Old pals act

A few months ago I put forward the challenge to my northern blogging cousins Unsworth and Bastow that we should all enter the set of 6 at the NVS Northern Branch Championships at Harrogate and have a little side wager on who comes out on top. As the Northern Branch is in itself held alongside the Northern Horticultural Society Championships it would therefore be a sort of mini-show within a show within a show! If anyone else fancies having a go (you need to be a relative novice like what we all is!) then you need to send your tenner to David Thornton of the NVS who has agreed to act as purse holder. Winner takes all. I am of course immensely looking forward to taking some money out of Yorkshire.




The more I think of this the more I realise it's a good way of entering an event like this that you might not have dared enter before. By persuading one or more pals to have a go too you can have your own little competition whilst getting vegetables benched next to the very best showmen in the land so that you can compare yours with theirs and see how far you have to improve. You may well have a nice surprise and save yourself years of getting cold feet otherwise. Even the great John Branham took some persuading to have a go at his first Branch Championships in the 80's. The other night at North East Derby DA he told us how he arrived at the showground in Reading at 1.30 in the morning with a car full of veg and went to the organisers' table to get his entry tickets. He then had a look round at what had already been staged. When he got back to his car he said to his wife "We're going home!" Luckily she persuaded him to stage and the rest is history, as he's won the National 'Class 1' six times.



Now then, Harrogate is for 6 single vegetables so I reckon it is quite a good collection to cut your teeth on. Next year the National is at Malvern so as I was driving back the other night it struck me that we could extend the little wager and all enter our first proper collection and see how we fare at altitude! What say ye lads? I can see it now....Malvern 2012 Class 1 - 1st Peter Clark 2nd John Branham 3rd Mark Roberts 4th Trevor Last 5th Simon Smith 6th equal Paul Bastow and Dan Unsworth (holding hands again).