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So one evening up the pub after the club meet some of us decided
that it might be fun to organise a mini convention... well what
with helping to organise the Crawley convention and doing trivial
things like working the idea of a mini convention degenerated
into getting hold of a field that we could camp in for a couple
of days and doing a lot of juggling.
It sounded like a good idea so we went ahead, booked the field
for Friday till Sunday and all agreed to turn up full of enthusiasm.
Come the big weekend Friday afternoon a few of us turned up
in the afternoon to pitch tents and the all important Marquee.
The site turned out to be a now closed children's farm place,
complete with Llama Deer Owls Chickens etc, but more of the
Chickens later.
Anyway due to various people having other commitments Friday
night turned into Richard and Joe being there from about 6 and
Dave, Brian and Nick turning up later, much later about midnight,
as I recall finding Richard and Joe seven parts to the wind.
Still Dave had brought the BBQ and a shed load of food so there
was some serious cooking and drinking to be done, we then settled
down to our traditional convention sing song (our apologies
to anyone unfortunate enough to camp near us at a convention)
this continued till the small hours when we eventually decided
that it was time for bed, the time being 04.25.
Now I mention the time as this is where the chickens come into
it. Sunrise on this particular morning was 04.26 according to
the papers, but if your going to keep chickens your going to
need a cock to make sure they lay some eggs and it was at 04.25
just as we were climbing into our sleeping bags that we discovered
that there was indeed a cock on this farm doing exactly what
cocks are meant to do at sunrise and then there was another
cock not wanting to be out done.
So there we were 4.30 in the morning trying to get to sleep
with two cocks having a I'm louder than you type battle in the
adjacent field.
Sleep eventually overcame us and we awoke in the morning to
find the debris left over from the night before, no one really
felt like juggling so we sat around played cards ate food and
drank beer, Christine and Graham turned up Saturday morning
took one look at the state of the Marquee and started having
second thoughts, still they pitched their tents and proceeded
to join in with the Drinking eating card playing school.
At sometime during the day the owner of the farm came over with
his Daughter "to show them the jugglers" now much
as we would normally love the opportunity to show of are rather
limited skills it was raining and we far too chilled out for
any of that nonsense so we sent him away and told him to come
back later when the rain had stopped (something I still feel
guilty about), still a few more drinks and hours later he came
back with his daughter again and this time we had no excuse
so treated his daughter to a short display of what half a dozen
untalented drunk jugglers can do, needless to say she was speechless,
though I'm not entirely sure why!
The juggling stuff was promptly put away as evening closed in
and the BBQ and guitar came back out, now it was a bit colder
this night so the marquee was kept closed to help keep the heat
in, about three hours into the evening someone decided to venture
out of the marquee for a call of nature, it was when he got
outside and looked back in that it became obvious that while
we were keeping the heat in we were also keeping the smoke in
and hovering in the marquee at about 4ft high was a smog suitable
to grace any Victorian London city scape.
As the night drew in we all made our way to the tents to try
to get to sleep before the dawn chorus began.
Sunday morning came round far too quickly for my liking and
as everyone else was up and making noise a lay in was out of
the question so up I got for that much needed caffeine shot,
nit much happened really on Sunday a quick walk around the nearby
lake some more food a couple more games of cards and then some
packing up of tents and some tidying up, well a lot of tidying
up really, then it was home to catch up on some much needed
sleep.
As you've no doubt worked out by now what started out as a mini
convention turned into a drunken camping trip, still we all
enjoyed it so much we're going to do it again next year, want
to join us ?
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