The Leek Show

Maybe I should correct a point from yesterday – the practice of displaying vegetable produce for fun and profit is not to be scoffed at lightly, especially if you live in a small mining community in the North East of England as I once did, for if you scoff at the miners and ex-miners while they show their vegetable produce at the autumn shows then you will feel their wrath, and death will follow as night does day.

This does not let my friends of forty years vintage off the hook, for they, by their own confession, were not displaying edible produce of the soil, no, they were displaying flowers, they were spending time cutting and properly arranging flowers giving due regard to colour, shape and size in a manner that Softy Walter of Dennis the Menace fame would have been proud – no, its not the same thing at all.

Just a few months ago all across the North East of England proper men will have congregated in a working mans club bar of their choice – and there is only one working mans club for you if you are a working man, you do not frequent more than one working mans club in your lifetime, you attend the same working mans club that your father did, and his father before him, and if anyone suggests that you should consider joining a different working mans club then you rightly regard him as some sort of snake oil salesman and possibly even redden his nose and darken his eyes for him.

So in the working mans club of their choice they will have congregated in “the bar”, that area of the working mans club where women are still banned from entering, except maybe the stewards wife if she is collecting glasses or wiping tables down, you know, womens work. In the bar they will have commandeered several tables, or maybe like the working mans club of my local choice in those days past, the snooker table, laid cloths on the surface and then accepted entries for the members vegetable competition.

In the North East of England it is permissable for all root vegetables to be displayed and judged together, pea agin’ runner bean, cauliflower agin’ turnip, but the king of vegetables must have its own competition, for the king of vegetables deserves no less, for how can you judge the king of vegetables against its inferiors, no, the leek has its own category, a leek can only be judged amongst its peers, its peers being solely other leeks.

So at The Terrace Club, Seaton Delaval, (I will return one day, they wait in anticipation) both snooker tables would be covered, ordinary vegetables for the lesser gardeners laid out on one, and the elite leek growers produce on the other. To the uninitiated it is an enduring mystery as to how you judge a leek from its button to its foliage, is it bulbous or not, or is it too bulbous around its button, for that is a genetic fault and not desirable, but you knew that anyway

These were not the wimpish sticks that you see displayed in supermarkets, those wimpish sticks would not even have been taken through the door of “the bar”, those wimpish sticks would have been composted for the benefit of next years leeks, nay, the leeks on display were gargantuan mammoths of the art of the leek grower, planted the previous winter from cuttings taken (with or without permission) from last years champion leeks and tended like new born children in their specially constructed garden beds, sheltered from killer frosts and icy winters, teased out of the ground while fresh horse manured was shoveled in, watered with precise amounts of secret growing elixers who’s formula would have been passed down from generation to generation but more liklely consisting simply of watered down horse shit, cared for better than the mans own children they were, until they reached gargantuan proportions by late August in preparation for the September shows.

This was the most dangerous of times for many a man had had his stock plundered, or worse still sabotaged by jealous rivals and many a man set up his camp bed in his garden or allotment shed to sleep the August nights with his children, his children the leeks and especially in that last week before the leek show he would often not sleep at all for several days, just in case.

On the eve of the leek show the streets outside the club would be lined with hopeful exhibitioners, some with vegetables so large they had to be brought in a barrow, and the rumours started right there inside that queue, rumours of “xxxx” using something more than watered down horse shit for fertilizer, rumours of “yyyy” pumping his vegetable full of water with syringes, but it was the leek-men who conspired and whispered more than any for the leek-men were part of the same conspiracy to silence, once you had grown the leek you could never return to ordinary vegetables, once you were “in” on “the knowledge” then you were “in” for life, being a leek-man was like joining a Masonic Lodge, you never spoke of its machinations and you could never leave.

And the high priest of leek-men were the judges, no-one knew from where they came, no-one knew of their qualifications for being the high priests of leeks, they just were and always had been.

None of the leek-men were even sure what the judging criteria was, some years the huge big fat leeks would win, other years its was length rather then girth that won the ribbons, some suspect it was beer and other favours that swayed the decisions, still, the rumours abounded on that Friday night when the leek-men laid out their year-long produce on the snooker table, a pair of leeks per man, as closely matched as possible, twin leeks, cleaned and polished so that they looked like plastic models of leeks, never to be eaten these monster vegetables lay on display right through the Friday night for all other men to wander, pint in hand, to stare in awed silence and admire and point at the constants and the newcomers, and then retire to the bar and discuss “things” with the leek-men but to no avail as a leek-man would never discuss “things” about his vegetable children.

The morrows champion would be feted around the village, his wife would finally forgive him for the long hours he had spent right through the year tending to his vegetable children whilst ignoring his human children and threatening them with death by shovel if any of them kicked a football anywhere near his fabled leek bed – the rest of the leek-men in their failure would return home with long faces and two fat leeks for the stewpot, their wives would berate them for weeks on end over their stupid hobby and “that bloody leek bed”, they would be lesser men for the next twelve months, unless, unless, unless they made a start now, dig out the leek bed, start again with fresh manure and some of that secret ingredient that the champion leek-man hinted at in the club when the other leek-men got him spectacularly pissed, start again with cuttings from last years champion leek snaffled when the champion leek-man sank to the floor in his drunkenness, it will be different next year, he will spend more time on his leek bed, next year he will be champion and his wife will eat her words – for now though she has to eat his failed leeks…