The Gymkhana has come and gone and Ian, David and I realise exactly how
much work Maurice has put into this annual event over the years. If you remember
at the last planning meeting in November Ian Charity, David Kennett and I
agreed to take over the planning and execution of this year’s Gymkhana. Now, Heather, Dylis and Diana wondered why this meant quite so many lunch time meetings at the Swan, Hoxne but we enjoyed them and we really did want the competition to go off without a hitch. We had pretty much decided on the tests by the end of the second meeting but some finishing touches needed to be made so another lunch was organised before we moved the meetings to Ian’s
home in Combs so that we could commence planning the layout. In the mean
time I had agreed to put together the instructions, the signing in sheets
and use my computer expertise to make the scoring as easy as possible (yes
well more of this later).
We had our final meeting a few days before the gymkhana so that we could actually put out the morning’s activities and not leave too much work to be done before people arrived.
At last the day dawned. I had printed the instructions after they had been proof read by Ian and David. I had also created a fool proof method of recording the scores (HA!! Hollow laugh that) Ian and David and I had set out most of the tests and Ian had been busy with his paint brush on the grass. He also put up the tent to shelter in should it rain. We had even devised a wet weather plan so that we could carry out five tests if it really did chuck it down. What could go wrong?
I arrived at about half past nine and found Dylis already hard at work setting
up the table, the urn and the biscuits etc. Ian appeared and soon after so
did David. We carried out a few last minute tasks and I set up the lap top,
put out the signing in sheets and prepared to give out instructions. It had
been decided that I would be the master of ceremonies, purely on the grounds
that I had the loudest voice. Actually I am not sure this was necessary as
Maurice always did the job expertly in the past and I do not believe he has
a booming voice. Anyway the difficult thing was to getting everyone gathered
round to sign in and listen to me. The problem is the downright sociability
of the average Folkmogger. We do find ourselves pausing for a chat at the
drop of a hat.
Eventually everyone who was going to compete had signed in twice, once for the attendance book and once for the disclaimer. Those who were not going to compete only had to sign in once. The briefing went off reasonably well, even with the heckling from Maurice (he was enjoying himself and to tell the truth so was I).
We had a couple of spectators who had to leave at lunch time. They were, of course, co-opted into marshalling in the morning (Thanks Graham and Gerard). We had some people new to FolkMog and we all welcome Richard, Claire, David and Gerard. I hope they all had a good time and will be back for many more meetings.
There were, as tradition has it, six tests but we broke with tradition and did two and a half tests in the morning and three and half in the afternoon.
The tests then were as follows:
Walk and Drive
The contestants had to walk a course in the morning and they were timed.
In the afternoon they had to drive the same course in as close a time as
the morning as possible. No timing devices were allowed in the car and stopping
also incurred a penalty. There were some very good scores here, Caroline
Page was out by 0.09 seconds which would not have been measurable had we
not had the loan of Maurice’s stop watch.
Garage
The drivers had to drive forward and get the centre of their nearside wheel
as close to an air hose as possible and then reverse without looking over
their should to get their filler cap as close to a petrol can as possible.
Penalties were incurred for hitting either. This proved more difficult than
expected with several contestants hitting the petrol can. Luckily this was
empty of petrol and had been for years (I think).
Fishing
This was a small twist of an old favourite. The twist being that we had actually set out crates of water with fish floating on the surface of the water. David did a excellent job of making the fish from plastic milk bottles which he painted and added weights to make sure they did not float in the wrong way. The driver controlled the speed and did the fishing while the passenger steered. This is a recipe for broken friendships and divorce but everyone seemed to remain both married and friends.
This was the end of the morning’s activities and we all retired for lunch. I had prepared my own picnic of potato salad and home made (by my own fair hand) scotch eggs. All very yummy but it was soon time to put away some the morning apparatus and get out the tools of torture for the afternoon. Once everything was set out I did the briefing for the afternoon and everybody went back to the fray.
The afternoon tests were, well the drive bit of the walk and drive, of course but also:
Ramps
Two ramps were placed in the middle of a line. The passenger would leave the car in its place on the start line and then arrange the ramps on the end line making their distance apart as close to the distance apart of the front tyre of the car they were in. The passenger would return to the car the driver then drove forward trying to line up their tyres on the ramps. Sounds simple and some people clearly really knew their cars as some were very close indeed.
Revolutions
No, neither Karl Marx nor Maximilien Robespierre had put in an unexpected appearance. This was an esoteric test requiring the driver to drive his or her car forward exactly two revolutions of the nearside front wheel. Before the start a mark was made on the bottom of the tyre and the difference between the required rotation and the actual rotation measured with a highly coloured, patent device. This turned out to be really difficult for some and extremely easy for others, Liz Prentice managed to get it absolutely spot on.
Finally the Dartboard
This was actually an inflatable disc covered with patches of Velcro and numbers. Three tennis balls were provided for the passenger to throw at the disc from inside the car. The car was parked outside of a circle on the ground brilliantly painted by Ian Charity. Again a mixed performance was noted for this test with some passengers missing altogether and some scoring two centres to get two hundred points, the winning score.
After
all the tests the brilliant scoring software was brought into play by yours
truly and it almost immediately went wrong. I say almost because it did wait
for me to enter all the scores before it spat out the wrong result. It was
lucky we checked because according to the first pass Ian Charity had won.
However closer inspection showed an error or three or four or…. The
pressure was now on and thank goodness for David who came to the rescue
and we did it mainly the old fashioned way, with paper and pencil. I have
subsequently discovered that the problem had been ‘operator
error’ which just goes to show the old adage ‘Garbage in, Garbage
out’ I would like to make a point here that Maurice has put himself
under this kind of pressure for year after year with less fuss so a hearty
well done to him.
Despite
the long time taken to work out the scores we eventually found the worthy
winner was Brian Turner ably supported by Rogger Tatton. The male runner
up was Alex Park supported by his wife Karen and the lady runner up was Liz
Prentice aided by Ken. The full results are here
This was a lovely day and in the main the weather was kind to us. The company was, as always, brilliant and if the tests were as fun to take part in as they were to watch I think everyone would have had another great day. Many thanks to David and Ian for their organisational skills and hard work also a super thank you to Ian and Dylis for putting up with us again this year.
More Pictures:
Alan's
Maurice's
