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Orange overalls and
a random jukebox
It seems a while since Sunday, when the BBC Jersey team set off
on it's odyssey to Shetland for the Island Games 2005. We're the advance
party from our rock, the competitors don't fly in until Saturday.
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| Roger Bara
beating Brent Pilnick at Pool |
The trip here - covering some 1,100 miles was simple
enough. Jersey - Gatwick - Aberdeen saw us two thirds of the way, with
the final leg taking us to the Shetland airport at Sumburgh.
This is at the most southerly tip of the most southerly
island and thankfully doesn't succumb to the thick fog that seems to have
enveloped us since we've been here.
I know it's not Hong Kong - there's not a high rise building
in site - but the runway seems impossibly short and the pilots conduct
some pretty impressive loop-the-loops before touching down safely. The
main road to Lerwick - some 23 miles away - runs across the edge of the
runway.
Spare a thought for the two men - one in orange overalls,
the other in yellow who sit in little huts at each end of the aiport and
manually open and close the gates across the main road, everytime a plane
lands or takes off.
Our hotel is just a few hundred yards away and that's
where the BBC team from the Channel Islands is based.
Over the next few days I'll take you on a journey of
discovery as to how life is lived behind the scenes at the Island Games.
It's a journey that begins in Roger Bara's bedroom (!) and ends at the
pool table in the lounge bar.
And maybe you can help me understand a juke-box that
never seems to play the tunes I've selected? Modern technology and our
engineer Ken Park are stumped on that one.
Although only one of our team - Rosin Gauson - has ever
competed in the Island Games, we're not short of our own home-grown sporting
icons. Just last night Roger Bara creamed the "Young Turk" Brent
Pilnick on the pool table.
They're convinced Pool could become a demonstration sport
in Rhodes two years from now….the only demonstration I saw was
Mr Pilnick flounce out of the room, still shocked at having been beaten
by a much older man.
Submitted by Matthew Price on 06 July 2005 at 15:30
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