Saint Luke’s visit To the Magical Kingdom of Camelot
2nd August 2004
On Monday 2nd August 2004 89 members of Saint Luke’s Morris Dancers boarded a bus headed for a fun filled day in the Magical Kingdom of Camelot!
I did take the camera along - as promised - but for some unknown reason it was VERY hard to catch any of our motley crew having fun! Those I did manage to spy on usually ran away as soon as they spotted – was it something I said?
Below are a few of the pictures I managed to get!
On Saturday 17th August Saint Luke’s Morris Dancers went bag packing in one of the Local Tesco Supermarkets, in the hope of raising our funds to cover the recent purchase of our new dresses and shakers - and to put some much needed money back into our dwindling bank account!
It took almost 2 years of trying
(and what must of amounted to about 100 begging letters to every local store in
the area) to get our first date to go packing – then we got 3 all in one go!!!
We couldn’t believe our luck
J
As we were new to the bag packing scene we asked the store manager what we would have to do the day and what was expected of us. One of the conditions was that we all had to be dressed the same in troupe colours, which meant we had to wear our Morris Dresses or buy some Tee-shirts. As we had just forked out a huge amount of money for our new dresses, this was not an option - so we decided to design our own tee-shirts and have them printed up for us. We decided that this was a good investment because we could also use them to cover up the dresses while we are out and about, waiting to dance.
We arrived in the store at
9.50am, much to the delight of the supervisor in charge! It turned out that
there were no members of staff available to pack bags in the store that day and
customers had been asking for some all morning
J
J
We set straight to work having already planned our groups and work load before we got there. We worked from 10.00am until 4.00pm changing groups at 1.00pm so that the most anyone was expected to work was a 3 hour shift. Some of us more hardy packers worked all day!!
The time seemed to fly by and
all the girls and mums enjoyed chatting to the customers about their Morris
Dancing. By the time 4.00pm arrived we had collected quite a bit of money, so
we packed up for the day. We were really pleased when we counted the money to
see that we had raised almost £700!!
We have another day packing at a local ASDA so we are looking forward to raising just as much again J
One of our main fund raising
events of 2000 was a sponsored walk from the Liver Building in Liverpool City
Centre to Lord Street in Southport . The journey was just over 25 miles long.
We managed to raise the grand sum £800 in sponsor money, of which £225 was
collected in buckets along the route from generous members of the public.
This money will help us to buy materials to make new dance costumes for all our
girls.
Special Guest: Our special guest was Steven Fletcher, alias Steve Murray from Brookside. Steven was a wonderful guest, he officially started the walk for us and even took time out to chat to the girls and sign autographs. A couple of lucky young ladies even managed to steal a kiss!
The whole walk was
completed by 5 members of our group and a very kind gentleman called
"Charlie Shiells". Charlie has walked from Liverpool to
Southport EVERY YEAR for the past 23 years!!! Each year he has
walked the same route to help raise funds for a different charity or voluntary
group. He spotted our pleas for help in a local newspaper and decided to
help us this year.
The members of the group who completed the walk were Debbie Hughes, Anna-Marie
Anderson, Lyn Tillett, Leona Johnstone and of course Charlie. Other
members, who deserve a special mention for walking most of the way, are our
trainers Pat and Jimmy Shearn, Kate Clarke, Katie and Stephanie Hartley, Emma
and David Thompson, Lyndsey Gordon, Toni Guy, Sally-Anne Burrows and Tina.
We left Liverpool at approx. 10.30am and all had arrived in Southport by
6.30pm!!
Those of us who are mad enough may be repeating the walk next year!!! Watch this
space!