Flaming Wednesday

The Skateboard park opened today.

Copied from Bassetlaw's website

There were considerably more bikes than Skateboards though. The main attraction was a young man who had been on "Britain's Got Talent" earlier in the week:

Joe Oakley

Now, I'm no cyclist but some of the things he could do were amazing:


Thee above pics were taken before the opening when he was performing for his tame video man

The opening was performed by "The Chairman of the Council"

Councillor David Challinor

The actual ribbon cutting was done by a young lad, no idea who or why.

Once Joe had done a few laps the massed hordes were let on. Chaos ensued, but none of the eagerly anticipated broken bones and blood!

Joe among the crowd

Of course there's one trouble with an all white skatepark at midday: no contrast so the camera won't pick out the shapes.

One thing Joe hadn't got that every other cyclist had: a saddle, in fact there wasn't even anything to put one on! I didn't notice that until a photog (Wop Guardian?) pointed it out.

In contrast the one thing he did have that no-one else did: a helmet.

There were several other things going on:

• "Street dance" acts, which seemed to be bunches of young girls doing aerobics to music. Might have been more to it.

  Keeps 'em fit and out of mischief, I suppose

• A (small) bouncy castle
• Laserquest, wherein you go into a dark inflatable and shoot everyone else with lasers
• Andy, our young^{(tee hee)} park ranger, was involved in something football related on the five aside court

  This is the guy who referred to me as "elderly" in a press release!

• Pogo the clown.

  Really, who likes clowns?

There was a lady with a rather nice Nikon. With the display team, I think.

Looking like a dictator flanked by security!

Plenty of coppers there but no need for them apart from holding back the eager riders.

A good day!