Teh Royal Show - Part I

Took the day off work and went to the Royal Adelaide Show today with the She_Admiral and the Ensign since they're fresh back from their "Avoid Buying Fathers' Day Present at all Costs" mission to sunny QLD. Initially I protested, arguing that after the two weeks I'd had, I needed rest and would like nothing better than to laze around home for a day. I guess the mountain of empty beer cans and pizza boxes littering the lounge room floor and neatly framing the TV gave me away, and the She_Admiral postulated that I might have been doing just that already for the past fortnight.

So we drive to the show and I drop them off at the end of a 200m long queue then go off to part the car... slowly. I figure it'll take them a good 30 minutes to get anywhere near the pointy end of the queue. I pay $10 and park in the park lands. "Who does that money go to anyway?" I wonder. Clearly not anything relating to the dusty bowl of dead grass masquerading as a car park anyway.

A leisurely stroll later and I homed in on the She_Admiral, just reaching the front of the queue where I "pushed in" under a filthily accusatory stare from a couple of old bags immediately behind her. I casually swung the stroller around so they they could get a view of the Ensign to defuse the situation since it's become apparent that any latent motherly instincts are awakened in any female as soon as they sight a baby. "Ooooh, she's GORGEOUS!" cooed one of them "She's SO ALERT!". "More alert than you, dumbass" I mentally sneered, "she came out of my penis you know!". Situation under control, we progressed to the booth, and I feigned a lost wallet to get the She_Admiral to pay for my ticket and we were in!

The Show never changes much. Every year there's one less connection to what the whole thing used to be about, and one more tacky amusement or tawdry ripoff in its place. They'd demolished Centennial Hall this year, the place where my parents saw The Beatles when they came to Adelaide, and someone was making a little replica out of sand. When the show was finished, they'd knock that one down as well I guess. The chair ride thing is gone, and the Mad Mouse will be gone next year as well apparently. I wonder what transient carnie attraction will be towed in and set up in it's place next year.

We made an immediate beeline for the food area, since it had been a good 45 mins since we all ate and my wizened body was craving junk food. Luckily that's all the Show has, and I settled on a steak roll - nice. Refuelled, I checked that it was past 10am and set a course for the Coopers bar. "Full Steam Aheeaad" I said in extended baby-talk to my little one, and she giggled happily, a bleak contrast to my not-so-little one who was hitting me with the stern wifely hattrick of raised eyebrow, folded arms and tapping foot. "It's all about the baby now!" she lectured and thus thoughts of beer were replaced with the solemn procession to towards the every-increasing aroma of rank barnyard incontinence.

It could mean only one thing, and yep, that's what it meant. The Bank SA baby animal farmyard thing. In we went, confronted by a humid wall of "musty hay covered in urine" smell and I whipped the baby out for her mum, reversing the stroller "out of the way". This was ridiculous since anywhere you were, you were in someone's way. Kids, mums with kids, kids with kids, all bumping into each other for a glimpse of baby duck or chicken. I looked around and say another dad behind his stroller, immobilised in a sea of kids, locked in an infant traffic jam. He shot back a "WTF are we doing here?" look and I nodded. Just then a Burnside mum arrived from outside, propelling one of those giant 2-baby strollers, almost as wide as the BMW 4WD she no doubt drove there. Amazingly, she just bowled into the sea of kids, bunting them here, shunting them there, cutting a swathe through the masses with awesome effect. Otherdad saw as well, and with a resolute look on his face, thrust his own stroller forward, straight into a fat little idiot eating from a cup of chips while looking at his porcine equivalent. He went arse up, chips went everywhere, and well-rehearsed tears started streaming down his pudgy cheeks. I looked for the She_Admiral. She was dangling the Ensign over the pit of fluffy chicken nuggets crowded under a spotlight. I turned the stroller around and bolted for the door figuring I'd meet them at the exit.

They finally emerged and off we went, to some other display where you could sit on a bales of hay arranged in a big circle and hold a fluffy little chicken proffered up by a team of bored-looking schoolgirls. Naturally, it was a requirements that we did this as well, although when the Ensign's ratchet-like baby-claws latched onto the little fluff-ball in a choking death grip, we figured maybe it wasn't such a great idea...