Carriage driver Elaine Luxa leading Rossford de Carteret’s champion horse, four-year-old Jiminy Cricket. (1015076)

LAST week I jokingly referred to previous horse, dog and pet shows having provided an opportunity for people to meet creatures as diverse as Ann Rive’s tortoise, Peter Cunneen’s cockerel and the Magell boys’ ferrets.

After all the years I’ve been writing for a living I should have known that someone – intentionally or otherwise – would trump that and they did.

Within just a few minutes of my arrival at the show no fewer than four people had urged me to take a look in the pet entrants’ tent, and there it was – the Magell family’s turkey, somewhat ironically (and I’m being really kind here) named Father Christmas.

I found Helen Magell and her sons at the other end of the field – exercising their horses in preparation for the fancy dress class – and one of the boys immediately offered the information that the specimen in the pet tent was one of six.

All were being kept for Christmas, he asserted, and moreover the one in the tent was the one they were going to eat.

There was little more I could say really and so I wandered off and enjoyed one of Harry Southern’s burgers – without giving a thought until I’d finished it to the fact that it was probably once part of a nice-looking animal grazing peacefully in a field.

Actually, acceptance by children at an early age of what the food chain actually means is one of the many things I like about this small community. Most years my neighbour Pam de Carteret can be seen being followed to The Avenue and back by a lamb she has hand reared, because of maternal rejection.

It always amuses me when I see the reaction of those who inquire of Pam if the lamb is a pet and get the blunt and immediate reply that it is – ‘until we eat it’. It’s strange how many adults simply don’t understand that many of the animals they see in fields end up on dinner plates.

My reference to the de Carteret family is timely because it brings me back to the horse show and the fact that Rossford de Carteret’s animals not only won the top honour at the horse show but managed to get reserve champion also – something that will please many Sark residents given that Rossford’s ill health means he hasn’t had the best of years.

His champion horse was a four-year-old – Jiminy Cricket – led by carriage driver Elaine Luxa and reserve champion was 16-year-old Megan, led by another of Rossford’s drivers, Toby Davies.

What was nice was that despite no carriages being on show, virtually all the animals in the classes from which the champion was judged were working horses.

The horse judges were Lisa and Mark Torode from Guernsey and the dogs and pets were supposed to be judged by Guernsey vet Chris Bishop. However, just before judging he was called to attend to a dog in Little Sark and so Charlie Knight – who was on holiday staying with her friends Peter and Pat Cunneen – was press ganged into action.

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FEW Sark residents would disagree with the praise and thanks offered to the island’s Fire Service in a letter published in the Guernsey Press on Monday from Susie Konig, who lives next door to where a young man died in a fire earlier this month.

Her commendation included the doctor, ambulance crew and the constables and she eloquently expressed what we all feel about our volunteer emergency services.

Susie is well qualified to comment, for when she and I first met – more years ago than either would admit – she was a young nurse in Jersey’s accident and emergency department and I was a young police officer. When she talks of professionalism and acting in a calm, well-trained cohesive way, she knows exactly what she is talking about.

Her praise is praise indeed.

* The email address for comment is fallesark@sark.net.