Now, in the history of the Island Games, there have been some very memorable opening ceremonies with some moments that i'm sure will stick in the memory for life....but unfortunately for the wrong reasons:
there was the rain storm in Shetland 2005 that cancelled the ceremony completely. The marathon 3 hour+ ceremony in 2007 in Rhodes sat on lumps of stone - a true test of arse endurance! The slightly bizarre 1999 Gotland ceremony where they mentioned 'coke heads' when referring to one island. The Guernsey ceremony with the flying donkey across the harbour.
Anyway, Aland is no exception...
The ceremony was expected to be good - not too long, it was to be in the stadium on grass and they even provided us with souvenir sit on cushion things (more about these later). However, the jewel of this one was one of the slightly alternative acts they'd booked - a Canadian comedian who did songs too. I'm not quite sure what they asked for when they booked him, but I'm sure the Aland organisers got more than they bargained for. Let me put it this way, I know that the first words you usually learn in any foreign language are the naughty ones, but this was a little close to the bone. We were treated to the finger not once but twice for good measure and 'merchant bankers' were mentioned too. The guy wasn't too funny, but was definitely amusing himself, with his voices of Bob Dylan and imperonations of Oasis. I'll give him his due though, he did get worse!
The rest was pretty good though: there was a dancing troupe, karate squad, and a aliance of dancers, theatrical bods and a singing group that did stuff all based on the hits of Queen - pretty cool really! And fireworks as a finale. No I tell a lie...the finale was the flying seat cushion things when virtually everyone started throwing them up in the air. It was raining these seat things and there was no place of safety as they bombed in. Being made of two sheets of rubber sandwiching some foam, no one was hurt, but it was just bizarre to be under the plague of these things flying about left right and centre.
Fantastic!
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