GOD! I am shattered!
Long drive, just over two hours, and the M11 was busy. It was held at the East of England show ground, in Peterborough!
As said before, we were camping for the first time, with a borrowed tent, and wanted to get the tent up before dark! We did not leave home 'till 6.30 pm, so it was a bit stressfull.
We got there just after eight, and although there were some Skylines parked on the GTROC stand, no one much was about! Another Skyline arrived and it was Ged one of the members, with his lovely Great Dane, Rosie, only a baby, yet was nearly to my chest!
We chatted for a while, and most other car clubs seemed to be putting their tents up on their stands, I wanted to wait for a few others though! This proved to be a very good idea, as all the others had been camped for ages, elsewhere on the showground! We found them, and they helped to put our tent up, (please don't ask, but am sure this will be the highlight of JAE for some!)
Finally got settled, and we stood around having a good old chat until the early hours! It was a shame some of the other clubs had to be a bit silly and start revving their cars really late, (well early, as it was about 2am).
We were up at six the next morning, Paul got up for some tea, and luckily no-one was about to see me crawl from the tent! I had the hump for about 2 hours, as I have discovered that camping is NOT ME!!! All the guys around found me with the hump highly amusing for some reason!
Got to the stand at about 8.30, and then HUGE discussion on how best to arrange the cars............men! Somehow, during this, got roped in to setting up the GTROC stand with all the leaflets, membership forms etc, while the blokes were, (yep, you guessed it!), washing and polishing the cars......
Claire, who is the events organiser for the GTROC, and her partner John, who is the chairman of the GTROC, were also the organisers for the whole of JAE, so were soo busy, had been up most of the night, manning the gate, and running around trying to keep some of the members quite with music, car revving, etc!
Poor Claire came speeding over on her buggy looking really upset! Some stupid guy on a stand had brought his 'promotional team' (girls with next to nothing on, parading around). Whilst this is normal for say, a Max Power event, Claire had been determined that this event would be suitable for all! She tried to have a word, and basically told her that the whole thing was rubbish, (not in those words either!) As this was the first event on this scale that she had done, (and it was massive, well over 4000 cars!), it is not surprising, that this person with fatherless issues, upset her!
So the whole GTROC got together to see what we could do, I did one quick trip round the stand, with a plastic cup, and managed to raise £20, then I thought, well, as organiser, bet all she has heard so far as complaints, but all we had heard was how much people were enjoying themselves! So I pinched a clipboard and some paper, and off we toddled! In the end we got nearly six sides of paper, with some great feedback, and nearly £70 in the cup!
At the bbq in the evening, when we all were together, we managed to connive to get John and Claire together at the stand, and we gave them masses of flowers, a bottle of champagne, a bottle of red wine, and John a lovely little model skyline! It was when they got the feedback though, that it really seemed to cheer them, so am totally chuffed!!!
After that, and running the stand all day with the lovely Emma and Clare (different Clare), not a very good nights sleep, was really tired so didn't eat much at the bbq, but drank loads of vodka and coke), so the rest of the evening was a blur!
We were back on the stand by 9 the next morning, and straight away, signed two new members, even though Emma and Scott had packed all the stuff in their car the night before, and weren't up yet! All was going brilliantly on the stand, even though a few chaps from Luxemborg had dropped in, and it was not easy, as they had to speak through an enterpreter. The rain started to fall, and then boy did it go! We left about 2, and were home about four yesterday, but have been catching up on my sleep! Sooo tired!
So has been a busy weekend, but was good, although I didn't get to walk around too much, as was busy on the stand! Will go again if poss, but will NOT sleep in a tent! ha ha ha ha!!!
