Thursday 8 September 2005

Offshore Europe 2005 - it's a bit busy!

My what excitement at the top of our road this week - it's the biennial Offshore Europe exhibition when loads and loads and loads of people pour into Aberdeen to make big money deals and get minging every night. They might try and say it's a bit more sophisticated than that but they would be telling big porkie pies! As you can see the protestors were out in force(!)...

Protest time!

And the one I always find most amusing is all these good cars turn up and then they have to go and use the field at the top of our road for the overflow parking. What a posh place we are! Rain would make it much more entertaining but unfortunately it has stayed dry so far this year. At least the farmer boy hasn't been able to spread dung a'wey this year (unlike in 2003) as he's still got loads of bales in the fields.

Overflow carparking

At least having OE05 on this year has meant that the local "Cooncel" has made a bit of effort in keeping the field tidy and bonny. Think they might have been a bit paranoid that the travellers would come back and after the state they left the place in I can't blame them. They complain of persecution but I did go up and take photos of the place after their exploits in March this year.

They took the gates off their hinges to get into the field in the first place.

"We don't break down gates - yeah, right!"

They left loads of rubbish all over the place.

"And we tidy up our mess..."

They broke down windbreak fences.

March and the mess

It's not as if they would have had to go far to put their rubbish to the dump - it's only 10 minutes along the road. True, they didn't cause us any hassle while they were here but the mess that was left behind was horrendous. You can see why the Council were a bit paranoid and protective of their overflow carpark field since then as this year's oil exhibition has been estimated to bring in almost 50,000 visitors from 110 different countries and probably be near the £20million mark as far as revenue to all the hotels, bars, restaurants and taxis, etc. You can guarantee that the taxi drivers will still be moaning - they're a pretty dour bunch. Our way of getting our own back on taxi drivers - if they moan about our track (after we've warned them to go slow and they still pelt down it at top speed) then they don't get a tip, if they're fine about it then they do. Petty but it keeps us happy!

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