mercial organisations promoting their interests at the show — among them the Army, the Native Forests Action Council, the Farm Workers’ union, and a Christian group running a “Good News Tent." Security guards are keeping a close overnight watch on the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of exhibits at the Show Grounds.