2007 Show


From 1989 we held our twice yearly meetings at Portchester Parish Hall and when the new hall was completed in 2001 we moved there, Dave Coates chaired all the meetings. It therefore seemed logical to make this our new show venue in 2005 having decided to quit the Southsea Show after 32 years. The hall was ideal for our needs, light and bright with toilet and catering facilities and plentiful adjacent free parking. It would mean a lot less work for our dwindling and aging numbers and we hoped that a fresh start would attract new recruits, sadly this was not to be. The 2005 - 2008 Shows were over 2 days but so few came through the door on Sundays that the final show (2009) was reduced to one day. All five shows were excellently supported by exhibitors, especially by those outside the area.
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
One advantage of holding the Show in a hall is that we were not affected by adverse weather conditions that occasionally troubled us at Southsea. This Show was on Southsea Common, immediately behind the promenade and the floral marquee was closest to the sea. In our earlier years, before we were allocated one entire end of the marquee we were sometimes allocated a pitch close to a sea facing entrance. On more than one occasion the wind would literally rock our stand! One year in the early eighties there was a full blown gale and torrential rain on the Sunday, the whole showground became a sea of mud. On breakdown it was so deep at the exits that it was up to car axles - and I was towing a caravan. One person was killed whilst dismantling a small marquee, the wind caught it, his legs became entangled in the ropes and threw all into the air. He came down head first on top of a car and broke his neck. The following day we were convinced that it would be the end of the show on the common as it resembled a ploughed field, but such is the recovery capabilities of grass and efforts of the ground-staff that after a few weeks the surface was fully restored.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx	xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx	xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx	xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx	xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx