Lancs and Cheshire Carnation Society Premier Show 2nd September 2017

Last year, this show had been very poorly supported and I was showing elsewhere at Liverpool on the day. I promised myself that I would try to support it this year. Then Liverpool Show fell through, which made it even easier to go to Atherton.

  As it turned out it was a repeat of the previous year with only myself and Keith Horton in the PFs and maybe three entrants in the Pinks. My intention had been to just go in one or two of the big classes, as I didn't have much but when I realised the situation at the venue, I split my blooms up to make more entries and at least give some semblance of a show. The crazy thing was that not only was there mountains of food, but the two judges travelled all the way down from the North-
East to do the judging and didn't have much of a job to do.

The one Heracles that I had wasn't very round.

This Lavender Schubert caused some confusion for the judges as I don't think they'd seen one before. At the moment it's classified as both self and a fancy which can't help matters. One of the judges thought it had sported from being self. In fact it's always like this.

The ever-reliable Crompton Classic gave me my white ground fancy.

Another that I've used a lot this year has been Clara's Choice. I don't think it has anything to do with Clara at all as it repeats fast like a Dutch variety. The late Brian Dean was of the same opinion. The stock came from him.

More consternation from the judges over this Unfinished Symphony below. It's a red ground fancy, classified as a pink ground fancy, another Schubert Sport. Mine got more and more red as the season progressed. The judge removed it from the Any Other Fancy class, put it in the red self class and judged it as a self.
 

To add to the judges' misery, I put in an Olivia, a commercial green variety which judges loathe with a passion. Compared to Elsie Kitchen, it has too much petal according to the arbiters of these things and after a similar one at Southport had been totally ignored it was hardly surprising that it only got a third from the judge.

Two Crompton Princess and a Winter Wonderland gave me my three whites.

Three Lavender Schuberts gave me another three selfs.

Best in Show went to these three Clara's Choice.

The Pinks saved the day and were probably of higher quality than my PFs.

It's a job to know what to do about this show. This year, I was unopposed in lots of classes at many venues. There is very little pleasure in receiving awards when you're the only exhibitor in those classes. I didn't have the luxury of choosing another show on the same day.