First sounds of Christmas at the Winter Fair

IT’S 5.35pm on the first day of the Royal Welsh Winter Fair and the evocative sounds of a male voice choir are drifting across the showground.

A blue-jacketed choir are belting out carols in the main cattle ring in front of an appreciative audience. Loudspeakers are relaying the action to the rest of us, and although the result is rather tinny, and the applause sounds like an aircraft roaring overhead, their music is almost succeeding in getting me into a Christmas mood.

Male voice choirs singing carols are for the festive season what cockoos are to spring. It doesn’t matter how cliched the songs are, it’s the sound that counts and the Winter Fair boys are doing themselves proud.

It’s a good end for the organisers: pre-show sales were down by 1,200 tickets thanks to the loss of the poultry show (bird flu) and the absence of English livestock competitors (bluetongue). It was always going to be hard to match last year’s attendance, but it looks like they’re going to have a pretty good go.

In between competitions I popped into the Fair’s newest attraction, a travelling souk. Essentially this is just an exotic name for an old-fashioned craft market, and by the looks of it, showgoers weren’t buying the ruse. Vendors looked bored or else looked desperately at the few shoppers wandering around.

In contrast the food hall was, as usual, packed to the rafters. Sardines. It’s amazing what a few free samples can do.

I was tempted - but didn’t - by the Christmas pudding giveaways. I’d gone there to chat to the owners of a new company from Abergele called The Pudding Compartment. Apparently, or so I was told, it’s named after the wife’s belly. I didn’t like to say anything, especially as she wasn’t present, but it’s hardly something you’d want on your epitaph. Anyway, there’ll be a full explanation in Wednesday’s DP.

Earlier Eurgain Jones, of Llansannan, won the NFU/Nat West Welsh Woman Farmer of the Year competition. I was delighted for her, having embarrassed her (in a nice way) in a preview feature for last week’s Farm & Country.

“Lots of people have been teasing me about the article,” she scolded me (in a nice way). I’d made a virtue of the fact that she’d refused to disclose her age and, as she collected her award, a million miles away from her everyday farm working clothes, I could have sworn she looked 21 again.