![]() ![]() We had Al and Pixie come along with their Cookie/UPT goodies, Ali Woodhouse representing Cypres, and many more manufacturers providing prizes for the raffle too. We were super-impressed that Jack, Cara and Hayley from XDream and Symbi Suits wanted to come on board and support the boogie – and not only with load organising and coaching, but also providing the awesome boogie T-shirts. The response to the boogie was great and we had more than 70 people pre-register with more turning up each day during the boogie. I was concerned that the registration fee would put people off, but I needn’t have been. I also decided to charge a registration fee, in part to encourage participation (jumpers are more likely to attend an event they have paid for it even if the forecast is iffy) but also to help provide entertainment for the Saturday night. I have never organised a boogie and, being a small DZ with a planning permission arrangement that doesn’t allow aircraft movements on Sundays, I decided to keep it small and do limited promotion. It is also reputed to have hosted the two biggest boogies ever held in the UK. Parachuting has taken place at the airfield continuously since 1964, initially with the Manchester Skydivers and then through several incarnations to the present with Skydive Tilstock Freefall Club. It has a long and interesting history, being the oldest skydiving operation in the UK. Skydive Tilstock (Tilly) is a small dropzone nestled on the Welsh border between Wrexham and Crewe. ![]() I had been thinking of running a Rainbow Boogie in the UK for a few years and the debacle around the BPA logo finally spurred me on to make it happen. The Rainbow Boogie has been an annual event in the USA since 2006. I was more concerned that she was scared to tell me as she was worried what my reaction would be and that she would ever think that I would judge someone on their sexuality – especially my nephew.įast forward a few years to when I had become a Chief Instructor, and I was saddened when a student approached me to say that they felt their sexuality was an issue with one of my Instructors.įast forward once again to 2018, when the BPA’s decision to support the LGBTQ+ community by applying a rainbow filter to the logo on Facebook was met with a disappointing and offensive response from a number of members. ![]() The tone in her voice led me to believe something serious had happened to him, so I was relieved to hear that all she wanted to tell me was that he had come out. Some years ago, while I was fortunate enough to be posted to RAPA as an Instructor, I received a call from my sister who wanted to speak to me about my eldest nephew. Unfortunately, this is also a view shared by many non-military people. I was in the Army for 22 years and, at the risk of offending those readers who are ex/serving service personnel, the environment I worked in for most of those 22 years was, to varying degrees, racist, misogynistic and homophobic. This is the spectacularly glitter-covered tale of the UK’s first-ever Rainbow Boogie at Skydive Tilstock and, perhaps more crucially, why it happened too ![]()
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