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9 June 2011 (Thursday) - Off to Teston

With the loading up all done, over a spot of brekkie I saw that B&Q were selling small gazebos for seventeen quid, and bearing in mind the weather forecast wasn’t good, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to have some shelter.
We set off arguably far too early and made our way to Teston via B&Q for a gazebo. The traffic on the way wasn’t good, but we arrived on the field before10am, and set to setting up camp. With rain forecast for 1pm I wanted to have all the tents up before the rain started. And we achieved this. We even had time to put the curtains up in “Brown and Smelly” – a tent’s not a tent without curtains. And these were particularly sexy curtains.
Having put the tents away wet two weeks ago I was pleased to find they hadn’t grown any mould.
Another pair of friends arrived in their camping van and caravan, and we greeted our old friends before having an inaugural pint of beer. ‘er indoors TM  and Tony arrived shortly after, and we had a bite of lunch, including a Wagon Wheel. Apparently when eating a Wagon Wheel you have to “grin to get it in.” I would recommend that my loyal readers bear that adage in mind (!) And with lunch scoffed I decided to try out my new water-fetching apparatus. Collecting the water at Teston Kite Festival is something of a caper: there is a tap in the gents some hundreds of yards away from where we camp, and in the past we’ve struggled with pliers to work the tap (the tap has no handle), and we’ve strained ourselves holding the water container under the tap (the water sprays everywhere) and we’ve done ourselves mischief trying to haul the water back to camp. This year I was going to simplify the job with a handle and a hose for the tap, and a sack barrow for lugging the filled water container. In theory this should have worked well: in practice my tap handle only worked in one direction. It turned water on. It didn’t turn water off. Fortunately I had a pair of pliers in my pocket.
Having had the forecast rain at 1pm, the weather cheered up, and we got kites out. Whilst ‘er indoors TM  flew her spirit nicely, the Rear Admiral and me flew his NASA power wing. I even put on my battle nappy and had a go at arsing. For those of my loyal readers who are as yet unaccustomed to “battle nappies” and “arsing”, a battle nappy is a harness one wears around one’s hips when flying a power kite. The handles of the kite line attach to the harness, and when one flies the kite in a sitting position one is dragged around the field on one’s arse. Hence the expression “arsing”.

And then we sheltered from the rain. Batty arrived and did us fajitas for tea. Very nice! And then my brother arrived to set up his tent. He was only able to come out for one day (Saturday) and so to save time, I’d suggested that he set his tent up early.
Once his tent was up we had a wander round the field, and after he was on his way home we settled down to do the Rear Admiral’s crossword over a pint. There were also mathematical brain teasers which I think had the wrong solutions given. But then I would, wouldn’t I?

By now it was very dark, and we could see some lights in the field. Someone was lamping for rabbits. We left him to it (as it was nothing to do with us) and seeing that the clouds had parted and that the stars had come out, we spent five minutes stargazing. I spotted three separate Castor and Polluxes in various parts of the sky.
And so to bed at 12.30am, where ‘er indoors TM was doing a silent version of the Birdie Dance. I am reliably assured she had a valid reason for doing this, but I shall let her version of history give the explanation….

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