Guns, Geese, Geelong Show

Okay, lots of blogging to catch up on here so I'll start at the beginning...

Fresh on the heels of the Melbourne Show came the Geelong Show. Smaller, yes, classier....no!! Though the food hall was still good and we did indulge in chocolate strawberries on a stick again.

Showbags were still a big part of the day, but this time I thought we'd go with non-character efforts since we really didn't need any more Cars/Dora/Wall-e/Ben 10/Simpsons/Iron Man/Disney Princess anything in the house. So after much to-ing and fro-ing up and down the aisles, the boys declared that they would like the pirate bag and cowboy bag and Ella went with pink fairy. Usually I don't let the boys have weapons, partly because I'm trying to do the whole responsible-parent-weapons-are-bad kind of thing, but mostly because they beat the bejesus out of each other within minutes and there are always tears and tantrums. So anyway, for reasons of sun/wine tasting/mummy magnanimity, I gave in and we piled the pram high with swag including one rifle, two pistols, a blunderbuss, a bow and arrow, a pirate cutlass, a dagger and a fairy wand you could have someone's eye out with. And in the animal petting tent we met James' teacher. And I had to decide whether to (a) pretend the pram didn't contain an arsenal big enough to mount a country-wide coup or (b)try to pull the sun shade over the whole lot whilst conducting an uninterrupted hello-nice-to-see-you-yes-isn't-that-a-lovely-fluffy-lamb kind of conversation. Either way, I just know she was walking away thinking 'it always starts with the parents...'



The Dodgems were a big hit too - James and Will loved driving their own car and after James worked out that he could just keep the wheel on full lock and hit everyone else by doing small circles in the middle, he was happy. It was supposed to be a two minute ride, but time is flexible here and I think they were on about 15 minutes.



Apart from that, we saw snakes and baby crocs - the snake man told the kids never to touch a snake but always to back away slowly and get a grown up, who will presumably know what to do. Or, in my case, scream hysterically and run away as fast as my ageing bones will allow. And if the children can keep up, they can come too... Apparently, more people are killed in Australia by horses than snakes each year. Knew there was a reason I didn't like horses!

We went for a wander around the craft tent, and in the middle of an enlightening discussion on spinning with one of the local ladies, I turned around to find all of my children on stage... in some kind of dodgy pirate show with a scientific purpose. Ella did a great stage whisper of 'Mum, these pirates are really bad' and got more of a laugh than she was expecting!



We also went in a huge shed full of old steam engines and generators ranging from full size train and tractor engines down to tiny steam miniatures - all working, Nick was fascinated! Children not so much...

And yes, the pig diving was back at the Geelong show - but that is old hat now... This time we were fortunate enough to witness the goose fashion show. I'm still wondering what kind of person gets up in the morning and thinks 'today I'm going to dress my goose'. And having had that bizarre urge, presumably then moves on to 'today I'm going to custom-sew clothes for my goose. In several colours. And then I'm going to build a cat(goose)walk. And see if my geese want to walk up and down it for the amusement of the general public'. Sheesh....

And finally, here are my beautiful children in full show regalia. Yes, I know Will looks like Jimmy Somerville in his Bronski Beat days. Nuff said...