Road blocks had been erected, trenches were dug, troops were assembled, lines of demarkation were drawn, armies prepared to mobilise and ominous zeppelins hung in the air announcing the battle fields of Ratheniska.
It may sound like something from the Eastern Front during the first World War, but this skirmish was run with a more practiced polished precision. Fáilte chuig The All Ireland Ploughing Championships 2013 in Ratheniska Co Laois, a temporary Soviet Union for citizens of the soil.
Plumes of diesel smoke are coughed out as a tractor digs deep to pull a plough through a stubborn hillock, the smell of decent,
honest-to-God pipe tabacco cuts through the fug of burgers and freshly turned earth. There's set dancing over at the mainstage, Enda is dishing out tea and biscuits in the Fine Gael tent, there's a hairdressers, a shower of messers, sheep herders, wholesale girders, tractors, trailers, combines and bailers.
The Ploughing is touted as “Ireland’s Farming Festival” with a mind-blowing and foot-fatiguing 700 acres packed with stalls, displays, events and agri gee-gaws. You’d just about see it all by three day camel trek.
Ratheniska is right over the ditch from Electric Picnic's site and it felt odd following the very same roads Wanderly Wagon excitedly skipped along as we sped towards Stradbally only a month ago. Odder still to be hitting such a massive event without it boasting a headline act; I'd eventually find out it had one. The first clue was a heavily bearded and cowboy hatted dude who I got chatting to, he was styling a T-shirt that read – "Did you ever get a ride?" above a picture of a fine vintage tractor. Turns out he's a Richie Kavanagh fan and he happliy told me that the Fiend of Focail was shacked up on-site for the duration of the ploughing. How could I resist?
When Richie takes to the stage in a multi-coloured hat, dungarees, a yellow shirt and white gloves, you'd be forgiven for thinking "Jaysus, Luigi has let himself go since the Mario Brothers broke up", but you'd be wrong to write this fella off. Richie has cut out a unique niche, inventing a whole new genre of Irish music – the single-entendre parody polka.
I enjoyed Richie’s performances in spite of myself. It could have been the giant chicken that danced with the audience as Richie cursed through choruses in the style of a hen, it could have been the milking competition for audience members as he sang about pulling cows’ tits, but I think it was his irreverence and lack of respect for social mores that won me over. He really doesn’t give a shit. The crazy clothes, outrageous stage antics and two- fingered salute to establishment norms has led me to believe that Richie Kavanagh might possibly be the Prince of Pig-Shite Punk.
But wait, there's more ...
The smiles and laughs weren't just in Richie's tent. The farming fraternity have had a good summer and the bumper harvest is safe, so the carnival atmosphere around the site was understandable, but there's a hell of a lot more than a party in pairc going on here.
The size of this thing is staggering, and over the three-day shindig, somewhere in the region of €35-€40 million will have been spent, with roughly 200,000 people coming through the gap in the sceach.
Sitting in Wanderly Wagon with a mug of tea as the throngs dispersed, wondering what on earth I'd do with not one, but two Faermers' Journal luminous vests, I heard three people singing Aon Focail Eile as they drifted past the van. You can gather a gallery of Massey's, a phalanx of septic tanks, an embarassment of politicians, a circus of media monkeys and a legion of livestock, but a catchy tune cuts through all that like a sterile slash-hook through shite. Never mind the bullocks, here's Richie Kavanagh.
Safe travels, don’t die.
