DRCS Shopping Fair 2011

Well, we have held our third DRCS Shopping Fair on Wednesday and Thursday this week (5th and 6th October) and come out victorious…! It’s a lot of hard work, much of it sheer physical slog, but we all reckon it was a very happy and successful one-and-a-bit day event. Customers flocked in, full of smiling anticipation and the buzz was non-stop. Whether the buzz meant less actual shopping was done we do not quite yet know, but the excitement and anticipation was  infectious and judging by the number of colourful shopping bags that left the hotel at least a bit of serious shopping was done.

The Friends’ Committee, helped admirably by their husbands/wives coped wonderfully. Running an event like this is a lot of work, particularly beforehand, so that the actual occasion runs smoothly and apparently effortlessly – in fact, appears miraculously to “run itself’ as one of my  chairmen informed me when I was managing the service and  resisting his suggestions that similar events should ‘run themselves’  monthly and more or less fund the entire organisation without any external effort.

Our treasurer thinks we will have made approximately £5,000 which is wonderful. we are very grateful to the lovely stall holders who filled the Maynard in Grindleford with their colourful wares and tempted money out of many a pocket. Click here to view some of the many stalls, photographed by John.

What a happy event, and a happily tiring two days. The next excitement for us (watch these pages) is the Haddon Hall ‘Jane Eyre: Behind the Scenes’  tomorrow morning, and Top Hat tomorrow evening, at the Lowry in Manchester.