Anyone For Polo daahling?

Ah the great British Summertime. How I love the grey skies and endless downpours. It reminds me of why we’re such a resilient nation...

On Sunday just past, we took a stand in the ‘Luxury Shopping Village’ at the Veuve Cliquot Polo finals at Cowdray Park. The expression “it seemed like a good idea at the time” springs to mind.

The day dawned brightly enough after a Saturday of torrential rain. In the wee small hours I trawled the internet, determined to find a weather report that corresponded with my requirements & succeeded in locating one that forecast 10% chance of precipitation for most of the day.

That’ll teach me. 

Actually the whole day taught me a lot.

My first lesson came at 8am as Chris, our glamorous friend Dorothy & I unloaded box after bag of stuff from our borrowed van (thank you Charlie!) in the horizontal rain. 

Imagining balmy weather, 20,000 wealthy polo supporters with shopaholic tendencies and a stand full of impulse purchases, I had prepared mountains of (rather heavy) stock for sale.

I cursed myself for my absurd overoptimism & lack of reality as our 3 metre x 3 metre stand filled first with stock & then with rain. And I ran around panicking, trying to find waterproof items for the front displays while Chris told me to pull myself together & Dorothy quietly soldiered on.

Once again I feel bound to admit to my bad behaviour. (I try, honestly I do.) Unfortunately my Positive Mental Attitude deserted me (and this despite the fact that it was me that booked the stand in the first place - I’m blushing as I write.)  

Sadly I was more PMT than PMA, more Pat Butcher than Pollyanna, and I proceeded to girn and greet until the stand started to take shape - thanks mostly to the forbearance of my trusty helpers.

The end result was rather Aladdin’s Cave meets East End market - sort of what I was going for. But more panic set in when I surveyed my fellow Petworthians‘ elegant ‘room settings’ tastefully merchandised with a few choice items.    

As the rain squalls increased in violence & frequency, a trickle of visitors started to appear. Already striving to avoid the mud forming in puddles around the grounds, they scurried up & down the streets glancing halfhearted & apologetic into the stands before disappearing out of sight.

By this time Heidi & Dorothy’s sons had appeared with a welcome cool box full of wine. The idea had been to ply potential customers with a wee glass as they shopped. Instead the cool box became a first aid kit, fortifying us as we dripped and dribbled beneath the angry skies.

All was not lost however. We had brought with us some wellies & brollies left over from a previous Sale. As word got round that we were the only stand selling waterproof footwear we were inundated with women in pretty frocks & mud soaked shoes. Squabbles ensued as they fought over the few remaining pairs.

Like a scene from Cinderella, our customers crammed their feet into boots too big or too small until we finally sold the last pair of size 8s plus two pairs of socks to a petite girl with size 4 feet.

One drenched family purchased a birdcage umbrella to shelter their three small children. I watched as they huddled inside it, shuffling off like a giant, rose covered jellyfish.

And the comedy rain continued to pour - I swear someone was on top of our stand emptying whole bath loads’ of water at a time onto our heads. The tarpaulin on the front of our stand was up and down like a whore’s drawers with us steaming gently inside.

Ah but isn’t that the point of events like this? The good old British spirit came to the fore and visitors and traders alike decided that, whatever the weather, we were going to enjoy ourselves.

As the rain downed and the mud rose we sang and danced and laughed at the absurdity of the scene. Girls in short frocks and sensible boots mingled with ladies in maxi dresses and bare feet. We have never seen so much ruined footwear in one day - Italy’s cordwainers must have been throwing their hands up in horror. And like days of yore those in platform wedges rose above the mire and sailed past, feet still relatively clean.

At 3pm the first match began and the clouds parted above the pristine emerald polo fields to reveal a perfect glimpse of sunlit England. The sleek players and sleeker horses galloped and thwacked to the delight of the now steaming crowds.

With the sun came other exotic delights: Dear Georgina from Guilt Lingerie had booked a model to promenade our High Street. As this glorious golden beauty negotiated the mud in crystal encrusted wellies and little else, the male population gave their own impression of the sun breaking through, beaming & sighing as if the world were now a better place.

And it was! Crowds cheered, families squabbled, couples laughed. And a crowd of youths, as good looking as an Abercrombie & Fitch advert frolicked and chatted in giant striped babygros. I swear, huge all-in-ones with zips that would please a bondage expert, ‘designed to be worn in leisure time’ I’m told - yes well...

At 6pm our friends and us sneakily decanted our stand into the back of our, now exceedingly muddy, van and vamoosed it out of there. Unloaded and cosy in front of The Apprentice final, I silently thanked the loved ones who had kept me going through the long day; thanked the husband who stood by me in my (often suspect) decisions; thanked my fellow Petworthians for their good humour & community spirit. And thanked God that I was now warm and clean and able at last to put it down to experience.

PS: My lessons in realism, magnanimity, community spirit & appreciation were hard learnt that day but I was pleased to have been given the chance to so. 

Nearly a week later I bumped into one of my neighbours from the day. I can’t tell you how pleased I was to hear from her that she too had had a sense of humour failure!

Oops, more to learn then...