Tuesday 1st July 2008.
The National is over! It takes a great deal of organizing, the whole of last week was turned over to National preparations, with just the bare minimum of routine chores carried out. Although only 50 koi could be taken to the show, every koi in the concrete ponds spent the whole of last week without food, that is around 3,000 koi.
The show is hard work, but one of our highlights of the year, it's a chance to show off our wares and meet up with many friends. We had great fun, in fact it was the best yet, we even noticed other UK koi breeders peering into our vats from a distance! Sales were brisk, many new contacts were made from the hobby and trade. Friday evening in the hotel bar was a fun as ever catching up with news from around the country and the new venue for the dinner dance on Saturday evening was a great success. I laugh a lot, but Saturday evening brought this to a new high and at times thought I was going to die the laughing pains were so high.
Some of the judging decisions posed some questions, but we came away with a couple of 1st's, 2nd's and 3rd's. We started packing up just before 5pm and arrived back at the farm by around 9.30pm.
Yesterday I slept in the longest I had for a good 40 years, it was 8.15am before I dragged myself from bed, there had been so many late nights over the last week. All of our energy has been drained and it will take a little while to get back to normal.
When I arrived at the farm, I walked through the concrete ponds checking all was well, then down through the tunnels. At 9.30am the temperature was already warm and as I walked along the grass I saw the largest grass snake I'd ever seen, it was a good metre in length and moved at quite a rate when it saw me. It headed off along the gravel between two mud ponds and found a bucket to hide under. At this point I headed back to the office to grab my camera, due to the heat, it took a while for the streamed up lens of the camera to clear, I moved the bucket and snapped a couple of photos.
It looks quite well fed!
For those who follow my pet bird breeding program the three baby canaries left the nest for the first time today.
