At The National
Spring Holiday
(Friday 4th -
Monday
7th April)
After last year, there was a sense of gentle anticipation surrounding this year's Brean, as over 200 Plussers made their way down and across to the north coast of Somerset, with the cars arriving at the site from mid-afternoon onwards.
After locating their caravans, the the-honoured tradition of allocating beds took place (one senior Plusser got round the problem by only spending two hours in their own caravan all weekend, much to the relief of their room-mate who then slept free from a snore that sounds like someone drilling through concrete), along with sorting out the first meal of the weekend. At this point, a number of people then made the mistake of asking where the supermarket was: at WASH there's one on-sight, however at Brean if's a branch of Tesco three miles away. Half of Plus seemed to be in Tesco, some stocking up on actual food.
And so on to the venue - the usual rounds of getting to know you, finding out where the parties are going on, and listening to the entertainment, with the National Chairman wandering happily around all night, accepted the offer of a drink (or two) guess it's a perk of the job.
Saturday morning started early for some (still coming back from Friday Night parties), and less early for others, with the chance to try their hand at Kite-Flying (makes a change from Clay Pigeons).
At lunchtime, a quiz was held in the venue, comprising about eight teams (some rather hastily thrown together) who had a great time, even if some of the answers (and the team names) were a little rude; this was followed by the moment that some will never forget, and others would like to the Karaoke. Our National Chairman, who is a rather decent singer herself, agreed to take on the Simon Cowell role as one of the judges, scoring on: various criteria including Choice of Song and Entertainment 'Value'. The 'artistes' had free range of a props/fancy dress basket behind the stage with which to transform themselves and then murder some classics - some though were taking it a bit seriously and brought their own costumes.
The competition was fierce, hard-fought and sometimes in tune. Paul West did Tom Jones' 'Green Green Grass' in a hula skirt, a duet (Jemini??) slaughtered a song from Grease, while lan Crawshaw did 'He Ain't Heavy'- the singer's dead, so he dressed up as a ghost! The deserved winners were South Bucks/Hounslow as Atomic Kitten (although rather more furry) doing 'The Tide Is High'- their performance left people in tears (and one judge wondering if they'd suffered a rupture).
For many, the highlight of the weekend was Sunday's Real Ale Trip - spots, cross dressing and all. The spots; a simple enough idea - on entering a pub, cover anything that doesn't move (or doesn't get out the way quickly enough), with small selfad esive spots, including the bar-staff. Nothing was safe - windows, chairs, toilets(?), all good clean fun. Now, the cross-dressing this was actually a Lichfield Group suggestion (with some coming prepared), others joined in by raiding the fancydress basket from the venue, or asking understanding females for assistance. The results were hilarious, eye-opening and, in a couple of instances, rather worrying.
So what of the actual acts over the weekend? By and large they were pretty good, the Midnight Dynamos got caught out when everyone joined in 'Living Next: Door to Alice (Dirty Version)', the Freddie Mercury tribute was impressive, if a touch loud for some, while the DJ was excellent after a slow start.
And the verdict? A resounding success, a great location and extremely well organized. It's not WASH, but R isn't intended to be - Brean is a holiday in its own right, and deserves to be treated thus. Already plans are afoot for Brean 2004; will the Kittens come back, will there still be spots on the toilets, and Will a bloke get a snog from a bloke who doesn't realise what they're snogging? You'll have to find out by going.
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Editors Note A big thank you for the Group Programmes forwarded to me by Mark - please keep them either directly to myself by e-mail at dane_fields@yahoo.co.uk or by Post to Mark. |
