Vintage at Sunny Southbank: Day 1

This weekend Wayne Hemingway brought his Vintage festival to the Southbank. I was slightly dubious, not only because I'd heard some horror stories from last year, but because I wasn't sure how it was going to work. The fliers didnt communicate very clearly what was free and what you got exclusively if you paid for a £60 ticket.

 However, I was looking forward to it because I love this old town of mine and I love Vintage, and as a bonus, I was asked to work for the Chap Magazine for the weekend which meant I go to hang out with all my favourite people, and get free passes all weekend.

I'm not going to bore you with a step by step guide to what I did all weekend. I spent the majority of my time peddling Chap magazines and Bounder's moustache wax to the great British public...oh and posing for photos...lots and lots of photos. The Chap crowd became a sort of freak show for the tourists and I was starting to get slightly peeved when people continued to take pictures of me even when I was stuffing my face with greasy chips.

Wearing my current favourite frock; a white a blue atomic print waffle fabric big ball of amazingness, we set up the stall under the London Eye, and then the first daily Chap Olympiad began.

We tried to get our MC Mr Langlois a bigger loudhailer but couldn't find one

The opening Ceremony and the smoking of the Olympic pipe

The Games begin! Mr Marlowe takes on a passing boy scout at the Lobster Joust

I then had to stop taking pictures of the games and start selling magazines! But only until I stole someones child as an excuse to go on the pretty carousel.

There were some interesting characters hanging around, and looking less than normal ourselves, we seemed to attract them. I got accosted by this Chaplin chap at one point...

Hanging out with fellow blogger Margaret of Penny Dreadful in our 50s frocks

As a favour to the wonder Tally Ho! cycle tours who let us store all our equipment in their lock up over night, we helped them cycle all the beautiful Pashleys back to the storage for them. Oh such a chore!

Ruthy and Bethy looking ready to ride

And that was Friday. I had a brief wander around the vintage village which was the free part, but I only went inside the Royal Festival Hall for a quick G & T in the late afternoon and didnt stick around for the evening as I was tired and wanted to get some beauty sleep for the long weekend ahead. There was a bit of a faff in the morning when we went to collect our passes which was really annoying at the time, but in hindsight, and as someone who works in events, I can't imagine what it is like to organise something of this scale and not have a few teething problems. Besides, I had fun, and that's all that matters right?

Stay tuned for the rest of the weekend...