Ely Eel Day 2024

I’ve not been to Ely Eel Day since before the pandemic. I introduced a friend to this fenland fun today. I know, but, to be fair, it could’ve been worse: it could’ve been the potato race.

There are a lot of morris dancing troupes in this area; it turns out one of our parkrunners is in one; they marshalled in the full regalia this morning.

A few weeks ago, I spotted someone had filled in the parkrun volunteer sign-up sheet for ‘my’ finish tokens role for this weekend. They hadn’t asked permission, so I had words with their mam ;)

I had been thinking about doing timekeeping for some time, although it seemed a bit scary: a lot of responsibility. I put my name down for that same week (this week) – after making sure our resident timekeeper was actually timekeeping that week as well, just in case things went pear-shaped.

Things did not go pear-shaped – at least, not at the timekeeping end of the finish funnel. When I’d given the finish-token-giver-outerer some words of wisdom, I was too busy stressing about needing to learn how to time-keep to remember the golden rule: everyone who goes through the funnel gets a token, whether they want it or not.

I apologised to the finish-token-giver-outerer after, and told them not to feel bad about it. I’ve messed up plenty of times; most recently by dropping several on the ground. Luckily, a barcode scanner rushed to my aid before any damage was done.