What made me so emotional?

I went to the Royal Welsh Agricultual Show in Llanelwedd on Monday, I’d been before many years ago, but had forgotten how good, seriously good, it all is.

I’m a city man, definitely not a country man even though like many I enjoy the so-called country sports.

But I’m not really into farming/agriculture/livestock etc. And my reason for attending the show was business related as I was attending a QUANGO meeting on a subject close to my employer’s heart.

Despite my narrow business/professional interest I did spend a lot of time walking the show ground and seeing the sites, the truly fantastic sites of animals, no, make that “Beasts”, reared to perfection and ready for display. I don’t know much about cows or pigs or sheep or goats, but I do know that I saw some great examples on Monday. And then of course there was the Welsh Food pavillion: Magic, pure foodie bliss,

But it wasn’t the quality of the produce that hit me, it was the people: people who had prepared for months or more, people who were excited at the opportunity, people that were so VERY proud of what they had made or had to show. It hit me harder than anything has for many a year. Here I was, surrounded by people who cared, REALLY CARED about what they do and were showing extreme pride in what they had produced. And that pride hit me: hugely.

How I would love to transport that pride into the world of business, the world where companies hide behind smoke-screens and Quangos claim not to have powers. If either had as much pride as the farming community who were proudly strutting their stuff, there probably would not have been a need for the meeting I was attending in the first place.