The Abingdon Air and Country Show opened at 10am this May Day morning.
Being the first of the month I also wanted to take part in the City Daily Photo Theme day – The May 1st Theme is Smell.
‘Huskies In Need’ are a specialised charity that try to re-home rescued Huskies. They had a dozen dogs, at the show, that were smelling the ground, smelling people’s hands, and smelling each other. There were an awful lot of smells around. For them it would have been an easy theme. But taking a picture of smell was difficult.
To me, with my underdeveloped sense of smell, the most obvious smell was the mix of steam and oil from the small traction engines. I hope this gives you a whiff of it.
There were stalls by groups interested in recent military history. This lady is a clerical auxiliary to an Oxfordshire Home Guard unit. The typewriter is an original made by the Imperial Typewriter Co. Ltd. Leicester, England. Those were the days when Leicester were more known for their office equipment than their football team.
Owners of Vintage Cars don’t get in for free (correction after George’s comment). They sat around catching up with each other’s news, while exhibiting their brightly polished cars.
In the central arena there were a variety of Country Show entertainments, including a visit from the mounted police. Their horses demonstrated that they could play football with a very large ball, jump fences in unison, and not get panicked by people waving a flag, banging a drum and shouting, ‘Make Peace not War!’
By the time the three hour air display began, at 1:30pm, clouds had blocked out most of the blue sky. A Hurricane and Spitfire from the Battle of Britain memorial flight were on at 3pm, having flown over from Lincolnshire.
Next year’s show could be quite different if the UK does choose to Exit the EU. Many of the laws governing air shows probably come from Brussels. So who knows what a BREXIT Abingdon Air and Country Show will be like.
More pictures on the Abingdon Blog Facebook Page.
