With most of the team at Bury Carnival, team call out list members Louise Jorgensen, Michael O’Brien and Stephen Kenworthy in our BM4 Land Rover Mountain Rescue Ambulance vehicle, joined by Support Group member Iain Clarkson, attended the Annual Garden Party at Eagley Bank organised by Team Eagley Bank Fund Raisers, who have made us their Charity of the Year 2010-2011. (Having raised a fantastic £452.00 for the team so far, and its only the start of their fund raising year for us !)
Opened by the newly installed Mayor and Mayoress of Bolton at 12.00 noon, the day was by all accounts a total success with Louise, Michael, Stephen and Iain all commenting that they had been made most welcome and had thoroughly enjoyed their day out as invited guests of Team Eagley Bank fund Raisers. (the cakes and drinks they were plied with helped as well !)
There follows a report on the Garden Party by Louise Jorgensen.
As we turned the corner into the close, thinking we’d gone wrong in our directions, it became immediately apparent that we hadn’t! We were suddenly plunged into the middle of the Garden Party. Most of the houses in the close had one, if not more, stalls on their front lawns! Amongst the stalls was some brilliant reminders of my youth – throw a ring over the bottle, a Lucky 7 tombola, hook a duck, roll a 10p (it was an old penny in my day!) plus plants for sale, brik a brak, a book stall (I managed to aquire a copy of the 1960 Good House Keeping Annual so beware Paul – I shall be polishing your shoes with newspaper and killing you with suet puddings) and an incredibly perceptive fortune teller who got me down to a tee on a reading based on my handwriting. A back garden was converted into a tea garden ( it was fun trying to watch people match up their almost-identical-but-not-quite loaned garden furniture at the end) and hot dogs were being liberally distributed. It was brilliant. Not wanting to miss out, we were joined by Mikes wife, chris and his 2 boys for the afternoon.
You couldn’t escape the over-whelming feeling of a great community spirit and hospitality. On our arrival, We were immediately handed a £5 donation from Steve, a resident, before we even had the chance to all get out of the vehicle who then proceeded to take who took our brew orders. People were only too willing to chat and we made a lot of new friends during the afternoon. One poignant meeting was with the mother of Adam Littleford (incident 93/2009 ) who tragically drowned in December of last year. A stall was being run to ’Buy a Star for Adam’ and his mother picked the winning star for which a cottage holiday in the lakes had been donated. We were also privilidged to meet the Mayor and Mayoress of Bolton, who also made an individual donation to the team.We were spoilt to the very end when we were lured (resisting I hasten to add!) into the tea garden for a full cream tea …mmmmmm !
We cannot start to thanks the residents and friends of Eagley bank for their over whelming generosity, hospitality and friendship shown to us at the Garden Party. Thank you for making it a very memorable day.
Please also see website ’news’ items dated 3rd / 13th / 25th February, 31st March, 2nd and 11th May 2010
