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Real Life!
7 Jun 2005 10:02 pmReal life is busy. Here on the Island it is the TT festival, which is, for those of you who haven't heard of it, one of the biggest bike festivals in the world, revolving around the most famous road racing circuit in the world. We have literally tens of thousand of bikes here at the moment - and I love it. The place is so colourful - all the bikes, helmets and leathers in wonderful colours - and those are the spectators I am talking about - the racing bikes are even brighter!
For me TT mainly means two things - it takes a long time to get anywhere, because the roads are really busy even on none-race days, and doing lots of baking!
On race days 37.5 miles of main road, which form the course, are, obviously, closed. So you have to take alternate routes, or just not go there for some places. Having thousands of bikes on the roads when they are open means the odd accident, and so sometimes you find the road you want to go down is closed by the police anyway whilst they clear up the road. That happened to me last week - a 13 mile trip took me 80 minutes!! The number of accidents per rider-mile is actually very low - most of them are pretty sensible.
Baking now - that's something else! My Church is right on a very fast part of the course, with a big garden which is a very good vantage point. So every year we open up the church to sell snacks, and allow the use of the loo, for the benfit of the spectators in our gardens - and also the benefit of the church funds! We sell hot-dogs, and hot pasties, loads of filled baps, crisps and pop (chips and soda!), and lots and lots of home-made cake. And of course the biggest profit is on the cakes - because they are all donated.
Daughter-dear and I also love going down to help with the serving - it is a great way to get lots of Church members involved as well, and D-d is especially useful as she speaks good German - and we get lots of German visitors!
So I have spent much of my non-working time either baking cakes or serving behind the counter!
I also accompanied S2C on his twice yearly clothes buying trip on Sunday, he now has some very smart new shoes, jeans and two neat casual jackets.
D-d has her last AS exams tomorrow - so tomorrow night we are going for an Indian meal to celebrate, and S2C can wear his new clothes!.
For me TT mainly means two things - it takes a long time to get anywhere, because the roads are really busy even on none-race days, and doing lots of baking!
On race days 37.5 miles of main road, which form the course, are, obviously, closed. So you have to take alternate routes, or just not go there for some places. Having thousands of bikes on the roads when they are open means the odd accident, and so sometimes you find the road you want to go down is closed by the police anyway whilst they clear up the road. That happened to me last week - a 13 mile trip took me 80 minutes!! The number of accidents per rider-mile is actually very low - most of them are pretty sensible.
Baking now - that's something else! My Church is right on a very fast part of the course, with a big garden which is a very good vantage point. So every year we open up the church to sell snacks, and allow the use of the loo, for the benfit of the spectators in our gardens - and also the benefit of the church funds! We sell hot-dogs, and hot pasties, loads of filled baps, crisps and pop (chips and soda!), and lots and lots of home-made cake. And of course the biggest profit is on the cakes - because they are all donated.
Daughter-dear and I also love going down to help with the serving - it is a great way to get lots of Church members involved as well, and D-d is especially useful as she speaks good German - and we get lots of German visitors!
So I have spent much of my non-working time either baking cakes or serving behind the counter!
I also accompanied S2C on his twice yearly clothes buying trip on Sunday, he now has some very smart new shoes, jeans and two neat casual jackets.
D-d has her last AS exams tomorrow - so tomorrow night we are going for an Indian meal to celebrate, and S2C can wear his new clothes!.
