Camber Sands, June 29th 2008
Well, it was my first 'solo' rally for a long, long time as I left Lee at home with the baby. I was only going for one night so I was confident he would cope. Saturday's weather promised to be fine, but it started off fairly cloudy as I headed east. I stopped for petrol near Eastbourne and got a call from Rich. There was no sign of Champs and there was a crime scene guarded by a policewoman a few doors down from him. Were the two connected? I continued towards Hastings and then spotted Champs at a cafe so stopped to find out what had happened. It turned out he knew nothing of the 'crime' but was bored and saving his pennies for the Belgian rally the following weekend. His lights had gone so he'd stopped to try and fix them. Satisfied that I could eliminate him from my enquiries I continued again, making good time and arriving in sunny Camber by 11am.
I couldn't find our accommodation so had to ring Rich who led me through the maze of blocks of apartments (Lee said it looked like a concentration camp on Google Maps!) to our home for the night. The policewoman was still there along with a forensic guy who'd been there since the early hours. After a quick debrief we headed for the stalls. I didn't buy much, just a patch and some stand rubbers, and caught up with some gossip from Dougie and saw some other familiar faces. It turns out there had been a bit of a fracas the night before and the guilty party had been arrested and bailed. Hopefully the victim wasn't too badly hurt, although the police presence meant that his injuries can't have been insignificant...
The custom show was in the go-kart area and didn't have that many scooters. I think more were arriving as we left though, so I took a few pics and moved on. We headed to the shop for supplies (mainly sweets and alcohol!) and then to the bar, where we met Claire and Louise. No sign of Tulin yet as it had been a late night... After some inane conversations (mainly about speed cameras which is Louise's specialist subject) Tulin turned up looking slightly the worse for wear. Nothing that a swift pint of cider wouldn't cure though!
At 3pm we headed inside to a packed room to see Russell Hastings perform a solo set. He went down a storm and played mainly requests shouted out from the crowd, including Little Boy Soldiers for me!! You can see it on YouTube here : http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=bLb3JQfazWc
After Russ finished his set Rich returned to the apartment for a siesta while I did another circuit of the stalls and bought a magazine in the shop. I then had a lovely chilled-out couple of hours reading the mag, eating sweets and having a long bath. With no housework, boyfriend, baby or son needing my attention. It was fab!
In the evening we grabbed a meal in the restaurant and then caught up with Claire and the gang again. Upstairs in the main room there was a Small Faces tribute playing. The crowd seemed to enjoy them and the room was packed. Then came the headliners, Snake Davis. Now they would have gone down a storm in the right place at the right time, but that clearly wasn't at this rally, in this room, at this time. The room cleared and it was a painful 90 minute set where I got more and more sober, and more and more tired. By the end of it I was ready for bed and despite trying to wake myself up with a dance I admitted defeated and headed back to bed. It was a shame because I'd have liked a big night out, but it was way past my normal bedtime and I'm a bit of a lightweight these days!
On Sunday the weather was still dry and I made us a nice cooked breakfast with what little equipment had been provided. There was no frying pan so we had healthy scrambled eggs with our bacon and sausages. I was keen to get back to my boys so left at about 10 o'clock. The Sunday traffic was awful, with car boot sales and other events attracting crowds of people and very slow drivers. I eventually got back about 1pm and Lee looked very pleased to see me, probably because I was just in time to change Daniel's nappy.....