Legs Eleven!

Greetings, unofficial openers! Our latest opening was a numerical nightmare to sort out and it only happened in the nick of time! Now I'm not one for waking up early so when the eleventh of November 2011 came about I knew there was no way I would have my scissors ready for 11.11am (And eleven seconds) so I figured I would instead wait until 11.11pm (And eleven seconds) on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year to get me some opening, unofficial-style.

To do this properly I would obviously need eleven people but I thought to myself that I'd got all day and it should have been easy to work out. I could then easily be at The Victoria pub (My favourite opening destination) to unofficially open a time. with a good twelve hours to sort it all out.

Wrong!

Well the day just flew by and I hardly had time to pack my ribbon before I was on my way to my monthly comedy show in Hitchin. The brilliant Matthew Hardy was on the bill and wouldn't you know it? The gig ran late and I only had (of course) eleven minutes to get to the pub!

The very funny Matthew Hardy - I had to put the camera on "zoom" to get this shot of him on stage at my comedy club...

I took huge loping strides along with a couple of snip happy compadrés, barged into said boozer and yelled "I need eleven people in the car park - NOW! Did I get them? YES! Did they know why they'd been dragged out into the cold? NOT REALLY.

Oops! Somebody's left his camera on the "zoom" setting and now we can't see everybody...

Minor consternation ensued when the cameraman explained that he had taken a close up shot and a couple of stragglers had to be reassembled. It also had run on to 11.12pm but hey - let's face it. Unofficial Opening is all about opening things that are already open so what better thing to do than be a minute late! Camera settings altered and gang reconstituted I was finally able to say that 11.11pm (and eleven seconds) on the eleventh day of the eleventh month in the year 2011 was unofficially.... OPEN!

I know what you're thinking - there are only nine people in this picture! That's because one of them was very short and is completely obscured by my apparently massive frame (!) and the other one... was taking the picture of course!

Sadly of the eleven assembled we did not include any of Hitchin's many Glitterati so I am sorry to report that we didn't have Arvind Parmar, Ben Hull, Kevin Phillips, King Offa or Pam Rhodes in attendance. I imagine they were all off playing tennis, acting, scoring goals, being a dead former king of Mercia or hosting Songs Of Praise respectively. Lastly, I have just realised that this is actually opening number 22, which as I'm sure you giddy ribboners will know, is exactly divisible by eleven! Oh I'm no stranger to Mister maths, my friends, no stranger at all. Make sure you check back here soon for more Unofficial Opening!