With the sodden masses braving churning swamps on the gushing walkways and President Michael D Higgins in full spate on the platform, there was no escape from the raging torrent on the first day of The Ploughing.
In normal times this ancient agricultural activity is left to tractors and horses. This year, in a gesture of climatic inclusivity, the heavens gave everyone a chance to plough through the turf.
The rain poured. Paths became surging rivers, intersections turned into lakes, and words cascaded at length from Michael D who was in front of the public and a microphone for the first time in months. Clearly delighted to be properly let out again.
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By late afternoon the car-parking fields were transformed into tar pits. And it was strange, in a venue with enough horsepower at its disposal to drag a small country from its earthly moorings, that it mostly fell to obliging members of the public to push sunken vehicles to firmer ground.
Media huddles became media puddles. Newsdesks across the nation placed their top hacks on muck-watch.
Montrose decamped to the showgrounds in Laois. Was there anybody left back at RTÉ headquarters to mind the ship, sinking or otherwise? Orange rain ponchos were much in evidence. They were decent and substantial too, not the flimsy cheap ones which stick to the skin and rip at the tiniest little snag. We thought they might have been provided free by RTÉ in an ironic, post-Oireachtas committee gesture. A kind of edgy reverse-season follow up to Flip-Flop gate.
For they were PTSB (Post-Tubridy Stress Buster) ponchos. Either that or they were sponsored by Permanent TSB, which sponsors The Ploughing as well as The Late Late Show.
New director general Kevin Bakhurst arrived later in the afternoon to walk among the large crowd and also to meet some people not from RTÉ. It must have been very reassuring for them all. We hope Kevin didn’t see the nice little Mercedes executive coach waiting in the media/exhibitors car park with a big RTÉ sign on the dashboard. Anyway, how was the talent supposed to get back to base now that nobody has cars any more?
President Higgins and his wife Sabina were among the first of the special guests to arrive. They would be followed by a large contingent of ambassadors and the usual complement of political party leaders, Ministers, Deputies, Senators and MEPs.
The politicians love The Ploughing but the leaders of the three Coalition parties were conspicuous by their absence, otherwise engaged at a UN sustainable development conference in New York. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Tánaiste Micheál Martin and Eamon Ryan of the Greens were photographed sitting together at Ireland’s table, looking very warm and dry and very pleased with themselves. For some inexplicable reason they took the Minister for Health along for the trip too. But Stephen Donnelly didn’t figure in the photo.
Their ears must have been burning while they were basking in their international moment because Michael D mentioned in his speech that they were attending the conferenced before he tore into the “falling” UN for its dismal track record on, well, everything really.
[ In Pictures: National Ploughing Championships gets off to a wet and muddy startOpens in new window ]
But back to the grassroots and the President’s first stop was at the horse-drawn ploughing competition.
A photographer took pictures of one man and his Clydesdale.
“What’s his name?”
“Elton John.”
And your own name is?
“Just say Gerry from Kerry.”
Michael D and Sabina arrived in a convoy of jeeps, full of the joys.
One of the ploughmen mused aloud about the correct way to address Mrs Higgins. Maybe “Lady President”, he wondered?
“Oh no” she instantly replied. “Woman President. Woman President. This is a republic!”
They met horses Rooney and Sonny, with James Coffey and Gerry North behind the plough, before moving on to Flash and Baily, who had Stephen Byrne and David Gorey on the reins.
“And now, President, you know about the umbrella and the horses,” said the formidable Anna Maria McHugh, head honcho of the National Ploughing Association. He did. Umbrellas sometimes unsettle them.
The Irish Times, resplendent in her Post Tubridy Stress Buster poncho, was specifically instructed not to frighten the horses because they don’t like “the big orange bibs”.
Then it was back down to the swamp where site workers were arriving in trucks with big tanks and suction hoses in a somewhat futile effort to drain it.
Meanwhile it emerged that Rural Independents leader Mattie McGrath had issued a statement declaring he would not be attending this year’s Ploughing in protest at the decision by the organisers not to accept cash at the turnstiles. The news did not cast an immediate pall over proceedings.
Sinn Féin won the battle of the free merchandise with it’s very cheeky green cowboy hat. It was walking out of their tent with it’s “No More Cowboys! It’s time for Sinn Féin.”
We met a friend who told us about the time they got a job handing out freebies at the show. Surrounded by members of the public looking for stuff, a fella stuck his hand out the crowd and shouted: “Can I have two? What is it?”
Minister Heather Humphreys was serving teas and coffees behind the counter on Fine Gael’s stand. Charlie Flanagan was running a competition and offering a prize of dinner for two in Leinster House.The quiz question was to complete the name … something Flanagan.
A lot of people wrote “Oliver J” for the craic.
We got an “I visited the Fianna Fáil stand at the Ploughing!” sticker to bring home and surreptitiously stuck it on the back of somebody’s coat.
With rain gear of variable quality pressed into service the heady aroma of people gently poaching in their own perspiration formed a piquant cloud under the canvass.
After the President’s homily there were more speeches and several blessings were performed. The ambassadors, sitting in a line in the back row on stage, looked somewhat bewildered by it all. But where else would you get someone wading through a 10in deep watering hole with the wind blowing and the rain lashing down eating a 99.
In the Fianna Fáil tent, where Charlie McConalogue talked about the EU and nitrates and the place was plastered with posters of politicians, one women told her friend “I couldn’t actually pick one of them out from a line-up”.
Mary Lou McDonald, recovered from her recent surgery, was in flying form as the cowboy hats flew out behind her. She talked about different sort of farm payments and pronounced ewe like the farmers do: “Yo”.
Not bad for a South Co Dublin woman.
“As in ee-i ee-i yo,” said Old MacDonald.
Great fun for all despite the weather.
The politicians were having a field day.
But as the saying goes: where there’s muck, there’s brass necks.
