Carol’s Column

So, who needs to Loop a Star?

THE pressure is on.

Before you can say snap, crackle and help, it’s Rand Show time again. Like a dose of fruit salts, it crept up quietly on me.

It’s that time of the year to put on takkies and bermuda shorts to jostle with thousands of people and stand in queues for icecreams, cokes, candyflosses, dead hamburgers and soggy chips.

In the late 1970s we lost two children. We probably found them in 1981 again because I remember six of us trying to squeeze into a ghost train built for two. It was also in the late 1970s that my third youngest unmarried son discovered the Looping Star and we spent days going round and up and down defying gravity.

It was here I lost my auburn acrylic drip-dry wig worn for special occasions which somebody later said had adorned the State President or somebody like that during the opening ceremony.

Over the years we have sat in the arena and watched drummies drumming, cheerleaders cheering, people diving into buckets from great heights, contortionists hanging upside down from galloping horses and shows that never end.

In fact, it’s a challenge walking 3 km to find a toilet then standing in a queue with four kids about to burst. It’s good for the soul, liver, spleen and kidneys.

It’s fun trying out caravans, tents, jacuzzis, braais, solar heating and thatch pergolas.

Besides which every child needs a funfair. And every parent needs a ride on the rocket, the rollercoaster or the dodgem cars. It’s fun being jolted, bounced, banged and jerked.

In 1982, while doing a head count, I noticed we’d picked up two extra heads en route. “We don’t have blond children,” I said to my husband.

“Why not,” he asked, watching the inner workings of a mobile barbecue stand complete with griller, roaster, cooker, turner and baster. “Listen,” he muttered; “If they’re nice, let’s take them home. A few more or less, does it matter? Besides, it’s time we had a change.”

I have to admit, there’s something pleasurable in the announcements that come screaming over the intercom system. “Has anyone seen a little boy with blue shoes and a red T-shirt eating a toffee apple. He’s 21 and his name is Willie. Ma is looking for you Willie,” or “Will Tannie Sannie and the girls meet us by the hotdog stand at the top between the striped umbrella and the men’s toilets on the left-hand side by the entrance next to the car park,” or “A pair of false teeth has been found in a gondolier,” or “Mrs Poppelowitz has lost her family. She has been waiting at the kiosk for three days.”

Each year the Show is bigger, better and bester.

And even the cow section has its moments. What joy to see the top milker in the world. What an experience to observe a stud that is without peer. I have even watched grown men fantasise over the rump of a Brahmin or the perk of porker.

There’s no doubt, to miss the show is like life without tomato sauce.

Why, only this morning, as we were sitting having a happy family breakfast, I grinned and said: “It’s Rand Show time again, so when are we all going?”

I think Jamie might have smiled under his hair, I wasn’t sure which way he was facing.

My daughter was more explicit: “Ma,” she said, “we’re teenagers. We’re going with our friends this year. Nobody goes with their parents.”

“You mean you don’t want to come to the show with me? Eat candyfloss? Go on the Looping Star? Watch the sword swallower with the two-pronged sword or the belly dancing eater?”

“Oh Ma,” said Nicky, “grow up.”

Why?

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