No need to be needy if you're tweedy

As part of my ongoing effort to be a bit more 'country', I went to my first Point to Point yesterday. I had no idea what one was but fortunately Wikipedia and my friend Violet were very helpful. Armed with a little information, I wondered what I should wear. J gently dissuaded me from wearing anything too lairy (i.e: my usual clothes) and when I reached the event I saw why. It was a veritable sea of green tweed, a total tweederama.

There was a real 'anything as long as it's tweed' vibe going on. Everywhere were stalls selling various types of tweed based clothing, from gorgeous, horribly expensive, tailored coats to fashion chimera in the shape of hoodies with tweed bits on (I thought David Cameron might like one of these when looking for a hoody to hug), tweed skirts and trousers and even tweed Y fronts (OK, I made the last one up but I bet you can get them). By the time I got home, tweed patterns had seared themselves on to my retina.

With all this tweed based entertainment around me, I almost forgot about the horses , some of whom were also wearing tweed as it happens. As they were walked around the paddock I was seized with a feeling of inadequacy as one who doesn't know a fetlock from a flank or a gaskin from a pastern. There was much umming and ahhing and taking in of 'form 'around me but not being up to the job, I decided to go for a name I liked. This proved to be a good idea as my horse came in third on an each way bet meaning I broke even , although sadly I didn't win enough money to clothe myself entirely in tweed.