We went back to the Show yesterday

because my father wanted to see things. He likes the Show. He missed last year because of a shoulder replacement so it was doubly important to get there this year. When you are 86 there is always the possibility that you will not be able to go alone the following year. He likes to go alone but he likes me to meet him somewhere at around lunch time so that he can enthuse about what he has seen.
I take our lunch as neither of us care for the 'chips with everything' type food that makes up the bulk of what is available. It is also unduly expensive and why waste time standing in a queue when you could be looking at something more interesting.
I was not quite sure how my father would react but I had suggested he watched the Jenny Gillies flower parade. He grumbled that he did not want to see a fashion parade of any sort so I said, "Well, watch a small part. You can go away if you do not want to see the rest of it." He stayed for the lot and declared it "absolutely marvelllous" apart from the one piece of rock music.
I left him talking to the gardening people - and agreeing with Sophie Thomson of the ABC about the general awfulness and dreadfulness of artificial lawns - and headed off to the shed where they have the alpacas. I am rather fond of alpacas. They are intelligent animals and, provided you do not pat them on the head, they will normally respond in an interested sort of way. The owners of a far distant from Adelaide alpaca farm are people I have become slightly acquainted with over the years. They do not knit but they produce yarn. It normally goes straight to a spinner and on to elsewhere but, this year, they had some yarn for sale. It is nice yarn but there are no patterns. The question they had for me was what they could do about it for next year. We chatted for a while and came to some tentative conclusions that will need working on. As things got busy again I left them and took a very slow tour of the animals of particular interest to me. Naturally they all, apart from the short hair cats, produce yarn!