Cowpie

This year the English summer seems to be arranged for May again. Being English means learning to make the most of whenever it does appear, and it's certainly summery at the moment.

The sun shone very brightly yesterday at the twenty-eighth Cowpie rally organised by the federation of Young Farmers Clubs. Very fortunately for the organisers and fundraisers, and also for me because I had agreed to be their official photographer. It is possible to take good pictures in poor weather ... but conveying an atmosphere of fun can be more difficult. No such problems yesterday.

I have become accustomed - to some extent - to enjoying myself on a Sunday, hard as the adaptation has been. This, however, was new again, being large, organised, crowded, rural in feel, and combined for me with a sense of duty. I suppose in essence it was a country fair, with a main ring and events, minor rings with demonstrations and fun, all surrounded by a multitude of stalls and activities. It was both child-friendly and animal-friendly, which is an unusual combination in my experience outside of petting farms. It shows how little direct knowledge of the country I have in spite of being surrounded by the stuff.

I should imagine it made for a very good day out for all those who attended. Personally I was a little distracted, and it was a good day even for me.

It's hard to say why it feels like a milestone, but it does. Maybe it's because although I have been doing photography for others for years now, off and on, this is the very first occasion where there is no brethren connection at all. Commissions from brethren feel like cheating, because I know very well that brethren will give jobs to brethren purely because they're comfortable with doing that even if someone else would do it better. In this case, it feels like the beginning of an alternative.

So I alternated wandering among the crowds and finding vantage points on the edge of the ring, hunting for young farmers enjoying themselves in groups and recording what I could of the events. Some, like the mad motorcyclist who removed the entire front of his machine and then rode it over the top of a battered car, were easy to capture. Others, like farm machinery and gun dog demonstrations (not at the same time) were a little more difficult. It was nice to have a real excuse for snapping people at random, too.

Honestly, it didn't occur to me until much later in the evening (when I had a call from someone who'd been at brethren meetings all day) that my Sunday a year ago would have been very different. That's another milestone in itself.