The Highs and Lows of Hackney Festival

Subject The Highs and Lows of Hackney Festival
From abw@cre.canon.co.uk (Andy Wardley)
Date Tue, 16 Jun 1998 17:41:29 GMT
Newsgroups rec.kites

If Chris Matheson ever suggests going out skateboarding around London's skateparks as a jolly Friday afternoon pre-amble to Hackey festival then think very carefully before accepting his offer... :-)= 

Me before:   :-)=

Me after:    :-{@=

I was taking some BIG AIR (tell 'em how big, Chris) out of a concrete half-pipe when everything went topsy-turvy and I landed teeth-first on the conrete.

I broke 3 of my top front teeth, one very badly, and the teeth, on their way out of my mouth managed to chew a great gash into my upper lip in the process.

In case you're wondering, it did actually hurt quite a lot.

The next few hours were a bundle of fun as Chris drove me from one hospital to another where they could give me emergency dental treatment. They stitched up my lip (~10 stitches) and drilled out the nerves from my teeth to ease the pain.

Imagine what a jolly chap I was on Saturday morning turning up at a cold, wet, grey and blustery Hackney festival with a painful, swollen face and having had virtually no sleep the night before. I couldn't eat, I couldn't drink, I could barely talk and everything between my nose and throat throbbed like a Super-King Throbmonster 2000 Throbbing Machine set to "Extra Throb".

From there, things went downhill. The low point was at the end of the day when the precision result were announced and I was placed last. This was an outrageous decision, in my opinion, and if the weekend hadn't been bad enough already then this was the final kick in the teeth. As it happens, there was a transcription error and I actually placed 3rd. That makes me feel better now, but didn't help so much then....

Saturday night I had had enough of competing, kite festivals, kites, dentists, hospitals, skate boards and pretty much life in general. If ever I needed to have a good kiting day to cheer me up then this was the day.

Thankfully, Sunday was that day. The sun came out, the wind was a reasonable 10ish mph, I had got a good night's sleep and we had a great day of flying fun.

Muchos thankos to all those involved with the festival and humblest apologies to all those people that I was miserable at. Thanks also to the many people who looked after me, looked out for me and tried to make a miserable bastard as un-miserable as possible. Biggest thanks of all to Chris and Maria Tramontana Kite-Wife-of-Mine who were excellent to me.

As of now, my lip is healing nicely (one of the fastest healing parts of the body, apparently), the swelling in my lip has mostly subsided and my teeth simply ache (considerably better than the alternative modes of operation: "throb", "hurt" and "searing pain that makes you feel like your head is about to explode".

Did anyone get any pictures, by the way?

A 

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