Dinting Station Car Boot (Just For a Change !!)

Slightly Better Than Last Time - Sunday 27th August

Due to such a disappointing time the week before last it was with a little apprehension that I decided to go ahead and do my final car boot before going on leave for a month. Despite being August and supposedly still summer a cloudy grey sky did not bode well at all. With fingers crossed I hoped that the rain could hold off just until lunchtime. I managed to get set up and despite bracing winds quite a few people ventured out to take a look. Mid morning my dad came out to see how things were going and kept me company. The extra pair of hands were very welcome when trying to rig up plastic sheeting that refused to stop billowing when the quick showers finally came. Despite the chilly day there was a continual stream of people who came over and we were kept quite busy. Combined with the few pounds from the13th, the grand total came to £60 so we were more than pleased with our morning's efforts.

The Really Wet One - Sunday 13th August

Once again the weather had been changeable all week and the forecast was not particularly good for the weekend. But as the saying goes "every penny counts" so I thought I really should make the effort and try my luck at "Dinting Station" . Unfortunately it absolutely poured down from start to finish and with hindsight it was probably better not to have gone at all as despite trying to keep everything covered with large plastic sheeting quite a bit of stuff (books and packaging) got totally ruined and had to be thrown away. Due to the amount of things that had got spoilt it really was disappointing. A handful of people braved the weather to come and take a look first thing in the morning but by about 9.30 the sky was so dark there was no way it was going to let up at before 12 so what few of us there were, we had to just call it a day and head for home.

Despite the poor forecast a few optimists set up !

Where is everybody?

Anne, a friend of the family and fellow optimist keeps smiling despite the rain!

"I'm a Wet Customer Get Me Out of Here"

Now we really know nobody else is coming .. aww

&

A total washout ...
time for even the diehards to pack up and go home

Corporate Sponsorship

I wrote to quite a lot of companies asking if there was any way they could help with my fund raising. I know they get bombarded with continual requests day in day out and often they have already "adopted a charity" which they regularly support and as a result don't tend to support individuals. So despite the poor odds I thought I might as well give it a go along with all the others planning to do a challenge at some point in the year. I received quite a few nice replies back even when they couldn't help.

I was thrilled to bits to get phone calls within a week or so of each other from "Boots" in Manchester and from "Costco" Trafford Park offering help.

Boots kindly donated 3 huge bags of samples some of the soft toys were used in gift baskets at the Carnivals and as raffle prizes whilst the smaller samples were given out to the "unlucky ones" who'd not won a Tombola prize.

One of the gift baskets - soft toy donated by Boots

---ooOoo---

Costco donated a lovely Stainless Steel Kettle / Toaster gift set to be used as a prize.

What a fantastic prize; it was won by a husband and wife who were as thrilled to get it as I was when I first got the calls, unfortunately in all the excitement I forgot to take their photo (it was early days and I've learned a lot since then).