Last hurrah for keen show girl
Ollie Reid’s kitchen bench is covered in ribbons, trophies, certificates and photos representing more than 70 years of A&P show memories.
Her first encounter was in 1947 at the Murchison A&P Show, as a 10-year-old, winning a prize for a photo she’d taken of a landscape on her Box Brownie camera.
She began entering the Nelson A&P Show, which is set to celebrate its 125th anniversary on November 23 and 24, in 1969 – under her maiden name, Terrill.
Reid has since won scores of trophies and ribbons, predominantly in cookery and photography, but she’s also taken part in handcraft and horticulture among the other sections she enters each year.
But this year’s show will be her last hurrah.
‘‘I’ve had a few health issues and I thought, ‘It’s getting too hard’,’’ she said.
She will enter her final cake in the cookery section, themed for the 125th celebrations – and to be shared after the event.
Despite her ongoing success, Reid hasn’t always been in the winners’ circle.
‘‘My first bread was a flop,’’ she said. ‘‘I entered it with a note stuck on it – ‘Tell me what’s gone wrong here?’.’’
The judges helped her figure out what had gone wrong, which was ‘‘marvellous’’. The next year, her bread won the cup.
Reid also fondly remembers when A&P shows became a family affair, with her husband entering a bottle of 40-year-old plum wine.
‘‘It won a prize, and everyone had to have a taste,’’ she recalled.
‘‘There was about a tablespoon left when we went and collected our bottle at the end of the show. Normally, [the judges] take a little bit out of the top, but they’d emptied nearly all of our 40-year-old wine.’’
Reid’s children Gordon and Caroline became involved, too, and in 1993 all three took out the top prizes in the cookery section.
Beyond the prizes, and the hundreds of photos of birds and landscapes Reid has entered – and later used for a poetry book to raise money for the region’s hospice – what she treasures most is the friendships she has made at A&P shows over the decades.
‘‘I made friends and I learnt a lot,’’ she said.
‘‘When I first starting doing them, I was shy and I didn’t mix with people much. It’s helped me with those things.’’
Reid has entered shows in Murchison, Reefton, Westport, Marlborough, Takaka, Motueka and Nelson.
When she began her nursing career, she moved around a lot, so she would enter the local A&P shows wherever she was based.
‘‘It’s done more for me than I could ever do for the show.’’
Reid said she would miss ‘‘everything’’ about the show, and she hoped more young people would start entering.
‘‘Without entries, there would not be a show, and all entrants make the Nelson show the best.’’
The 125th Nelson A&P Show is on at the Richmond Showgrounds on November 23 and 24, from 9am to 5pm on Saturday and 9am to 4pm Sunday.
‘‘It’s done more for me than I could ever do for the show.’’ Ollie Reid