Politicians did not have an easy time when they paid a visit to the championships, writes ALISON HEALY
CAKE WAS on Enda Kenny’s mind when he visited the Fine Gael tent at the ploughing championships yesterday.
The cake was baking in the oven, he told the crowd. Our mouths were watering. The cake was coming out of the oven, he said. And now the cake was being cut up. But who would get a slice? The anticipation was unbearable.
But it transpired this was an analogy for Lisbon. The cake was in the oven in the kitchen of the EU house. Ireland was sitting in the kitchen/living room, drinking tea and having a great time. But if we vote No, we’ll end up in the back room talking to ourselves and missing all the fun. And we’ll get no cake. The crowd was crestfallen at the prospect.
Then they forgot about the cake and pressed forward to get a photo with George Lee.
George, in his sharp navy suit and matching umbrella, was Fine Gael’s star attraction yesterday. Everywhere he turned, people wanted to shake his hand. But he doesn’t do small talk. A throwaway remark from one woman about the Government led to George explaining that if you put the money being spent on Nama in €5 notes and lay them end to end, they would go around the world 32 times.
“32 times, oh Jesus!” exclaimed the woman and scuttled away to contemplate that.
Next up to George was a farmer from Co Laois. He wanted to talk about cows and subsidies. But before George became immersed in the finer details of suckler cow schemes, a Fine Gael man pulled him aside to speak to someone else. The farmer was disconsolate.
“He doesn’t give one sh*t about my cows,” he said to his friend and decided to return to hover around Enda Kenny instead.
Earlier the same farmer had heckled Kenny as the Fine Gael leader struggled to be heard above the loudspeaker giving results for the Farmers Journal heifer competition.
“The small farmer is being sold out and Fine Gael is good for nothing and no different to the skunks in there already,” the farmer shouted at Kenny, but the Fine Gael leader ignored the heckle.
Earlier yesterday, the media trooped after Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith in the hope that an irate farmer might lob an egg at him. But the reaction from the public was generally indifferent and he emerged relatively unscathed, perhaps saved by the fact that many people did not know who he was.
One passerby pointed to him and said confidently “there’s Batt O’Keeffe”.
An Irish Daily Mail reporter pressed a copy of a Bóthar calendar into Smith’s hands to see his reaction but he just gave a weak smile.
The calendar has 12 photographs of young farmers without their shirts, and raises money for the charity which sends livestock to Africa.
Mr July is ironing his shirt in a field while Mr September is strumming a guitar as a curious pig looks on. “We had an awful job to get people to pose,” said calendar organiser Ciara Ryan. “It took us six months to get them. Irish men are very timid.”
When the effort of looking at half-naked farmers and walking past thousands of people became too much yesterday, ploughing fanatics could hop on the back of a trailer and go to watch the ploughing, several fields away.
The horse ploughing was an oasis of peace and calm. The delighted shrieks of children on the fairground rides could be heard in the distance as pairs of horses moved up and down the furrows, carrying ploughs behind them.
Mogue Curtis from Wexford looked on, forlornly. He should have been competing with his horses Paddy and Johnny yesterday but a fall in recent days put paid to that.
The National Ploughing Championships were the highlight of the year for horse ploughing enthusiasts, he said. “I suppose it is a hobby but it’s a nice kind of hobby. You get great days out and make great friends out of it.”
It was “nearly impossible” to get good horses to pull the ploughs and it could take three years to get a horse ready. He had been training every day in recent weeks. “I have two good horses,” he said and looked horrified at the thought of asking someone else to take Paddy and Johnny through their paces. “I’d never give them to anyone else.”
But people visiting Athy yesterday had more than ploughing on their minds.
The ecumenical prayer wall in the marquee hosted by the Dublin Archdiocese, the Church of Ireland and the Irish Missionary Wall was laden down with prayers yesterday afternoon. “For my Dad’s job” one said in childish writing. “For Bernadette, our class student. RIP” another note said.
A child had a wish that “granddad is safe up in heaven” and another prayed for “help in my Junior Cert”.
But when the ploughing is over, there’s always hurling. One child was thinking ahead and wrote “I pray for my family and friends and that Kilkenny wins”.