Getting over it

We are all a bit euphoric. Monday was a great day with a large crowd - I don't have the figures yet but we know that we have raised a good amount for our charities and many of the stallholders had good takings for their charities. A good indicator that loads of people were there is that the field that we use as a car park was almost full for about 1½ hours and very busy for the rest of the afternoon. Add in the large numbers that walked to the field and it is easy to understand why we had so many on the Donkey Derby field.

What really made it was the weather. We are definitely a local event, so we are competing with 'exciting destinations' that are further away. The weather on Monday was cool and dry all day which meant that people stayed at home in the morning rather than going down to the coast. The result is that our charities will benefit more than they expected. More important than the money though is that this is a local event, typical of the family fairs that used to take place all over the country which are now much rarer. It's becoming harder to put these things on, but it does feel great when we see so many people enjoying themselves.

On the day before the derby we mark out the track and the positions of all the stalls. On the day we begin early and put up wooden stakes at inner and outer edges of the track and set up ropes. We also create a pen for the donkeys and put up Start and Finish banners on aluminium scaffolding. We had a good-sized work team and we managed to get everything sorted by about 10:30. I helped with some of the heavy work, but I also show stallholders where they are going so I seem to spend a lot of time jogging up and down the field making sure that people are happy. They never are of course. I sometimes wonder whether I should operate a 'no changes' rule but as I had some pitches spare, I was willing to let those that were unhappy to move to vacant pitches.

The rest of the day I seem to spend with a series of black plastic bin liners in my hand, collecting rubbish that people drop on the ground and putting new bin liners in bins that are full. After the last race we begin breaking it all down, collecting the rubbish and putting all the gear away for next year. Next week we meet together as a team to work out what we could have done better.