Organising an open day

Many people who volunteer with countryside charities will at some point be called upon to organise or help organise an open day; the idea being to raise awareness of the charity’s aims and hopefully some funds. To those people who have been asked to help with an open day I would say DON’T. Run a mile, leave the country and change your name as it is absolutely not worth the grief and hassle.

I volunteer with a fairly well known countryside charity and was asked to help out with an open day. The format is usually that we sell tea, cake and burgers and punters look at a few cows and go home. This time I proposed that we do something different in that we make the day slightly more interesting and a bit more family friendly so I suggested we have a bouncy castle for the children, a ‘have go’ clay shoot and a beer tent. You’d think I’d asked the other volunteers if I could sell their daughters into white slavery. Never have  I seen so many supposedly intelligent people start behaving like kindergarten children.

Problems started when the other volunteers were told one of the main reasons for an open day was to raise funds. They didn’t want to do this as all they want to do is cut down rhododendron or maintain hedges. The fact that money needs to be available in order to buy hedgerow plants or tools did not seem to have occurred to them. To complicate matters even further the de facto leader of the group threw all his toys out of the pram and left in high dudgeon citing arguments over the bar as being a contributing factor. Since he was a supporter of the bar I was  a bit perplexed by this and even more perplexed when he flatly refused to tell me what the arguments were about. Even now I have no idea.

Still I thought arranging the clay shoot would be easy. After all shooting is a fact of life in the country and many people enjoy it so what could go wrong? Well quite a lot actually. The same group that didn’t want the bar didn’t want the shooting either as they didn’t think it was relevant and one person actually said they didn’t expect to see any animals being shot. I tried really hard to ignore the stupidity of this remark but made it very clear what my opinion was and explained in words of one syllable that it was a clay shoot – the clue’s in the name. I also thought it would be a good idea to lay on some air rifle target shooting, nothing fancy, just a few paper targets stuck to straw bales. This also caused a few raised eyebrows.

The bouncy castle however generated the most vitriol as apparently I was bringing ‘urbanity to the countryside’. What a ridiculously pompous remark and the person who made it quite clearly thinks that children should be seen and not heard and obviously has no clue that the word ‘urbanity’ should not be used in this context. Still, bless’em, they can’t be expected to know. On the day I think parents were very happy to have somewhere to allow their offspring to let off some steam.

So despite all the arguing everything from my point of view was ready, beer ordered, bouncy castle ordered, shooting coach arranged, police informed, safety checks done and license to sell alcohol obtained – hurrah! Then less than two days before the event the shooting coach pulled out as he had work commitments. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry so had a large G&T followed by a G&G. Another coach could not be arranged and I was unable to accept offers of help from experienced shooters as they did not have the relevant coaching qualification which would have caused problems with our insurance.

The attractions on the day consisted of the things you would expect to see such as cows, burger bar and nature walks. I along with the mem., and some good friends was running the bar (read beer box), bouncy castle and charity merchandise stall. The antis, as in anti children, beer and anything that might be fun sold tea and cake, studiously ignored us and our efforts and made snide remarks. Hope they all get suppurating piles.

Never ever again!