Things that go CLUNK in the van!!!!!

Ha Ha the joys of exhibiting!!!
So there we were on our journey "sarf of the river"  to Crawley exhibition.
We had made excellent time,,, had somehow missed the notorious Friday afternoon Dartford Crossing mayhem,,, had time to stop for a quick meal at the wonderfully appropriate Clacket Lane services and were cruising the last 20 minutes or so to our final destination when suddenly from the rear of the van that noise that all exhibitors dread,,, CLUNK,,, [muttered breaths,,,,,, oh dear whatever was that!!!]
We pulled into the next layby and opened the rear doors with some trepidation,,,mmmm,,,, not a pretty sight,,,, one of the stacking boxes had decided it was bored sitting on top of it's counterparts and had decided to jump off and go gliding down the layout,,,, and as gravity has no brakes it managed to demolish the:
water tower
3 working yard lamps
1 platelayers hut
2 point levers
on it's 2 second journey down the van.
Now that should not have happened,,, but it did,,, and it's the first time in nearly 10 years of exhibiting.
Picking up the pieces on arrival at Crawley it suddenly dawned on me that the box on top of the stack was the heaviest,,, the other 3 had buildings in them,,,, 5% plasticard and 95% fresh air,,, the top box had the servicing kit,,, and the mains operated minidrill in its sturdy Germanic packing case.

Would Mr Murphy step forward for yet another award.

Not a good idea putting the heaviest box on top SAD,,, but it could have been so much worse,,, now I am also seriously considering we were receiving some assistance from "divine intervention".

 
Meet Neville,,, one of our two new operators,,, he is our very own "Hand of God",,, and a very useful fellow to have around when things go bump in the van,,, stop unexpectedly,,,, come off the rails,,, or simply just go wrong.
We started earlier than normal on the Saturday morning and the first task was to glue the remains of the water tower together,,,,if you look closely at the first pic it is a bit like Ernie's wig,,, you can just see the joint.

Anyway sincere thanks to Alan,, Neville and Roger,, the merry band of emergency gluers,,, rebenders,,, and weatherers who managed to jigsaw it all back into place in time for the arrival of the great unwashed at 10am

As usual I think we enjoyed ourselves as much as the public did and apart from the obvious the pastures ran pretty well all weekend.

Divine intervention????? don't know how but we managed to come away with an award as well!!!
Don't you just love it when a plan comes together!!!!

The next one is in July,,,, so watch this space.