Cold, wet, windy, miserable. Since time immemorial it has been tradition to go to Shell Island in the Autumn.
Since it is September, I thought it best to bring up a timely tradition; that of the annual Shell Island Oktoberfest. Unlike actual Oktoberfest it usually takes part in October, not September, and apart from one I missed due to being in India, I have attended them all. TO be clear, this isn’t about the real Oktoberfests in Bavaria.
We’d been to Shell Island for the closing ceremony in 2012. But for the 2013 season there would be an actual Oktoberfest happening.
Nearly every Oktoberfest has been… eventful. There have been times where:
- Due to some roughhousing Ash suffered some sort of internal arm injury that meant we had to take him to Porthmadog minor injuries unit who seriously recommended he go to a proper hospital. He didn’t. It went down on the medical report as “fooling around with a friend when he fell”.
- Sean wore full Lederhosen. Despite this, or maybe even because of this, an old man fondled him by groping his arse.
- Sticks became my favourite things.
- We all bought cheap glass steins from Porthmadog Lidl, then whilst dancing on the table one of us proceeded to drop theirs, and for good measure fall off the table onto the shards. With blood flowing from their leg they did go to a proper hospital. This got dancing on tables banned for like, one whole night.
- Kari got on stage in the opening night festivities and drank an entire glass Wellington boot of beer in the shortest amount of time.
- A bag baby was born.
- I got so inebriated I thought it was a good idea to dance on some tables for hours on end and then collapse face down in a swamp. This video was… *ahem*… popular… when first posted.
- We paid for a photo in a frame and it actually came out looking like a nostalgic faded photo of better times in the 80s.
- Sean decided to try inviting a strange couple of guys into the tent who just turned up with alcohol and asked to come inside, in a “totally not gonna murder you” sort of way. Basically if you need anything from Sean just ply him with free booze.
- This had the side effect of setting Ash into “patrol mode” because he grabbed a torch and spent the next 30 mins patrolling in case crime awas afoot.
- Becky blue the fuse on a not really real Motorhome by trying to use a Microwave, leading to a great chase in which we tried to find a fuse. The fuse not being an auto fuse but a large glass style usually used in aftermarket sound mods, not one garage had it. Not even the marine garages, we checked those too. This hunt took a whole day.
- Most recently was so hungover I missed the second night.
- The one I missed; a real Motorhome was rented and Sean nearly drove it off a cliff overtaking a tractor. A tent was also pitched in what was only described as a swamp (but not mah swamp).
- Back at the tent, Ad wrestled Sean into a gas powered heater.
- In nearby Barmouth, we went on the Dodgems. ALL CARS MUST GO CLOCKWISE the signs said. COUNTERCLOCKWISE IT IS Kari said. Head on collisions and whiplash ensue.
- There was also a motorcross day on the beach because Wales.
- I tried making a timelapse.
In case you noticed the last post promise of future posts “soon”, the plan to write up some bigly post about all happenins since 2015 sort of fizzled out. In fact I totally forgot about this blog until last week when a friend read it and reminded me it existed. So I thought I’d go and tidy it up, found it was running an ancient version of php, and that Installatron had detected two (yes two! wild) installations of WordPress, the software that runs this blog. So, I thought I’d delete the one marked backup since it was unmodified from 2016. Bad idea – it was also linked to the current database, it was only a file backup, so Installatron wiped the database. Dread crossed my mind as I realised nearly 20 years of important historical documents had been lost. How will future civilisations build a utopia based on my life if the blog is gone? Luckily the webhost, Owen was able to restore the missing database. Now that order is restored, I’ll be adding some posts here in categories of things that happened since 2015 rather than Jumbo posts. Easier to write.
In short, more, shorter blog posts going forward. In the mean time, enjoy this fancy new collage of Oktoberfest photos from 2014.