We were back into alpaca racing at the Mid Devon Show this year. This is a hoot and much loved by children who have a whale of a time racing against the clock over the obstacle course set up by Paul and Teresa Cullen of Hayne Alpacas. It consists of a slalom through traffic cones with tennis balls perched on the top. A penalty for every tennis ball that is knocked off. Then it is over a jump, up the ramp into the trailer, out off the side ramp, over the last jump and home. The Cullens have two geldings who are experts at this so they taught our alpacas and the suris from Rosewyn Alpacas how to do it. It turned out that my slightly arsy girl Cecilia was very fast and held the course record. We had to do extra races as the queue built up. In between Peter Roisseter read my script about alpacas, everything you ever wanted to know (!), while the alpacas were paraded round the ring. We all enjoyed ourselves and our audience seemed to as well. When we were stood up in the centre of Tiverton the weekend before last handing out flyers it was touch and go whether the show would take place given the amount of rain. But last week’s boiling sunshine meant the fields were very dry and there was NO MUD.
Chas and I tried hard to get our marquee and all the stuff down and into the trailer fast so that we could get home and slump in front of Beethoven’s Ninth at the Proms. We missed the first movement but were there, glasses of wine in hand for the rest. It was wonderful. Chas has the sound coming through his amazing system so it was great and not like the tinny crap that comes out of the television. We have been glued to all the Beethovens that the West Eastern Divan Orchestra have been playing.