Teston Bridge Kite Festival 10 - 12 June 2004

or - "What's gone wrong - there's wind!!!"

 
Despite STILL awaiting the arrival of the club tigers, (see minutes of meeting of 7th June) we arrived to set up at Teston bridge - one of our favourite camping sites - at mid day on Friday and couldn't believe it - wind - WIND - WIND !!!!!!!!!!!

So much so that we feared our port-a-party might not stand up to the wind force. We set up in what started as a very empty corner of the field...
...and ended up as a very busy corner of the field with over twenty elves, friends & family camping out and over a dozen visitors coming over the weekend
Having spent all Friday afternoon setting up, "Yours Truly" had sat down for a nice cup of tea (*) when he heard a rumpus outside. Someone's tent had been cordoned off. The sad thing is that it took our poor webmaster twenty minutes to realise his tent had been done too!! 

(* Tea as in T as in Tanglefoot from the Badger brewery !!)
Darkness soon came, so time for emergency plan B (*), this time until 2am !! One might think that this was rather excessive, but there's not a lot of point in trying to sleep on the first night. The elves are on the sauce until all hours anyway, at 3.45 a.m we heard one of the littlest elves throwing the biggest stressy fit ever because he couldn't possibly go for an early morning tiddle without his socks, and at 7 a.m. our Webmaster underwent the justly famous armpit washing ceremony, photos of which are thankfully not able to pass the censor!

 

* B as in booze

Saturday morning was bright and windy, so whilst more senior elves cooked brekky, us mere mortals attached a skydancer to the "puff magnet" and tried to find whether the end of the line was tied to the spool, or just wrapped round it. With about two more yards of line to wind out, words were said about CAA height clearances, so line was wound back in again. Fast !
Short skirts did seem to be in fashion - it did seem to be "Show Us Your Bloomers" day. We were grateful for our Webmaster's firm moral stance on a couple of occasions.

Apparently the skirt was a prerequisite for "doing Scoobies" - an obscure art form which involves laboriously knotting together bits of plastic for no adequately explored reason.

As the morning wore on, more and more friends arrived, having come out to spend the day with us. Dinner was soon cooked by our wonderful catering staff and scoffed by all, this time with musical accompaniment.

"Thirsty work, this kite flying !!"
 

After something to eat, many of our number wandered down to the lock where we got in the way of the boats going up and down the river. We did our best to help !!
Some of our number even went for a swim. It was far too cold for swimming really, but prolonged exposure to a Team ELF camp site does strange things to the mind. Having TOTALLY embarrassed the lady swimmers about what the cold weather does to their anatomies (photos available !!) we wandered back to our camp site for what turned out to be the highlight of the weekend.
One of our number had made the teensiest of mistakes by locking the car keys in the boot. "It could happen to any of us" blithely announced our webmaster as he opened the fourth beer of the day. "Just send for the nice roadside recovery man and it'll be done in no time"

Oh how we laughed. It's at times like this that you realise that there is nothing as entertaining as other people's misfortunes
Section 4.4biii of Team ELF's constitution is specifically written with this sort of event in mind, so in true team ELF spirit, we pointed and laughed. To be honest, there wasn't much else we could do - the repair man had arrived VERY quickly and we patiently waited for him to do his thing.
Well, we waited, and we waited. After our webmaster had gone for two tiddles & poured three more bottles of beer down his neck, the nice fix-it man sent for back up.

Here they are "on the job" whilst a suitably contrite mum looks on.

Click here for further info on this event.
Whilst waiting for tea there was time for a quick bout of Bop-It - a "fun toy" which was picked up for quid at a boot fair, and came oh-so-close to being thrown in the river.

In the meantime the girles did tea as usual!!
Still sulking from the car mishaps, Darth Brian turned to the dark side & copped Obi-Wan Badger in the gob with a kite-sabre. A pleasant half an hour was then spent doing "proper" kite fighting.
As darkness fell we set about the beer - this year's beer list was quite tame compared to others we've had:
Tanglefoot

Champion

Blandford Fly

Golden Glory

Greene King IPA

Empire IPA.

Director's
Speckled hen

Hobgoblin

Goliath

Hen's Tooth

Abbott ale

Masterbrew

Not forgetting the "Pink Girlie Bar" including every alco-pop known to science, and butterscotch schnapps.
We waved goodbye to the last of the day visitors at 11pm who drove off in their newly opened car, only to say hello to them again fifteen minutes later. It transpired that the nice fix-it man considered that a vital part of opening the boot was to stuff up the engine. A third fix-it man was called, and we finally waved our friends off with a smile on their faces and a song on their lips (!) at 1am.
The next morning saw a lot of wind, so the lines were scientifically adjusted so Cat would fly in front for the tree and Teddy would fly behind it.

You just know what happened, don't you.......

As always, the kite shop did well out of us - one or two new kites were bought - and even flown!!
The plan was to stay on till Monday morning, but a combination of factors including the weather and the fact everyone else was going home made us decide to pack up late on the Sunday afternoon. Here we are seeing off the last of the food - bigguns eating sausages and littluns eating marshmallows.
"I am fast asleep"
"I have just farted!"

Once again, a great time was had by all, and many thanks to Ron Dell for organising such a wonderful weekend.