30-10-2024

Helping Santa.

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We received a cry for help from Titchfield Festival Theatre to help erect the Santa's Grotto at the Great Barn. After a bit of arm twisting, which seems to be the only way to get volunteers theses days, we managed to assemble a team of 12 Shedders! We all duly turned up at 9.30 with a promise of plenty of tea, coffee, biscuits and screws to put it all together although it was a good job that Cliff had a good supply of his own screws as the promised did not arrive until 11.45. We were well rewarded when the screws, tea and coffee arrived as we all had a generous piece of the best carrot cake I have ever enjoyed!

Well little did we know what we were letting ourselves in for! The best way to describe it was like having 3 different jigsaw puzzles all mixed up with no picture to work too! The best they could do was show us a video clip on someone's phone of what it looked like last year! By about 10.30 we had managed to make some progress sorting it all out and we seemed to naturally form 3 different groups to undertake different parts of the grotto .

A team of TFT ladies with a few husbands started to sort out all the props and decorations and to their dismay both the reindeers had been severely injured with broken antlers and legs and these were no small animals. It was decided these poor dears (get it poor deers!) had to go back to our workshop for surgery.

Most of us left at about 1.30pm but a few stayed to finish the building of Santa's workshop!

Well done team!

Author:Chris Hodgson