Mary’s Party

The local currency here is the zloty (or zl) so the results of the party were as follows:

Cake: 131 zl
Vodka: 100 zl
Venue: zero zl
Watching the Kiwis (and the rest of the world) sing “Ons vir jou Suid Afrika” with conviction the day before a Test - Priceless

So what was the party about? Mary has been flying for 20 years and so she decided she ought to celebrate. She did this in typical Mary style – at the last minute and better than anyone else.

She approached the catering staff at the airfield (who work HARD at these events, and who have been absolutely brilliant to us for the whole two week stay) and asked about having a cake made. Her only requirement was that it be big enough to go round. The results in the single day available to them were absolutely spectacular. They went all out, made it huge, and decorated it with the SA team’s logo for this championship. It was impressive work!

Mary in the meantime went about the business of letting everyone know she was planning a get-together for after the landings. As usual, they were all keen to come and join the South Africans for a bit of a tension-breaker. So the crowd grew to represent just about everyone in the competition. It was in fact a necessary outlet, I think, given the tension of waiting for the various scores to be tallied. The only non-attendees were the poor judges who were doing the tallying.

As if that wasn’t enough, after the Pomorski ladies brought out the 20 candles, one of the teams added some heavy duty sparklers. Once it was all lit up, Mary was speechless (no, really, she was!) She could do nothing but exclaim about how wonderful it was! And she was quite right.

The storm that had been coming for a while finally arrived during the event, and so the tent was tied shut a bit on the windward side, but it didn’t dampen proceedings. In fact, after such a hot day the rain was welcome, and I was glad to run through it to take the bus driver a slice of cake.

The party thinned when the last bus to the hotel left. I am sure the hotel staff had been wondering why the dinner crowd was so thin. But most of us got there at around 8 and rushed them off their feet as usual. All in all a successful celebration after a very good day.

We have had to pack up and go home (sadly) but there will be a post on the final standings together with a nice pic of South Africa on the podium at the award ceremony.