They were offering pig on a spit to chocolate fountains and candy floss, at a price – but the aroma drifting from the Cully & Sully stand announced free mushroom soup and curry, writes KATHY SHERIDANin Athy
IT WOULDN’T be “The Ploughing” as they call it, without Carrie Acheson and her Irish Mammyish exasperation.
“Damien Smith – come back IMMEDIATELY . . . Your child is upset and starting to cry.”
If you were Damien, hearing that tone of voice, you might be tempted to abandon the little darling and head for the hills.
Carrie spends her day telling people how not to lose their children (and if you intend to lose them, write your ruddy phone number on their hands). But some folk just don’t listen.
“I had a lot of lost children today”, said Carrie wearily over the loudspeaker at 4pm, announcing yet another lost child. This time though, that child was spoiling the ploughing for his parents, chided Carrie.
God knows what she thought of the chap from the Irish Aviation Authority who had to deal with the fall-out from the blimp/balloon that became detached from its moorings and was last seen drifting towards Monasterevin and into Dublin airspace. The rumour that it had to be shot down turned out to be untrue sadly.
Then we heard that the Breffmeister from The Apprenticeworks with JFC, the company in control of the balloon. "Smart lad, that. Was he holding on to it like Mary Poppins?", asked someone suspiciously . . .
It’s probably not something that featured in the hardy organisers’ snag list as they finalised the plans that lured 66,000 happy, cross-generational punters to a big farm in Athy yesterday. But they probably longed briefly for the tented candle-lit oasis organised by the Catholic Dublin Archdiocese and the Church of Ireland, complete with liturgical music and a prayer wall.
The ecumenical duo skated to victory in the ambiance stakes but the Free Presbyterian Church got the rosette in the only class that matters. They had free tea and biscuits. There’s no great mystery about how to attract the hordes at this gig.
“I’d never ate the schtuff at home”, chortled a massive Laois farmer, as he laid into the free Flahavan’s porridge at lunchtime. “But shur it’s free!”
The mystery is how the fleets of food outlets in the various alfresco food courts manage to sell anything at all.
They were offering pig on a spit to chocolate fountains and candy floss, at a price – but the aroma drifting from the Cully Sully stand announced free mushroom soup and curry; nearby a little girl was doing her bit for (Glenilen) farm and family, ladling out delicious strawberry yogurt for the crowds while beside her, Ballymaloe was serving up little pasta samples topped with sauce and cheese.
Then again, there’s no accounting for what flies with folk.
A quick word with the queues at the ramp to the Road Safety Authority caravan – with no visible attractions – revealed that not a single one of them had a clue what they were queuing for.
But Ann Queenan, a 12-year-old from Sligo, emerged grinning with the news that she’d driven a car (computer) and a gang of teenage girls came out triumphantly waving fluorescent arm-bands : “Free!”.
Beside the RSA, John Walsh, a former fire officer working with Kildare County Council road safety transportation, was repelling the hordes on the grounds that they weren’t open yet.
Corralled beside him was a rusty Opel car, “well melojined” as a youth put it. The idea was to put them off speeding; the lads were entranced. Was it really crashed like that?, asked a girl. “Ah we’d have doctored it a bit . . . hit it a few bangs”, said a commendably honest John, as the queue built up.
So what’s with the crowds John? He pointed to the piles of hi-vis vests in the tent within. “We give them away”, he said. And sure enough, an hour later, the hi-vis vests were the mode du jour for young teens at the ploughing, complete with messages scrawled on the back – “Eden is awesome”, “Sophie woz here”, “Up the Cats”. Free stuff. Makes you look like everyone else. Score!
Another guaranteed crowd-puller is anything that involves showing off ball skills. Big queues of lads built up at the AIB stand, where there were prizes for belting the ball into a hole in the wall. It looks easy though surprisingly few managed it – rather like meeting the requirements for a loan.
A little gang of girls wandered into the AIB “office”, which was doing a brisk enough trade under the circumstances. “Annie – they’ve tea!”, yelled one. “D’ye really want tea?”, gurned Annie. “Take it where you can get it”, yelped the sage friend.
Meanwhile, the dense crowds on the gangways built to scrum level as President Mary McAleese took the stage to a rock-star reception with a thrusting, rock-style, “Conas atá sibh?”, that was almost “Helloooo Athyyy!”. She made a gentle, hopeful speech, quoting Gandhi : “To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves”, and was followed by prayers from Catholic and Church of Ireland reverends, including a Gospel passage and a blessing on the crowd, while two gents from a Cheta fencing oversaw proceedings under enormous wooden cow heads with horns and blonde ringlets.
Enda Kenny then showed up and attracted a decent crush to the Fine Gael tent (tea available, biscuits gone) before the media ruined everything with questions about PJ Sheehan.
He did predict an election in six months though . . . which a grinning Minister for Social Protection Éamon Ó Cuív later described as “an interesting prediction”. He got used to hearing all that in the two previous terms, he said, looking genuinely happy to be at the ploughing.
Alan Dukes turned up in his Barbour coat, languidly accepting as much homage as any sitting deputy. Meanwhile, up at the Sinn Féin tent, where a poster announced that Martin Ferris TD and "Minister for Agriculture, Michelle Gildernew" would be on hand to launch a farming and fishing report on the west, they had a special ploughing cover for An Phoblacht– "Sinn Féin – fighting for rural Ireland".
In the tent, there were little hurleys for sale bearing the Bobby Sands quote : “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children”. One of the youths looking over the merchandise, pointed to a sentence in Irish and asked the man behind the counter what it meant. The man looked incredulous : “It says ‘tiocfaidh ár lá’”.
The ploughing is like that – a great fistful of random things dropped from the sky into a corner of Kildare for a remarkable three days. We might get a look at the actual ploughing today . . .