A day at the races

It's probably not the kind of races you were thinking of.  The Boy spent Friday an Saturday at Innerleithen pracitising for the IXS World Cup.  That means downhill mountain biking.  We had torrential rain both days so The Boy phoned on Saturday to suggest that I might want to try and buy myself a pair of wellies for coming to watch him in Sunday's race.  I managed to find these ones, specially chosen for their extra wide legs, so that I could tuck my trousers into them:

On Sunday we got up early and drove to Innerleithen.  The normal car park was closed and competitors were being directed to a field down the road.  This is what the car like after driving 200 metres across the field to park:

There were more practice runs in the morning so The Boy prepared his bike and got kitted up ready for the practice.  I got my shiny, clean, new wellies on ready to go and watch.  The Boy, ready to go:

I teamed up with his friend's girlfriend, and the beasts - Z'ed, Odin and Sura to go in search of a place to watch the boys practicing.

Short dog hair was definitely the best option as the mud didn't stick to it in quite same way as it did to the long hair.  I didn't envy their owner the job of cleaning them afterwards.  We took a walk past the other car park and headed up the hill.  Eventually the path was blocked with coloured tape, a sure sign we'd reached part of the race track, so we stopped to watch for a while.  Just next to where we stopped was a stream that had to be crossed by the racers, with a very muddy, slippery looking bank at the other side.  A few poor riders came acropper there, one poor soul landing upside down in the water, still attached to his bike.  Eventually, we moved further up the hill to a spot next to a corner and a steep drop-off.  I think we managed to miss the boys while we were changing our viewing position. When we were sure we'd missed them, we headed down towards the finishing line and ploughed through the ankle deep mud at the entrance to the field.  We found the boys jet-washing their bikes.  I noticed The Boy had a graze on his cheek.  It turned out he'd misjudged the jump at the end of the track, just before the finish line and this happened:

 I missed it, of course, but a lovely Swedish lady who was photographing the Swedish downhill team caught it.  Apparently the handlebars hit him in the face at some point during this tumble. Here's the cleaned up version of the wound:

 Yes, that is his face after cleaning it.  Somehow he seems to have avoided a full-on black eye.  He had a puncture to repair before the actual race so he busied himself with that and checked his bike over before the main event:

My wellies were faring slightly better than The Boy's clothes at this point, but only just:

While we waited for the main event to start, the dogs got bored.  That's when Odin managed to roll in one of the plentiful cow pats and got unmentionable stuff all over that lovely long hair.  Z'ed decided to walk through the cow pats then jump up on me.  Thank goodness for waterproof trousers and baby wipes.

We ploughed through the ankle deep mud again to find a decent vantage point to watch the boys racing.  A marshall suggested a good place to watch it from and gave us directions to get there.  Unfortunately he neglected to mention that the route involved negotiating a very steep hill that seemed to go on forever.  Tiny Z'ed was extremely enthusiastic and did his best to haul me up the hill.  It was still hard work though.  I thought my face was going to explode with the effort.  Eventually we got there, just in time to see The Boy fly past.  I hadn't quite got to grips with how to set 'Action Mode' on my camera so that I could just press the button and the shutter would keep on taking photos.  So this is my feeble attempt at catching him in action:

Yes, his shoulder and elbow were all I caught before he disappeared out of view, down the hill.  At least they were in focus.   I played with my camera a bit more, got no shots that were worth the effort and went back to the finish line to find the boys again.  We 'walked' back down the Gold Run.  Anyone who has been to Innerleithen will know what that is.  It's a very steep, narrow trail with lots of roots and bumps and was a challenge for someone as clumsy as me, especially with a very enthusiastic Z'ed on the end of his leash bounding down in front of me. We all made it in one piece and, eventually, found the boys.  My washing machine is going to be hard at work trying to clean all the clothes.  Look at the state my wellies and I were in by the end of the day:

Now I'm off to take advantage of the sunshine and get the clothes hung out to dry.

Regal Community Theatre Open Day

I can't believe it's more than two months since I did my last blog post.  I've been a busy girl.  Anyway, I thought I'd tell you about my wee trip to the Regal Community Theatre Open Day at the weekend:

When I was a little girl, The Regal was the only cinema in the town that was still open as a cinema rather than a bingo hall.  I saw Bambi there and Snow White and The Sword in the Stone and loads of other films there when I was growing up.  The last film it showed before it closed was The Tales Of Beatrix Potter.  For the first time ever, my dad paid for seats in the balcony and we sat in the front row to watch that last film.  It was a sad day when it closed.  The Regal cinema in Armadale (a couple of miles away) also closed and was eventually demolished.  I was expecting our local Regal to suffer the same fate but it has re-opened and closed a few times in different guises since then.  It's changed a bit from it's original format and now has a bar, amongst other things, and it's now a community theatre.  It still shows films now and then and also hosts concerts and shows and has it's own resident stage school.

I was contacted a few weeks ago by the organiser of the open day and asked if I would like to rent a table.  Naturally, I said yes...... and then panicked.  Why did I panic?  Because I'd taken only recently a load of jewellery down to Kidzeco to put on display and didn't have a whole lot of stuff left to fill a 6 foot table.  I also had nothing to display jewellery on so I was afraid my table would look a wee bit sad.  So I set to work making some new things to take along with me:

I also splashed out on some displays:

So, on the day, I made a reasonable job of setting out my table:

My stuff needed two huge, wheeled suitcases to transport it, between jewellery and displays.  We had an hour to set up and it took me the WHOLE hour. I have learned some lessons, like don't attach the price tag to the organza bag that is going to be left in a box because it's extremely fiddly and time consuming to remove them. I also need to make some labels to explain what the dreadlock cuffs and phone/bag charms are and make a sign with my shop name on. Doh!  In the end, I had too much stuff with me to fit on the table.

My daughter, aka Missbaah, was able to transport her wares in a small bag.  She was a total smarty pants and was set up in no time:

There were all sorts of events on during the day and customers seemed to arrive in clusters.  I think some may have come in to shelter from the rain rather than to buy but it was still nice to see them.  I think Missbaah and I had a reasonably successful day.  Not a bad experience for my first craft fair.