My father didn't show but he grew chrysanthemums and begonias that were show quality and I think I've mentioned there were times when a bloom or two would find their way into another man's exhibit. He and his brothers worked my grandfather's green house  where they grews tomatoes during the wartime. In the twenties, my father had grown chrysanthemums for the London Christmas market, sending them down by train a few days before Christmas day. I doubt if he made a great deal of money but, like grandfather, he was always busy with something and I've tried to be the same.http://www.amazon.com/dp/1535417188

Best in Show started out as a short story which found Miss Kirkwood retired and struggling to make sure Cairndhu Flower Show's Best in Show award would not be won by someone who treated his wife rather like a slave. Not something uncommon in the fifties but by no means the norm. In most instances the wife ran the home and her rules were not only observed by her husband but reinforced if the bairns broke any of them. By the fifties, the old 'miner's rows' were jhad been mostly replaced with decent housing but some still remained. In one village the houses had been undermined and the walls had cracks you could put your hand through. The sense of community in those old rows was strong and few who needed help didn't get it.

www.sullatoberdalton.com/books/land-fit-heroes

Flower shows seem a long way off at this time of year but thankfully I have photographs and images to remind me of brighter times . The picture below is a King Protea from the garden in front of the church in Pniel near Cape Town, the village where those magnificent pumpkins were grown.http://www.amazon.com/dp/1535417188

Memories of the village flower show have an extra dimension for me. When I was about fourteen, the committee laid on n afternoon dance for the teens. I was a member of the Scout Highland Dance Display team and danced the Eightsome Reel, Dashing White Sergeant and the Strathspeys, but was taken by surprise when a girl I had admired for some time came to ask me to dance a quickstep or something. When I told her I couldn't do 'modern dance', she told me I could try but I was quite adamant I wasn't going to make a fool of myself. Eventually, she glared at me and walked off. As I watched her go, I thought, this will NEVER happen to me again. It was the first,but far from the last time that lassie inspired me to get on with things. The picture was taken years after we were married http://www.amazon.com/dp/1535417188

I set Best in Show in a mining village in Southern Scotland because most of the miners were proud of their garden. One chap I worked with had a garden of the standard one sees in the magazines. When he was moving from one council house to another he asked the incoming tenant if he would be prepared to pay something for the shrubs and plants that he had planted and arranged. The new chap refused and my friend transplanted everything, including rows and rows of potatoes. He told me the potatoes survived and cropped. I wouldn't want you to get the impression that I knew people who were mean but... http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1535417188

In South Africa, this is mid-summer and people are getting ready for flower show.The nearest I came to Cairndhu was in a village called Pniel in the Swart River Valley that the slaves - people of mixed race- had built when they were freed in 1834.From the picture, you can see how successful they are at growing. They were lovely people, self sufficient in many ways and in no way inferior, despite apartheid. http://www.amazon.com/dp/1535417188

In one office I worked in, one of the women had a pot plant, which she talked to. Being an engineer and sceptical, for a kind of joke, every time I walked past the plant I muttered to it - Drop dead. To my amazement, the damn thing was dead inside a month. The blame didn't go to the woman who forgot to water it, of course, so, now, I even chat to vegetables when I visit them and naturally the Cairndhu gardeners encourage their Flower Show exhibits.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1535417188

.

I was worrying about how I could follow up Best in Show but I took some copies to a country market on Friday and readers were telling me about flower shows they remembered from the fifties. If this carries on then we will be back in Cairndhu with John Brown, Miss Kirkwood

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1535417188, and of course, Jinks

Cairndhu - In this frosty winter weather, nobody in our mining village went digging their garden but a lot of time was spent looking at seed and bulb catalogues. My father would mention he thought such and such would be look good and ask for an opinion. My mother might comment on the colour, or ask if it had a scent, which chrysanthemums have but it's not a rose. I was expected to give advice on the shape and any other characteristics. Occasionally, my father would change his mind, if I was VERY insistent. I suppose we used it as an escape, mining could be a grim business at times but at least it was warm underground even in a blizzard.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1535417188

People ask where Cairndhu is. Well, I thought it was in my imagination but it turns out there are places called Cairndhu. The one in the book is a thing of the past, a mining village where people were a community, worked together, played together, prayed together. I was lucky to be brought up in that atmosphere. I suppose it was being in the dark for the working shift that made us all appreciate the colours and scents of the flowers.
Sullatober Dalton

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1535417188

I want to share a few of my flower show pictures, as much to look at them again as to try to brighten this gloomy weather.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1535417188

I love going to local flower shows, not the Chelsea, where I'm supposed to 'get a message' from the various garden designs but the ones where I can just enjoy the flowers. Unfortunately, I don't know all the names but I do enjoy the beauty. This is an example

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1535417188

Wartime recipes

My grandfather grew tomatoes during the war and even tried tobacco. He made it into a kind of tarry cord. I've no idea how it smoked but it smelled like a rubbish heap.http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1535417188

Dig for Victory

At the time in which Best in Show was written, the competition was amateur. There were no sponsors or grants from seed companies but yet the Show was a highlight in the year. Most people still gardened after being asked to Dig for Victory during the war years and it was only the most brass necked that allowed their garden to become full of weeds or turned it into a paved or gravelled yard. My father didn't exhibit and was allowed to visit the various greenhouses and gardens as a consultant and, naturally, I was taken along to share the fun and the tea and cake a visit deserved. I still visit the village at flower show time but you'll note the title is not in capitals and every year or so, another school friend can't come. Despite everything, the Earl and the Countess still come to open the Show and maintain the tradition.

Mining Village, humour, How green was my valley, respect, compassion, love, community life - In the years Best in Show is set in, the mining villages were real communities. Everyone know everyone and most of their history and intimate detail from the day they were born. It meant people knew who they could depend on, who would do a thing today, who would do it properly and who would start but never finish. If someone was lazy, they were left in peace. If someone needed a job and a suitable job came up, they were recommended. At school, those with ability were expected to do better and chastised if they didn't try hard enough. The equality was that everyone was expected to make what contribution they were capable of. The leader of the band was respected for that, even if he was lazy at work. People like Broon, were respected for their garden and not despised for doing a lowly job. Many, starting with How Green Was My Valley have painted life it those villages as doom and gloom but it was far from that, there was a great deal of love and compassion and gentle humour.

Flower Show, Scotland, Mining Villages, 1953, Nostalgia - Best in Show started with a bit of an autobiography, which I asked my friend Jake Buchanan to read. It was his talking of the flower shows we remembered from our young days in the mining villages in Southern Scotland that started me exploring the idea of a book about a flower show. One of my memories of those days is of an afternoon dance organised for the teens at which my future wife asked me to dance and I, terribly embarrassed, having to admit I could neither waltz nor quickstep. Unfortunately, both Jake and my wife are dead and I hope I have created something they would have enjoyed.
Sullatober Dalton