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Newsletter 43. Autumn 2007
The children are moaning about all the “back-to-school” advertisements, their parents are glassy-eyed and frayed around the edges and the entire apple crop has fallen wholesale from the trees before you had a chance to pick it. It must time for the Autumn Newsletter.
Firstly,
a brief canter through the last six months worth of fundraising
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Festival of Fools: Somebody up there likes Muncaster Castle . The forecast for the WHOLE week of the Festival was for wind, rain and unmitigated misery. The Met Office however – and not for the first time – got it completely around their ears as far as West Cumbria was concerned. The whole event was bathed in balmy sunshine, the punters turned out en masse and we made a very respectable £575.00 out of the coconut shy. Our thanks to Muncaster for inviting us, to all of our volunteers for giving up so much of their spare time to man the stall and to everyone who spent vast amounts of good money trying to win a coconut.
“B” Festival: You probably didn't know about this one because it was a late addition, organized after our last Newsletter was printed. The Bower House kindly offered us a charity stall at their annual two-day music festival in Eskdale. We elected to run a Teddy Bear Tombola, (a tombola in which the prizes were – exclusively – small stuffed toys, in case you were wondering …). It did remarkably well, considering that due to circumstances beyond anyone's control (the gazebos were blown down by an inconvenient gale ..) we ended up for part of the time on a table indoors. We made about £160 and it kept Gretchen's grandchildren out of trouble and gainfully employed, as all young children should be.
Cooking the Books: We had mixed fortunes with our Book Sale at the end of July. The weather – in spite of a deeply dodgy forecast – was actually quite kind, much to our surprise. We held it over two days - Friday the 27 th and Saturday the 28 th - more or less out of curiosity. We wanted to know if – at least during the peak holiday season – it was worth holding fundraisers during the week. Well (pauses to pull a wry face …) - not exactly . Friday was okay, but we weren't what you might call rushed off our feet. Mind you – I discovered at the end of the day that a couple of half-wits had parked in front of our big sign in the car park at Muncaster Castle – the one saying “Come to our Book Sale” – so that no-one could actually SEE it. Thanks guys. Saturday, however, was excellent and in the end we cleared £300.00, which is not to be sneezed at – especially when you consider that we were selling books at 25p and 50p each. That's a lot of books.
Funding News: We managed to finish our last financial year (ending the 31 st of March) showing a small surplus once again, which is always a Good Thing. It has to be said, however, that this was achieved without anything very substantial in the way of what you might call “local funding” from the business sector. We should stress at this point that British Nuclear Group are an honourable exception and have been supporting us to varying degrees for some time. It's irritating, though, knowing how much money there is available just a few miles along the coast from us and not being able to tap into it. The excuse is always that we don't “fit the criteria” and apparently no-one with the power to say “Yes” or “No” has sufficient wit or imagination to look beyond those criteria. We're obviously seen as weird and flaky. Well, we have news for them. We wouldn't have survived nearly 20 years if we were weird and flaky. Nor would we have survived for nearly 20 years if we were so easily discouraged. Possibly they think we're just going to go away.
A clue: No .
If anyone reading this has any contacts or influence that might help open doors to the Great and the Good, we'd be grateful. It's hard for us to make our own case that the Centre's work is unique – original, effective and available to everyone. Our results are consistently – and extraordinarily – good. The funding response is minimal. Gretchen is cheesed off with having to spend all of her weekends and most of her spare time writing applications which are summarily rejected. HELP.
COMING EVENTS
Egremont Crab Fair: Saturday, September 15 th . We're taking a charity stall at the Fair this year – a first for us. It's a HUGE local event and we thought we'd take the Teddy Bear Tombola along to see how it was received. Have Teddies, Will Travel, that's us. Come and find us – hopefully in the main street – but failing that, on the sports field.
Egremont Car Boot: Sunday, October 21 st . 9.00am to midday . This event, held in the Market Hall, can generally be relied on to net us about £300.00. We'll need volunteers on all the stalls and at the door. All and any help would be very much appreciated. We'll also, of course , need cakes ( I mean, when DON'T we?). We sell them with the refreshments and also on the cake stall. Scones, fairy cakes and tray bakes are great for the refreshments (portion control, don't you know …) but anything and everything sells well on the cake stall.
Christmas “At Home”: That's a posh way of saying that on Saturday the 1 st of December we're throwing open our doors for the day for a bit of a Christmas knees-up. There'll be refreshments available in the kitchen all day, Christmas and greetings cards for sale, our annual raffle, drawn on the day (of which more in a moment), our fabulous 2008 Calendar (ditto), our infamous Trivia Quizzes (ditto, ditto), tombola, crafts, Christmas goods for sale, white elephant, jewellery, competitions, secondhand books … Oh – and cakes of course. Always cakes. If you'd like to lend a hand on the day rather than just come and support us, please contact us.
2008 Calendar: We're taking orders for our 2008 Calendar … due out towards the end of October. This year, we're going for local shots again … provided by a hugely talented amateur photographer by the name of Dave Buxton. When I first saw Dave's shots, I was certain that he was at least semi-pro … but no … he's apparently just a very talented amateur. All 7 photographs are local scenes – some familiar, some possibly not so familiar and the calendar is, as ever, printed on high quality 100gsm paper and wire bound for easy hanging. If you would like to see samples of the photographs in the Calendar, I've put two or three of them up on the website here. Calendars will be £6.50 each, including postage and packing (or £6.00 if you collect them from the Centre yourself).
Annual Raffle: It's been a while since we've had a big raffle – but we suddenly found ourselves with some really good prizes, which made it worth the time and trouble of printing the tickets. The prizes are:
Handmade heirloom quilt by Mavis Gaskell. Beautiful 17” high model distaff spinning wheel Autographed photograph of actor Richard Armitage (John Thornton in “North & South”, Guy of Gisborne in “Robin Hood” and the man-what-married the Vicar of Dibley). Upholstered footstool/workbox Wedgwood bone china dressing table set £40.00 in Marks and Spencer shopping vouchers £20.00 in Marks and Spencer shopping voucher £20 Focus/Do-It-All shopping voucher Large and ornate Victorian-style photo album Crystal fruit bowl, large Peter Rabbit, (… and anything else that turns up along the way … ) If you'd like to take a look at the prizes, you can see them (if you have very good eyesight ...) here.
We're changing the system for buying tickets this year. In previous years, we've asked you to send the money and we've bought the tickets for you this end. THIS year, we're asking you to let us know how many books of tickets you would like. We will then send you the books and ask you to return the counterfoils along with the money in due course. This is, of course, a cunning ruse to get YOU to do all the work. I just can't understand why it's taken me so long to think of it. I'm usually a lot sharper than that. Tickets are 20p each or £1.00 for a book of 5.
Trivia Quizzes: No … I haven't forgotten. As if I'd be allowed to. I've been amassing questions for some time now. As in previous years, there are two quizzes. One is for the nice sane people who make up the bulk of our readership. It contains 100 questions of varying degrees of difficulty which should exercise your little grey cells without driving you to edge of reason. The other one – cheerily entitled “Abandon Hope” – is for those for whom “the edge of reason” is but a dim memory. Quizzes, calendars and raffle tickets may all be purchased by contacting the Centre.
Wanted
Garden Volunteers : The garden is a gentle way of reintroducing people to “working life”. They can interact with the other gardeners as much or as little as they want, work at their own speed and their own level of ability and gradually regain lost skills or – indeed – discover hitherto unsuspected ones. Thing is, we're so successful at integrating people back into society and employment that we lose our gardeners on a fairly regular basis, fools that we are. So … if you'd like to lend a hand for a few hours a week on a Wednesday, we'll be happy to see you. As well as endless amounts of tea, coffee and biscuits we also give you a simple lunch of soup, bread and cheese. Gardening equipment is provided and all levels of ability accommodated. Even if you don't know your maple from your mayweed, we can find something for you to do. Just turn up on a Wednesday, or call in any other weekday for a look around, or ring up for a chat.
BOOKS: We sold so many at the Book Sale that our stocks are actually running a bit low, believe it or not. In addition, we've attracted the attention of a couple of book dealers and regular buyers who were unaware that we'd set up in competition to Moon's (joke, Michael , joke ). They now visit occasionally and scoop up our leftover stock at a very fair price, so more books, please.
TEDDIES and other soft toys. The teddy tombola seems a popular feature, so we'll stick with it until people get bored and start throwing rocks at us. OLD JEWELLERY: Always popular – both at the Centre and on eBay. And that's it for this year. I hope we see some of you at our fundraisers, but if not … best wishes from all of us here at The Chase for Christmas and the New Year. September 2007.
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