For nine months of the year, Kelso Races is the oil that lubricates the Scottish Borders business machine: gathering business representatives and customers together in informal surroundings once or twice a month from September all the way through until the end of May.

Convivial conversations take place in every corner of the racecourse, whether between guests in one of the many private hospitality boxes, around a table in one of the marquees, or standing on the steps overlooking the parade ring. The easy atmosphere is highly conducive to striking bargains – and not just with your chosen bookmaker. Accountants, architects, construction specialists, car sales companies, financial advisors, insurers, men’s outfitters, grain growers and distillers: you name a business and they’ve probably entertained at the races.

So how, you might ask, does anything get done during the Summer months?

Well, there is a short pause in every year between lambing and harvesting, sowing and tupping, silage-making and straw-carting (sometime between Ladies Day in May and the Charity Racenight in September) when the good folk either side of the border gather beside the River Tweed at Kelso for the Border Union Show.

Living and working in the Borders community, it’s difficult to walk twenty paces at the show without bumping into someone familiar: accountants, architects, construction specialists, car sales companies, financial advisors, insurers, men’s outfitters, grain growers, distillers…

But the Border Union Show, which concludes on Saturday (admission £20 per person, accompanied children under 16-years-old free of charge) is not just a replication of the races. In addition to some friendly equine competition, there are cattle and sheep and goats and donkeys (don’t start – we’ve none of those at Kelso Racecourse).

And in the broad shopping aisles that run parallel to the Main Ring, retailers sell every type of footwear from flip-flops to thigh length waders: full length, half length, fully fashion calf length, brown boots, black boots, patent leather jackboots, low boots, high boots, everybody’s crazy for those kinky boots, kinky boots, (boop, boop) kinky boots… (with apologies to Honor Blackman & Patrick Macnee).

There are demonstrations of dry stone wall building, basket weaving and baking. And in one corner of the food marquee there is a stand that sells every conceivable flavour of fudge, together with giant fizzy laces which might just be one of my favourite things in the world – fizzy laces and jump racing joint-favourites perhaps…

Sadly there’s no jump racing at all in Britain on Saturday – which is another reason to head over to the Border Union Show. On Sunday, however, the winner of Kelso’s £100,000 Herring Queen Mares Handicap Hurdle makes an appearance at Uttoxeter. I’m confident that Leloopa can do the business for followers of the blog selection in the 2.37pm.

And if she doesn’t… well, it’ll be business as usual at Kelso Racecourse when the new season commences on Wednesday 17th September.