Bring on the basmati!

The excitement down here in Patouland is building slowly and steadily like a tsunami thousands of miles from the coast. The power is growing and soon the wave of excitement will be hurtling towards its intended destination, the journey will take another 3 days before with a deafening roar the mighty Patou show team will arrive at the Telford International Centre for the BAS National Show!

I really don't know how I can contain myself. The weather is set fair at the moment and the team is currently lounging around in the sunshine gathering itself for the big kick off. I am not, obviously, as I am sitting at a desk writing this drivel accompanied by a large mug of strong coffee. In about half an hour when the caffeine is coursing through me like hot metal I will burst into action to continue with the chores for the day.

I was a bit slow off the mark and so we only have a small team of five going to the National and as usual, with those of us who breed from the 'dark side', we will probably be all finished and heading for the bar at lunch time on day one. Win lose or draw we will have enjoyed the experience and will have learned a lot too. We will have decided who our favourite judge is and who we think is completely mad and knows nothing about anything at all, nothing.

Preparations have been underway for some time, the trailer has been professionally cleaned by the Gusmeister, the alpacas have been undergoing extensive halter training, chips and tags have been inserted and checked. I have even bought some new buckets, mainly because I had a little tantrum the other day and two buckets became lots of little pieces of bucket. Stupid buckets!   

So who are we taking? Well, one brown one, one grey one and three black ones. It would appear that although my personal passion is for the gorgeous browns, that our dedication to breeding from the best dark males available has lead to a significant increase in the black wing of the mighty Patou empire. Still, they look great together. We have ploughed our own furrow and will continue onwards, wellies on, heads up!

We have two intermediate males and an adult going. The intermediates, Wasimba (rose grey) and Viking (black) and my little chum, stroppy pants himself (after all I have done for the little turd he is such a drama queen and kicks like a mule!) Tsar (brown).

The other members of the team are the junior blacks, Spitfire and Pinot who haven't met Tsar yet and don't know they will be travelling in a trailer together. They may be green on arrival.

No pictures of the juniors, they are currently being held in a high security top secret location whilst they receive their final instructions. Over the past few weeks they have been training hard in the dark arts of the Ninja. Come show time, if things don't go exactly as we want them to, they will explode into a whirling mass of ninja fuelled violence. No-one will be safe from those razor sharp, highly polished alpaca toenails as they fly every which way searching for a soft target, the precision spitting machines  are accurate to within a hundredth of a millimetre, reloading is almost instantaneous. It will be brutal in it's intensity and awe inspiring in it's swiftness. The mighty Patou machine will be merciless!

Sorry it appears that the coffee has already kicked in, I must prepare to go outside.

And the reference to basmati in the title?

My favourite time at a big show is either early morning or late evening when the hall is empty apart from hundreds of alpacas. The soft background noise of the fans keeping the animals cool, the gentle humming of numerous alpacas, content in their environment and the smell, the wonderful smell of alpacas, which to me smells just like a newly opened packet of basmati rice. I love it!