Norman Rally

18th September 1981 - Hastings & Rother District MCC

We arrived as HARDMCC members were constructing their shelter. Again. This served as a marquee, the only problem being it only had three sides, (as in one side being open, not the whole thing being triangular). Last year, this hadn't mattered, as the weather was quite pleasant, this year the wind and drizzle were being troublesome, and the open side was, of course, letting some rain in. Still, the amount of water wasn't a problem and it soon lessened anyway.

They had a different generator and video game from last year, and these seemed to be able to cope with the power drain when the disco started up. This year we were given proper badges, rather than the vinyl vehicle stickers of last year.

Saturday morning arrived with a splat, but the rain had nearly gone, but you could feel it wasn't far away, even when the sun came out, (briefly).

I think one of the organisers was some sort of youth-leader, (or had a very large family), as there was always a group of kids on site. The silly games even had separate awards for children's teams. The games were pretty normal but the organisers allowed themselves to enter the games and they had been practising, so they kept some of the awards themselves.

In the evening, the video game had been removed as there were more people wishing to shelter from the returned rain in the marquee. The wind had also increased by quite a degree and a few of my club's tents, (and, I'm sure, some others), had stability problems, the wet field being unable to hold the pegs. Mine was very wobbly and Adolf, being without company for a change, allowed me to crash in his much stronger tent. Another of our members was having a total collapse, but he elected to crawl into my vacated heap, as there was at least a polythene sheet between him and the elements. He claimed not to have slept at all that night. I can't say I blame him.

Obviously, we had to re-think our tenting techniques, (like chucking away those silly little bent-wire pegs and get some decent ones).

- Phil (the Spill) Drackley