Okay.  So it’s not Friday, when I promised I would post our copy for the January Eskdale Parish News this, but – HEY – it’s less than a week late, which has to be some kind of record for me …

ESKDALE PARISH NEWS – January 2012

Funny old things, fundraisers: you never know how they’re going to turn out until they’ve been and gone and done it.  Our Christmas Fair was a case in point.  After weeks of planning, organizing, wheedling, cajolling and heaving stuff around in cardboard boxes (almost none of which was done by Yours Truly, incidentally) when the day finally dawned – grey, miserable and distinctly unfestive, we had zero idea whether we were going to make any money, whether anybody was going to turn up or whether we were going to spend the next fortnight eating all the leftover cake and sandwiches, because it would be a terrible shame to let it all go to waste …

For the first hour, it looked as if the ‘massive loss/living off fairy cakes for a month’ scenario was the most likely outcome, until – emerging from the drizzle much as the Vikings must have done all those centuries ago – people started to arrive.  First, they came in penny numbers, but almost before we knew it, the car park was log-jammed and threatening to spill out onto the main road.  There were revellers shoulder-to-shoulder in the Centre, the kitchen was no place for the faint-hearted and it was like the first day of the Harrods sale around the Christmas trimmings.   They came from as far afield as Lancaster and Penrith by the car load.  A couple of strangers to the area fetched up with us accidentally, having set out to visit the Sellafield Visitors’ Centre (yes, the one that closed eight years ago), decided to try Muncaster instead and then met a group of happy shoppers on their way back to their car, who pointed them in our direction.  Then there were the escapees from the power cut – who knew where they could get a cup of tea and the determined ones who were visiting all four Christmas Fairs that were being held in the area that day …

By the time we’d strong-armed the last bargain-hunter out of the door at 4.00pm, we’d cleared £1,300.  Yes, you read that right.  £1,300.

Funny old things, fundraisers.

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(The splendid Viking image is courtesy of neonbubble on Flickr and is reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence … Not that I’m suggesting that the punters at the cake stall in any way reminded me of Viking berserkers, you understand …)