Thurlaston, Warwickshire Click the icon to see the current weather forecast

This year's fete was on:

Sat. 11th July 2009

You can book the date but you can’t book the weather and for the third year running we had a mixed day with rain and sun but luckily again the rain held off in the afternoon.

Unfortunately though whether it was the rain or other events such as the Birdingbury Festival we don’t  know but numbers did seem to be down this year which is reflected in some of takings being down on last year i.e. children’s games and the teas.

However, all those who did attend the fete seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves and that’s the main thing.

It’s great to see the village children helping with the games, apparently beat the goalie was the hardest it’s ever been thanks to Emily and Adie March along with some of their friends.

A big thanks to all who helped with the stalls, games and erecting and clearing up from Friday evening until Sunday morning.  As always there are too many to name but Roland Robinson gets a mention for letting us use his cherry picker for the bunting and for coming out before his birthday celebrations on the Friday to help put the bunting up and take it down again early Sunday morning.

Also thanks to Steve Brown for organising the loan of a marquee even though his family couldn’t be at the fete due to a family wedding.  The use of the marquee certainly took some pressure off the evening do when the rains came.

We tried a different approach with the plant stall this year with plants donated from villagers and some brought in from Barby Nurseries.  Andy and Unni who came to Thurlaston in November last, managed (along with their neighbours Heather and Margaret) to make sure there were hardly any plants left at the end of the afternoon.

Graham Stokes opened the fete this year, Graham has for many years made the plant stall so successful, but this year took a well deserved rest.  It was the first time in years that he actually got to walk round the fete.

Claire Jinks has been made the Thurlaston Squire, with Nigel as her Manager, I’m sure she’ll cope with the pressure and responsibility that being in office brings.

Thanks to the Warwickshire Nursing Home and Mr and Mrs Perry for allowing us to use the grounds.  The lawns are a fantastic area for the children to run around and enjoy the games.

Linda and Peter Wilson came up trumps with the raffle prizes again this year.  We lost count of how many prizes were donated but all of them were top quality which made sure tickets were selling all afternoon and into the evening.  It also helped having the delightful ticket sellers Cath Owen and Marilyn Hobday smiling all day as they took your money.

Bryan and Irene again worked their socks off with the bar on Friday and Saturday evening and were there early Sunday morning clearing up.  A big thanks to the two of them for making sure the wine didn’t run out.

Come the evening do and Helen Creery and her team made sure Evelyn got a large ploughmans and after that everyone seemed content to sit round talking with the background music not as loud as previous years.

Perhaps we all tried too hard to create the Main Street atmosphere in the Village Hall when we have had to divert there because of the weather.  We will take on board comments from the feedback sheets and see if we can make improvements for future fetes.

A donation of £560.00 from the evening do has gone to Hope 4 Rugby Charity this year, I’m sure they will put the money to good use and £890.00 went to both the Village Hall and St Edmunds Church Groups.

Finally, a big thank you to you all for helping create such a pleasant day. We did what we set out to do – we enjoyed ourselves!

Steve Murphy,
Fete Committee