Wish me luck.

I think most of you know that as well as running the guest house I work full time on a farm machinery magazine, selling advertising.  I also go to agricultural shows to man our stand, this is sometimes great fun - Yorkshire show drinking Pimms at 4pm, some times utterly tedious - LAMMA standing in a cattle shed as a storm rages outside and sometimes, sometimes its so awful I can hardly find the words.

The National Ploughing Championships in Ireland.  It really is this muddy.  I have told my colleague that if en route to the stand one morning I trip and fall into the mud she is not to help me up, she must find a gun and shoot me.  Although it would be a waste of a bullet cos the levels of shite contained in ploughing mud are so high its highly likely you'll succumb to some dread disease if you get any of it on you. 

Just being there opens you up to all manner of vile contagion, but if you go to the toilet. Dear god. In the past there weren't gender specific loos, everyone used the portaloos.  The portaloos weren't emptied for the 4 days they were in use.  I have nearly gone into renal failure holding in a wee for 13 hrs rather than use these portaloos which is akin to hovering your nether regions over the opening to hell (think "slumdog millionaire - the toilet scene" its identical).  Luckily its got a lot more civilised in recent years and they now have ladies only loos!

So please if you do find yourself at the Ploughing come to the profi stand and say "Hi"!  And if at any point you think you are having a craptacular week bear in mind that I am stood in this, no doubt in the pouring rain and only drinking a mixture of equal parts of whisky and coffee is keeping me from sobbing.