My dear friend

I hope this email finds you in a state of equilibrium or at least in a state in which you can remember having once felt a moment of equilibrium however fleeting that moment might have been.

For myself, I have had a busy week and I’ve been engaged in pursuits of the intellect meaning that the braincells that I didn’t kill by drinking Tia Maria and Kahlua in the eighties have been working overtime. (Thinking about Tia Maria, I have a slight nostalgic yearning for the bottle, but not for its contents. I am going to assume that it is as sweet as it used to be, but I feel no great urge to rediscover this piece of my young adult years).

Although I was busy, it is Adelaide Show week and so I did take some time away from my desk to go to the Royal Adelaide Show that most beloved event brought to us by the Royal Agricultural & Horticultural Society of South Australia. There are people who do not like the show. I am not one of those people. I bloody love it. When I was young, my dad used to take us every year and we were given four rides and four showbags which felt like an absolute bonanza of a day.

I didn’t take many photos this year, partly because I was there without my Influencer Husband, and partly because I go to the show every year and really how many photos does a person need of woodchoppers they don’t know; or of toasted sandwiches that are definitely a bargain at $3.50 but don’t look any different to the toasted sandwich they photographed last year; or of plates of duck eggs.

Actually, I couldn’t resist the eggs, because they are so very beautiful:

Naturally, I spent a lot of time at the handicrafts, where once again I found myself sending up a quiet but heartfelt plea: please for the love of all things handmade could the organisers of the handcrafts section find a way to display things so that it doesn’t look like a pile of jumbled pile of nonsense. Every year it looks like this:

It’s impossible to tell one thing from the other let alone to really see the work. The guidelines and judging demand such precision from entries and then they get presented like this. Pretty sure you could make a quick trip to the home organiser section of IKEA and this would be sorted.

Further down at the cooking section, everyone was standing around one of the cabinets in particular, and being a person of a curious nature I went to see what they were looking at. It took me a while to work out what I was seeing, but in all my years of visiting the cooking displays at the show I have never seen anything like this:

It was taking everyone a minute to work out what exactly had happened, but as they did work it out, there was a shared sense of horror. I mean, can you imagine the absolute devastation if you’ve told all your friends that your incredible gingerbread castle won second prize and they’re all going to the show to see it and all week you are getting a steady stream of photos to show you what’s happened to it? If you do know this person please give them a most sincere hug from me.

The highlight of my day was to realise that I was there on the day of the poodle judging. This was the first time I’ve seen the poodles. I do always watch of bit of dog showing, but I kind of just rock up and see whatever is there on the day. And this year it was the poodles. I have to admit that when I got home I spent a considerable number of my remaining braincells looking up poodle breeders and scrolling through endless reddit posts about them. It is going to take me a few years, but I am really hoping to convince Adrian that we can join the world of poodle showing in our dotage. Because it is glorious:

I know it’s easy to laugh at them, but I thought they were beautiful, and they had such gorgeous natures. I’m in love!

The thing I love most about the show, however, is the little glimpses and reminders that this event brings the country to the city and for ten days it transforms this space:

I bought a few showbags for my children and one for Adrian (and he won’t notice that there aren’t quite as many Bertie Beetles in it as there were when I bought it); I had scones from the CWA; I checked out the horticultural displays; and I wandered around for a bit thinking about the people who weren’t there with me and enjoying very much the memories of Royal Shows Past. And then I walked back past the house where we used to live (and it was so much fun having a driveway where friends would park on the days that they went to the show); and I found my car without any problems and then I came home and checked my emails to discover that I have been rejected for another job. Luckily, I still had the endorphins of my encounter with poodles to buoy me so I did not let this get me down.

This is, I admit, a shallow and superficial letter of no particular substance. As shallow and superficial and insubstantial as they come. I was writing you something more substantial, but I didn’t get it finished in time to make this afternoon’s post, and after a two-week correspondence streak I didn’t want to break it. I’ll finish that more substantial post it in time for next week’s letter, but until then I will think of you often and with love.

Your friend,

Tracy xx