A Royal meditation

It would be churlish of me - a longtime conviction vegetarian - to display any hint of gloating over the sorry state of the livestock entries at this year's show: way, way down, with bluetongue restrictions not the only problem facing the industry.

Elizabeth Grice (who I vaguely recall as colleague from years and years ago) has a masterly analysis of the whole phenomenon at

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2249389/Is-the-agricultural-show-a-dying-breed.html

Copy and paste the above if my hyperlink is acting up again and clicking on it doesn't work. A good read.

She makes the point that the actual hands-on farming element (like the acres of machinery and various demonstrations) is disappearing from agricultural shows. Certainly, I fondly recall WI tents and school handwriting competitions and far more community events from my youthful reporting days, when we covered every result.

Now it's all supermarkets telling us how good they are at sourcing local produce and how they're all out-greening one another.

That said, it's a brilliant family day out, and we'll certainly be back for more next year. Where else can kids get up close and personal with miniature pigs from New Zealand and sit (thanks to Natural England) in a deckchair made for a giant and make their own smoothie by pedalling a bike?

Our two loved getting close to the giant bulls and huge horses as they were beautified in preparation for pulling their brewery drays. And seeing sheepdogs and their handlers working sheep is far better in real life than the TV version.

There were a couple of showers, yes, but this year's show was a huge improvement weather-wise on last year's washout.

A tip if you're planning a trip next year - head straight for the education section and pick up a trail to take you right round the show. We could have spent the whole day in that section. It's sponsored by HGCA, the body that supports Britain's cereals and oilseeds industries and was quite brilliant, from learning how to skewer a balloon without bursting it to making bread - we ate ours with our picnic lunch.

Full marks to Asda for sponsoring the farm that let young visitors handle animals and nul points to in-trouble M&S for having nothing but a retail outlet to sell their food to punters. Give us some cheese and strawberries like everyone else!

All the supermarkets (except the excellent co-operative - note the lower case initial) had wannabe celebrity chefs doing dire cooking demonstrations and the flower classes more and more resemble horticultural versions of Strictly Ballroom.

Best bit of our weekend was yesterday's free sample of a guided meditation session at our local Buddhist Centre during their World Peace fete (marred by torrential showers).

Beef cattle and commerce were a million miles away and I'll long remember the brilliant name of one of the bands playing in the garden - Old Speckled Men. Shame about the music, but the amazingly cheap all-veggie food was terrific.

Try http://www.meditation-nagarjuna.org/ if you're interested.

Pictures show bike-powered smoothie making courtesy of co-operative food and the tempting Natural England giant deckchair.