Here I am marooned in a remote corner of coastal Ireland in a boat without an alternator and the only entertainment to hand is the Famine Ship Experience and Restaurant…what can I say? This is about as far as I could be from where I wished I could be with you all last week, enjoying the pleasures of the Limousin semen ball, the black pudding and scallop rolls, the buttery soft ostrich leather collared coats….

Thanks to the wonders of the internet I am reminded every two seconds of the fun and games that was going on at the Highland. But even if I hadn’t resorted to the electronic diversions in the face of the indigenous ironic charms of Co Wexford, then there is something in this tiny fishing village to remind me of where I should have been…it’s that unmistakable whiff of …dung.

Dung always reminds me of the Highland Show. We were taken every year from infancy – it was, like many, the annual family trip, months in the planning and looked forward to with something of a frenzy of excitement. For me, it was the showjumpers and the shops; for my Dad it was the Clydesdales and the Herdsman’s; for my Mum, it was the flower show and the rest.

But funnily enough, I have noticed during the urban exile years that the thing that instantly transports me back to those balmy days of sore feet and sore heads, is the ripe perfume of animal waste products…I’m guessing that it was because everything at the show was so super smart and pristine that the one bit of it that seemed familiar to a young farmer’s daughter was that smell, the same smell we all grew up with and learned to – not love, exactly, but not loathe like our non agri pals.

So, as I sit here in my teeny corner of laptop loneliness on this benighted boat, with hatches open everywhere and bits of engine strewn everywhere else, awaiting the genius who’s kidnapped our alternator, it is the similarly sour ‘n sweet strains of olfactory oddness that is seaweed and dead fish which has brought on a bout of Highland Show homesickness.

I remember my first day as a Scottish Farm cub reporter. I was in charge of collating the poultry results. Before computers. With a notebook and mental arithmetic. It was actually my first week at the paper as well as my first job as a ‘proper journalist’. I knew I must be doing something right when the then editor, the legendary, now sadly deceased, Angus Macdonald suggested I move on from trying to secure an interview with the best cock in show (aka hard news) and take the, for some, easier route of feature writing (aka soft news) and tail the Queen Mother who happened to be gracing the show with her presence in my inaugural year.

Poor Queen Mother. And her very attendant attendants. I’m sure she’s used to it but everywhere the poor woman turned, I was there with my notebook, waiting for her to say something interesting. The truth is, all she does is shake hands and smile. I never heard her say a single word beyond “Lovely to meet you." How to make my mark in agricultural journalism with that material, I wondered, somehow, I did it and I seem to recall that it revolved around asking the Royal groupie middle-aged matrons who mobbed her what they thought of the Queen Mum. Opinions ranged the entire gamut of a couple of feet from “Love her” to “Isn’t she tiny”! And so it was that my very first TSF byline had its very first headline and it didn’t involve the best cock in the show, thank the Lord!