Originally published by The Clifton Courier, February 20, 2019

Sometimes all you need to do to win is to participate.

My sister and I found ourselves back at the old Maguire Manor on Friday morning, after spending a wild Valentine’s Day night playing cards with Mum and Grandma while listening to Wings at a moderate volume.

I was doing my morning scroll through Facebook when I saw a post from the Clifton Show Society informing me (well, not just me specifically, but it did feel somewhat targeted at me in a cosmic kind of way) that pavilion entries closed at midday.

My work roster meant I wasn’t able to trot on down to the rec grounds for the big day on Saturday and a friend’s engagement party (well, more specifically, the pig on the spit being served at said engagement party) kept me from my favourite spot within the fenced off area outside the Wattles clubhouse* that night.

* For the uninitiated, this refers to the outdoor area where you’re legally allowed to smash tinnies. It’s the happiest place on earth. 

But I still wanted to feel involved, somehow.

And while I haven’t got the ability to grow a tomato, don’t have the technique required to craft a sufficiently scandalous example of adult needlework* and my hat looks far too pristine to compete in the Old Battered Hat section, I do know how to turn flour, eggs and butter into biscuits.

* By next year, I hope to have mastered the needle and thread so I will finally be able to fulfil my five-year-long dream of entering tastefully pornographic needlework in the show. 

I could enter the cookery section.

It was about 9am; that left me with a three-hour window to claim culinary victory. It cutting it close, but it was doable.

I made a comment to my sister that we still had time to enter and two minutes later, thought turned into scrambled, frantic action.

Perhaps it was the extra honey in our morning cups of tea or a hangover from our intergenerational card battle the night before, but we suddenly had a burning desire to compete – an urge that usually lies dormant within me.

We’ve never been particularly competitive girls.

I mean, we play special rules of Monopoly where you didn’t need to buy a whole street of properties before buying hotels and we let heavily indebted players take interest-free loans from the bank. We never, ever actually finished a game – we generally kept playing out our sisterly socialist alternative to the capitalist system until we got sick of sitting around and started packing up*. The first time I played the ruthless, by-the-book Monopoly, I was horrified.

* I mean, I’m not saying I should be in charge for the whole economy, but I would be interested to see how this played out in real life. 

And, hey, I’m not saying that winning isn’t great.

I mean, I had a prize-winning scratchie that I cashed in to cover our entry costs. I won a whole $2 and joyfully accepted each of the four 50 cent pieces the honourable newsagent ceremoniously counted into my hand. Without those winnings, we would have had to raid Mum’s spare coin collection.

Yes, winning is fun and there are practical advantages to it.

But, I will say this; the thrill of entering a plate of baked goods in the Show far exceeded my elation over my scratchie winnings.

The vibe in the kitchen was electric. We are always excited about food, but that morning we kicked it up a notch.

I took pride each individual ball of gingerbread I carefully placed on the baking tray. My sister, in a moment of inspiration, added a “secret ingredient” to half her scone dough. Flour was actually sifted. Standard measures were mostly respected. The timer was methodically set. We even went up to the op shop to source fancy plates to give our baked offerings a competitive edge (of course, we now know that the stewards level the playing field by putting all entries on generic paper plates).

Rolling into the pavilion, we were practically buzzing. Sure, a certificate with our names on it would have been fantastic. Being able to call my ginger bickies “blue ribbon gingerbread” would have been a thrill. And the prize money would have been a welcome addition to our wallets.

But we were all ready winners. We had ourselves an incredibly wholesome natural high and we rode it out for the rest of the day.

I didn’t care about the result; I’d got what I wanted. A sense of satisfaction and belonging. Kitchen banter. Spare gingerbread bickies to eat as breakfast dessert. What else could you want?

As long as you have a go, you don’t need a prize, because you’ve already won. Winning doesn’t matter in the end, as long as you had fun participating. Accolades and certificates be damned, I say.

(You might think that I’m only saying this because my sister won a prize and I did not, but you’d be way out of line…)