MINIS IN THE PARK 2005 by Jeff Hills 

I was in two minds about whether to camp at this event, and over the two weeks before the event, decided several times, first not to camp, then not to camp, then to camp and so on, and eventually decided not to camp when I saw the weather forecast on Tuesday, which was for rain on Saturday night, showers on the Sunday. So, as I live in Southampton, I decided to go up on the Sunday morning…..until I talked to Daz and Steph on MSN. They persuaded me to go camping, and I am so glad that they did!

I asked my 14 year old daughter Nikita if she wanted to come, and she asked if she could bring two of her pals, so we had a car full and a trailer full as well when we set off on Saturday at 2pm, hoping to synchronise a meet with the Staffsmini group on arriving at the camp site. A couple of phone calls, and the Staffsmini group set off, and so did we….what a good result that was, we arrived within 5 minutes of each other, and set up out tents in the classic sort of wagon wheel formation, with Daz and Steph’s pop up Gazebo in the middle. We also started on the beers…..I had two cool boxes with me, one full of food for the BBQ, and the other full of Stellas and white wine, into which I had emptied two packs of part ice. They were good and cool, and we began to enjoy ourselves once we had all the tents up and the chairs and tables sorted out. Daz and Steph had also brought large quantities of drink with them as well.

We got the BBQ started, and made more inroads into the beer and wine…and Daz eventually got into Nikita’s Smirnoff, white wine and red wine as well. We were joined by all sorts of people during the evening, some guys from my club, other Staffsmini club members, and people we got to know when we smoked them out with our BBQ!

Nikita and her pals went for a walk round, and discovered that there was some music and dancing, and they had a good time until all that closed down around 11pm. They were quite flattered to be chatted up by some boys, and I and the assembled gang kept an eye on them from time to time to make sure there was no monkey business!

Daz should have felt very ill the next day! (But he didn’t). No, that was reserved for me, as I had rather a lot of the white and red wine, and went to bed to sleep very soundly apart from some idiots having an argument outside the tent and some ungodly hour. I believe Steph drew herself up to her full height and went and sorted them out, I was not really caring much by then!

The next morning was wall to wall sunshine, and we managed to get up early and pack up and get on the track to the main event before 9am. I must say I have felt better, but I have only myself to blame! Once we got set up on the club stand, we got stuck into bacon rolls and sandwiches and tea and coffee. Nikita and her pals went off to do some bungee trampolining thing, and after a couple of nurofen, I was ready to shop! There were more trade stands than I have ever seen at a static show, and lots of autojumble as well, and I had a (small) shopping list. I needed new shock absorbers and some of those nice smoked plastic sun shade things. I managed to get both, so I was very happy. Steph spent all her birthday money on nice shiny things for Milly, and we generally had a fantastic day out.

I would like to thank Daz and Steph for inviting me onto their club stand – I had a fantastic time, and look forward to meeting up with the Staffsminis crowd again. This is another one to store in the brain memory bank under the “do not delete” section

I now have the job of getting my mini ready for the Brands Hatch to Nurburgring run in a few days time!

Jeff Hills