I couldn't write this yesterday as I was so tired after a long day at the Family Fun Day, which I will now tell you all about :) I think it's safe to say this will be a long blog entry! The day began around 6am for me - as it was also Father's Day, my family wanted me to open cards and presents before I left for the Fun Day. Mandy, my daughter Jenna and I left the house at around 7:45am as thankfully we had been offered a lift to the Letchworth Centre for Healthy Living where the event was taking place. Quite a large field / grounds round the back of the large building, we had plenty of room for all our needs. We quickly got to work, helping to set things up - first the information stall, then we located the games 'stall', or I should really call it the games corner, as we were in the corner and also we weren't under the cover of a gazebo as around 90% of the other stalls were! :) This was fine, till it rained a bit later, but we'll get to that in a bit...
To begin with we thought we would also be running the couple of golf games, which we set up in the golf tent next to us, however a couple of other volunteers turned up to do that. A relief, as we would have been a bit stretched otherwise! In 'Games Corner' we had 4 games - we had the classic 'Ball in the Bucket', and the most popular game of the day 'Hook a Duck', then we had the tricky 'Whack the Rat' and finally the fiendishly difficult, least popular 'Captain Hook' game which involved throwing a quite small metal hoop onto Capt. Hook's quite small hook. Only a couple of people managed it. Most folk had a look and though... nope, too hard to try...
At the start of the day Mandy, Jenna and I were joined by 3 other helpers, but 2 were soon reassigned to a different stall as I think it was realised we had too many people! It was pleasing to have Catherine join us for a while in the morning - she's one of the new volunteers at the centre. A little later, after Jenna and Catherine had gone home, we were joined by Josie in Games Corner.
The first half hour or so was pretty slow - we opened at 10am - but as the morning went on, we did start to get quite busy. There was quite a lot of activity around lunchtime, and into the early-mid afternoon. For the most part the weather was acceptable to very good. We had hot sunny spells but probably an equal amount of colder cloudier times, and the wind didn't help. We did have a down pouring of rain which coincided with Mandy and I going for lunch, at around 12:50pm - we left our 'neighbour' for the day, Margaret in charge of our games, and she had to run for cover when the heavy rain began (literally just as we sat down in the cafe!) Some of the prizes, particularly the little books, didn't fair as well though, getting rather soaked! It lasted no more than 10-15 minutes, so it was nice and sunny again when we emerged from the cafe!! Lucky escape for us...
We ended up in the cafe instead of at the MS Centre run BBQ because we're vegetarians, and there was no alternate veggie BBQ this time (unlike last year at the volunteers BBQ they held at the MS Centre itself) probably my only real gripe about the day there, but I cannot really complain since Mark very kindly gave us some extra money for lunch as we didn't bring enough.
After Josie joined us, not long after lunch, I'd say we had our busiest spells, with many children (and a few adults) trying their hands at our games. As I say, the ducks were the most popular, however I quickly got sick and tired of these misbehaving plastic quackers, half of them had obviously turned up drunk and kept preferring to lie down on the job! Most kiddies didn't mind too much though, and still managed to hook them (occasionally with just a little help!) We gave out lots of little prizes, and I think (and this is a pure guess) we must have made somewhere in the regions of £40-something just in our corner. I know from talking to the guys next door that the golf was very popular too, and they reckoned they'd made £70+ - wow! I will try and find out, when Charlene has had a good count up, and announce how much we actually made on the day.
Among the many stalls we had yesterday there were other attractions and activities for people including an archery range, bouncy castle, football competition, obstacle course and a tractor which the children could sit on (supervised). We were also very pleased that the fire brigade and also the police both dropped in on us (not for any of their usual reasons either I'm pleased to say!) We had the scarecrow man riding around on his tricycle collecting donations for us. And we had the aforementioned BBQ and also a small bar. A little later in the afternoon we had a live jazz band - in fact, Ruth's band - Ruth is a Member at the Centre who comes in for Oxygen Treatments and Physiotherapy weekly. She is also a wonderfully gifted jazz singer, and we all enjoyed her band greatly! There was also a raffle - tickets being sold by Hannah, who has been helping on a Saturday with the O2 but is now taking a break from that - the prize draw was one of the final things of that day.
After about 4pm it became evident that going on till 6pm was maybe stretching it a bit, and numbers of visitors were dropping dramatically. Many of the guest stalls were packing up. We decided to hold off for as long as we could - by this time we were already very tired. I was pleased we held off as we did get a few late-comers, including one little girl who kept coming back to play our games numerous times. By 4:45pm though we were also packing up, and we left at around 5:15pm. Many other volunteers were still packing up, and I imagine it took them quite a lot longer.
All in all, Mandy and I enjoyed the Family Fun Day, and I personally would say it was a big success. Okay, we didn't get the masses and masses of people that we'd have liked (in an ideal world!), but we did get quite a lot of people come, and I am sure we made a fair amount of money for the HMSTC charity. As I sit here typing this, I am still very achy all over, and I have to leave shortly to run the Monday afternoon oxygen session - I'll put the photos on the FB Page when I get back home later. But, well - that's my account of this very tiring but very enjoyable day :)
As ever, more from me soon - best wishes -
Rod
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