A storm in a leek cup

This photo was originally entitled 'The Show Must Go On'. But in the end it didn't.

It depicts my Dad washing a pair of potentially prizewinning leeks early in the morning, in torrential rain, in preparation for the village show. Dad spends hours of every day between March and the first Saturday in September growing and tending vegetables. Gardening is his main passion in life these days. I think he has won the vegetable growing prize trophy every year bar one (that being last year, when he'd had an operation on his ankle and so couldn't do any gardening).

Everything was ready to load into the car, when he received the call to say the show was cancelled because the marquee was flooded. He was heartbroken. At 81, having missed the show last year and with his health not what it used to be, he had put every effort into his gardens this time around. His last major push, so he said. He had spent a lot of the past couple of weeks picking, washing, dressing and preparing the vegetables and generally making a right proper mess all around the house. He was the most proud of the produce than he ever had been before. As it happens, there was another (indoor) show happening locally, so Dad took some vegetables there and did well, but it wasn't the same to him.

Of course all of this completely fades into insignificance compared to the tragedies that have befallen people around the country because of this awful weather and the folks not too far from here, elsewhere in Northumberland, who are currently homeless or facing utter ruin.

However, I saw a little light go out of my Dad today and it was very sad.