Gŵyl Tyddyn a Gardd Frenhinol Cymru

Please God I am not making a fool of myself and that title actually does translate into the 'Royal Welsh Smallholder and Garden Festival', which is where Bert, Clint and myself spent last weekend. It was my first visit ever to Wales and I was very impressed with the country. It may be wet but it is beautiful and the people are lovely.

Which is not what we'd been led to expect from Clint. He regaled us all the way over with stories of the sheer horridness of the Welsh people. His dislike of the Welsh stemmed from his experiences driving tankers of Irish milk to a cheese factory in Anglesey. What did the Welsh do to him that drove him to take umbrage with an entire country you may ask? And I did. It appears that a canteen lady in the Welsh cheese factory in Anglesey wouldn't give him a cup of tea saying curtly that the canteen was closed and that he could get his tea from the machine. Meanwhile there was a group of employees sitting at a table nursing hot steaming cups of proper tea and they were all glaring at him. What did Clint do? I asked him this. It seems he told the canteen lady to stick her tea and then flounced out. Now there is an entire cheese factory in Anglesey that thinks Northern Irish people are perfectly hateful.

The Garden and Smallholder festival was all about flowers, pigs, woodcraft, pigs, goats, pigs, vintage farm machinery, pigs, vegetables, pigs, cattle, pigs, farmer's markets, pigs, dogs, pigs, country clothes, pigs, sheep, pigs, camelids and pigs.

And did I mention the pigs? They were far and away my favourite part of the show.

While I was away I picked up a new Facebook friend. Her name is Mavis and she is a Berkshire pig. She's got a brother who lives and works here, in the Ministry, in the AI section. Tough job but somepig has got to do it.