First off, we’d like to thank all of those who attended this event for coming with JapCars-UK, because without you, none of it would have been possible!
As our first event, it has required a lot of planning, and the blind leading the blind to get this sorted!
The Japfest weekend started on Friday with the arrival of Paul323f (with the burgundy Mazda), who arrived much earlier than expected and took me completely off guard, as I was still trying to get loads of things ready to go, and get the house ready for people to arrive. After a while more people arrived... eventually! Garry dived out to rescue Ness & Steve (black MX-6) after a phone call saying “help, we’re lost!”, this was after Paul was caught tossing in the kitchen over a saucy bird whist I was dealing with a kilo of white stuff...
Ness, Steve & kids arrived, the kids were frog-marched up to bed, and shortly after Andi and Fenny arrived. We started packing the two estates amongst all the madness, when another friend we hadn’t seen for a while turned up... cue more madness!
We eventually had both estate cars packed to bursting point, and the house relatively tidy... well, enough for people to inflate airbeds and get off to sleep... time check: gone 1am :shocked:
Whilst the rest slept, myself and Garry stayed up for another hour or so trying to get some T-Shirts sorted – but with no success, as the printer decided that it too was tired and didn’t want to be awake and working at nearly 2 in the morning... so it didn’t! We gave up, and passed out at just gone 2am.
Time check: 5am. BZZZZzzzzzzz BZZZZzzzzzzz *reaches for alarm* Should this time of the day even exist!?
Begrudgingly we eventually woke up – to the sound of someone asking for door keys – bleeding smokers!
With the aid of some super-strong Italian coffee (aka
Wopanese Go Juice) we eventually wake up enough to leave the house, not before double- and triple-checking we had everything.
Time check: 6:07am – we pull off the driveway, to go and meet up with Tim (orange Prelude), to then meet up with the Club-Jap convoy. A while later, we leave for Castle Combe, taking a nice steady drive along the M4 in a 6-car convoy.
Time check: 7:26 – arrive at Castle Combe. After being sent to the wrong side of the paddock by the marshalls, we finally come to our resting place for the day ahead.
The cars are unloaded, and we set to work setting things up. The marquee is erected, the barbeque is screwed (at moments a good job there is a barbeque between Garry and Kat as it would have looked quite incriminating otherwise...), and hilarity ensues.
It is universally decided at this point that it’s time for breakfast, so James puts on his gas stove – to quickly put it back out again as it bursts into flames to try to end the day early for anyone unfortunate enough to be within the blast radius – ie myself, him and Kat.
The “things randomly bursting into flames” theme continues when Garry and Kat have stopped screwing over the barbeque, and get a good spark going between them – enough to ignite the entire barbeque – paint’n’all! Panic stations! Turn the gas bottle off!
Disaster averted, breakfast is made for everyone – cremated sausages, anyone?
And in typical Japfest fashion – the rain arrives! The estate proves itself useful yet again, as it is backed up towards the barbeque, and a make-shift shelter (and seating area) is made.
The day then continues with people wandering off to have a look around the rest of the site, and those left on the stand discussing various things, such as shoving someone’s very loud train horn (which they insisted on setting off with alarming regularity) somewhere rather painful.
During this time, anyone brave enough to venture near the stand is accosted to buy a raffle ticket and the JapCars-UK merchandise on offer.
Food was provided all day by Kat, who manned the barbeque with great success.
Strong winds eventually took their toll on the marquee, so it was taken down after nearly knocking out and burning Kat as it lunged towards her and the barbeque.
Tim’s Prelude drew the crowds all day long (unsurprising, really!) as he swapped between the stand and the Redline Power Paddock, every time the engine was started people appeared from thin air to see what it was making all that noise!
Come 3pm, the raffle was drawn. The children were tasked with picking out the winning tickets, the winners were:
Pearl & Dave (Club-Jap) – baked beans
Ness & Steve – Toy Car 1
Lucus – Toy Car 2
Cliff – JapCars-UK mug
Andi – JapCars-UK pen
Stevie – Momo gearknob (and then told to give it a good polish!)
James – Infinity 12” subwoofer
After the raffle, the thing most people were looking forward to – CAKE!
A bit more chatting and wandering around, and it was then time to pack up and head off home, absolutely a thoroughly exhausting, exciting and fantastic day.
We would like to thank everyone who attended to make our first show an absolutely brilliant one. A big thanks again to Kat for manning the barbeque all day, Tim for the crowd-pulling Prelude, kids for the raffle drawing, and everyone else who has been unnamed so far for their assistance with anything they helped with – everyone chipped in to help at some point during the day in a true team fashion!
The raffle and the donation box pulled in a whopping £143.25 – massive thanks to everyone who stuck their hands in their pockets to give what they could – all this money will be going back into the club to buy other things for our future events.
Again, thank you to everyone who turned up and joined in – without just one of you there, the day wouldn’t have been the same!
We look forward to seeing you all again at our next show!
Japfest 2009 – Castle Combe
