Every year in September, my home town puts on a traditional Flower and Produce Show – although it’s not that traditional as it only started in 2014. In fact I “designed” and printed the posters for the inaugural event back in 2014 when I was heavily into letterpress printing.

Unsurprisingly, they’ve eschewed that old-timey vintage look for something way slicker and this year was the first year in a long time we’ve been at home and able to go along.

The format is of course as you’d expect in any traditional British Flower and Produce Show, although mercifully without the brass bands and face painting. Rows of tables laden with prize fruit and vegetable specimens harvested from the gardens and allotments of the local residents.

Artfully arranged chillis, dangling tomatoes and serried ranks of runner beans abounded.

Hot competition in the cake and bread sections.

The obligatory quirky exhibits…

…plus the added frisson of some dodgy interpretations of what we assumed were rigid and strictly enforced entry regulations. How about a purple flower coming third in the single yellow flower category?

Or, even closer to home, my wife’s excellent Seville orange marmalade painstakingly cooked and labelled to competition stipulations only to be pipped (SWIDT?) for the prize by a Ginger Marmalade! Needless to say a Steward’s Enquiry was duly lodged and we await the verdict anxiously. Clearly taking the pith here…

We didn’t hang around for the trophy presentation – not that we’re sore losers or anything.

Our friend did however manage to garner a prize for her pink rose.