In Mourning This Morning 

The weekend is well and truly over and so too the queue of scheduled posts; the pressure is on!  Thought I’d share with you just how I’m feeling this week.

For just under ten years I was employed by the Royal Agricultural & Horticultural Society of SA (RA&HS).  Sounds mighty grand doesn’t it? I was just one member of a huge team who delievered a pretty decent event each year – the Royal Adelaide Show.  This year would have been my eleventh Show but sadly no more, well for me that is.  You see, commuting from Brisbane was just not an achievable option.  The Show started last Friday and runs for ten days – without me!

I miss it; I miss the buzz, the early starts and the late finishes, the stress, the team work, the familiar once-a-year faces, the animals and the volunteers once under my wing. I miss the smells and sounds and of being part of something big.  It was a unique place to work with a truly awesome bunch of people.  The majority of my year was spent behind my desk but then there was the interaction with the team of event volunteers and the thrill and exhaustion of the Show itself – if we hadn’t done tears at some stage it wasn’t a good Show!  By the halfway mark I’d often wonder what on earth I was doing – surely there was a more sedate job out there for me but by the time we were all patting each other on the back for a job well done, that sentiment had disappeared.  It was kind of like childbirth – painful at the time but you soon forgot about it and came back for more!

So, as I wish my ex-colleagues, co-workers and friends as well as the event volunteers all the best and as I know I’ll never be part of anything quite the same again and regardless of whether I’m there or not, I just have to remember that the Show must go on.