Another year another pile of presents, prizes and gifts. I couldn’t get a supply of decent new elastic so instead I built a whole new attraction. Another gun of course but this time the power was a leaf blower and the gun made from Gutter down pipe. Ammunition was ball pond balls. Terry and I worked it flat out the whole time mostly Terry crawling around on the floor picking up the balls. You could fire one ball at a time but most kids did the lot (10) in one blast first time and a bit more carefully afterwards.

Profits go to the ECA to spend on community projects but this show is designed simply not to make a loss, the games and side-shows and refreshments subsidise the kids presents and the gift stall fees cover the Hall letting, anything left is a bonus.

Joan Boughton has now left the village and Sue Johnson has taken over the chair of the committee however its all a bit of fun and Sue is now finding out what an unruly bunch we are but the actions were all in place the minutes were good and everything got done. I think the public enjoyed it, I am certain the volunteers did, I know I did so hopefully we get to do it all over again next year.

Santa’s fun day started life way back as “Gifts Galore” another of Joan Boughton’s creations. In those days it was a market with a Christmas theme selling things that groups of villagers had made,  typically as joint efforts. For most villagers however it was more to do with Santa visiting the village and the kids getting presents. We used to site Santa’s Grotto in the corner furthest from the door and the queue would be a family deep and go diagonally across the hall and gridlock the main door.

After this had run for a while a change crept over the village, everybody began to work far harder, employers became ever more demanding and time for making stuff eroded away. This did not kill the show however it prompted  a rethink. Alongside the stalls selling stuff there had always been some games and they had always been a success. The games side was grown and the making of stuff replaced by letting local small businesses with ‘Christmassy’ products buy space but the cake stall marched on regardless. The queue problem was solved by issuing Santa tickets with numbers and calling in the numbers as Santa got through them.

A recent breakthrough was to realise that partly through small business credentials and partly the size of our orders we were able to get into a real toy warehouse and get real trade bulk prices. Now as we don’t make any profit on the toys no other grotto can touch us for quality and price.

In current times we go more for craft type stalls and the games have become ever more noisy and ambitious although the powered bash the rat game was a step too far, the rat got killed (it was Peter Johnson!)