Michele Hewitson
Sustained gazing at woolly mammals is the key to becoming a homespun philosopher.
Icame to the country to contemplate my navel, which is to say I intended to have a very long lie-down, but I am quite worn out. It is country life’s social whirl that has done for me.
In the past fortnight, we have had various visitors from abroad ( Wellington), the Rotary Club Melbourne Cup fundraiser afternoon and Gladstone School’s Scarecrow Big Day Out – which certainly scared the bejesus out of me. The scarecrows were seriously weird. Greg pointed at one with a very large belly and said, “What are they teaching these kids? This one says ‘Bun in the Oven’.” There was also a dead one,
“Pushing Up Daisies”, and one holding something indescribably disgusting and sporting a peg on its nose. They were brilliant.
An A&P show is always brilliant and at the Wairarapa A&P show in Carterton we made a beeline for the dog agility trials. I don’t know why watching a dog exert mind control over a bunch of silly sheep is so mesmerising (perhaps they are also exerting mind control over humans; I know cats do), but there it is.
At the dog trials I met a very fine gentleman with an even finer moustache. There was nothing worth knowing about sheep dogs that he didn’t know. He had had dogs for 40 years. I planned to be in the ring myself within two years, with my dog Rosie, I said. What sort of dog? A kelpie. Kelpies can be good heading dogs, he said.
Did he think I had a chance? You have to stay optimistic, he said, gallantly. I had to admit that I didn’t actually yet have a dog but that I had already trained her mother-to-be, Red, who is Miles the sheep farmer’s dog, to jump over a fallen tree. You have to start somewhere, he said, with extra gallantry, although I may have detected a faint twitching of the moustache.
He was watching the dog trials from his wheelchair. He had had an accident on his farm. He no longer has the farm. He no longer has his dogs. He wasn’t bitter about anything. But he misses the dogs. I said, “Have you thought about getting a pet dog?” He said he hadn’t. He’d always had working dogs and they were the only real dogs, as far as he was concerned. He was terribly nice and gave me a lot of tips on training (the imaginary) Rosie.
I thanked him and we went off to look at the chooks and the cows. I wanted to find Kevin, who, many moons ago, at the Masterton A&P show, I helped win Best Cow. My help involved applying the hair spray to the tail of his prize cow, Princess. Cow showing is very technical.
Ididn’t find Kevin. We found some peculiar hairy beasties called Woolly Manor Moos. The little ones are inordinately cute. But what are they for, I asked. People buy them to look at. They are very calm and friendly, apparently, despite the Viking-helmet-like horns.
We popped into the Home Industries showroom. The prizes are tempting: a packet of Weet-Bix and a set of plastic measuring spoons. I’m going to enter my pav next year. I reckon I’ve got a chance – or more of a chance than I have of winning an agility trial with an imaginary dog.
We were determined to have one of those disgusting hot dogs on a stick, the ones that come slathered in tomato sauce, because in the interests of nostalgia, one ought always to leave an A&P show feeling a bit sick. But they didn’t take eftpos at the hot dog stand and I had spent all our cash on the sorts of things an Aucklander would buy at an A&P show: a manuka-smoked pork fillet and the first of the season’s asparagus and strawberries. We came home and Miles came in for a glass of wine. I told him about the philosopher with the moustache. Miles said, “Yes, we country people are very philosophical.” If he had a moustache, it might well have been twitching. He said, sagely, “Once you have spent two years looking at sheep, you will understand the meaning of everything.” You have to stay optimistic.
In the interests of nostalgia, one ought always to leave an A&P show feeling a bit sick.