Chap Olympiad

Five years ago, I read a copy of The Chap at Alec and Suz’s (so long ago that we were back at uni. I am old :( ) There was an advert for the Chap Olympiad, which sounded like an amazing event. Unfortunately I couldn’t go, partly because at the time I was about to start a new job with a small company in Chester (oh my life, who knew Crest was so long ago?) and partly because to get from Chester to London would cost approximately five billion pounds. Not even a joke.
So we got up at ridiculous o’clock on Saturday, and I faffed with my hair to try and get it as lovely as how it was done at the Aussie party (I managed it slightly, but by the time we had gotten to the venue, it had flopped slightly. Sigh. I am not used to London hair)

Here’s the programme for the event. Since you probably can’t see that properly, I scanned it and uploaded to Flickr. There were so many excellent events, but because we had decided that we wanted to leave London by 8pm, we only stayed for the first half.

First up though, was the lighting of the Olympic pipe. No silly torches here!

Of course, what afternoon in a park is complete without a few pitchers of Pimms?

Here’s the first event, the martini relay. There were three tables set up, the first with glasses, shakers and ice, the second with gin and vermouth, and the third with olives. It was a relay race so the contestants had to run between the tables. However because this was the sort of event where rules were just guidelines, you had people sauntering up to the alcohol table and swigging the gin from the bottle. Good work I think.

More chaps making a martini

The crowd were the most amazing though. Almost* everyone had made some sort of effort in dressing up in style, and there were some amazing outfits and hair dos!

Setting up for the cucumber discus. I’m not sure I understood this game fully, but you had to throw a cucumber sandwich on a china plate and points were awarded for the distance between the sandwich and the plate (when they inevitably separated during the throw)

Here is someone gearing up for their throw…

And during their throw:

I’ve tagged the flying cucumber sandwich and plate on this picture on Facebook, but they’re pretty much in the centre of the image. Beautiful. People were disqualified for using cling film for keeping the sandwich on the plate, but all sorts of things were using – including popping the plate inside a Nazi uniform hat!

Here is the butler with a giant tube of mustache wax for the tug of hair – which was basically a tug of war but with a big (fake!) handlebar mustache.

During the interval, this “comedian”, Paul Foot, came on to entertain us. I said “comedian”, but there were only about 10 people who were actually paying attention to him. Honestly, if you see an event with him on, just avoid, avoid, avoid

Here’s Alex and I, in what I think is the first picture of the two of us ever. God thats smug.

So once the “comedian” disappeared off the stage, they started playing some swing type music, and people were dancing at their picnic baskets, then all of a sudden were up on the stage. Yes, thats a lady in a Nazi uniform. She was called Heidi Heil, and instead of a swastika, there was the logo of the Chap. She was very pantomime-y. camping it up all over the place.

Soon after this, we left, and hunted down some food. Of course, we found the nearest Wagamamas. We were slightly over dressed.

This is Nathan’s “I’m going to moider you with only a chopstick” look.

We got on the train home, and the boys produced a bottle of champagne which they had purchased earlier and tried to smuggle back into the event, using the excuse that it was Grannys Christmas present! Unsurprisingly, the security weren’t impressed with this excuse! We drank it from plastic glasses, and posed a bit:

We played Scrabble on the iPad (such a good thing to travel with!) and drank tea on the way out.

I had a really lovely day with three of my favourite people ever, and can’t wait to go again next year!

If you’d like to read some other versions of events, then Fleur de Guerre and Retro Chick have also blogged about it, which are well worth a read.

*Almost everyone dressed up, but there were quite a lot of professional photographers who just rocked up to the event wearing jeans and a t-shirt. This was a bit annoying, as it wasn’t difficult to pop a shirt and trousers on. These photographers would get in the way of everyone else as well, which was pretty irritating. I don’t mind people wanting to take pictures to potentially sell on later on, but please respect the people who have paid to get into the event and want to take part as much as possible!