The 99th Garrison was asked to support a fund raising day at the Didsbury Festival in Manchester on the 16th June, 2012.
We picked up the Craigster en route to Didsbury and were at the venue for 10:00am. Ken was already there waiting for us and brought with him copies of a local newspaper from Burnley which contained a story and photo about him being a stormtrooper and member of the 99th Garrison. A good bit of publicity Ken!
Our changing room for the day was at Matt's house. Matt is a friend of Craig's from Uni and now work and Matt was to be the first to wear the Christie bear costume for the day.
We had to be in armour for 11:00am and then set off on the short walk from Matt's to the festival. We harassed a few on lookers who were waiting for the Festival parade and although we did not take part in the parade from the start, we were able to join in at the front for about the last ten minutes or so.
We then had a spot on the festival field with the Christie table/tent and were very busy... busier than I I had anticipated given the weather and what had been forecast. It was cold and grey and it did rain from time to time but it was still a busy festival. The worse rain waited for 4:00pm when we were due to finish anyway and we got soaked walking back to Matt's.
Lunch was chips from a chippy in Didsbury which had been voted the best chippy in Cheshire... very nice too and did involve another walk to and from Matt's again.. This was in a residential area and I think that the local residents were getting used to seeing us walking up and down their residential streets!
From our posing for photographs we managed to collect £308.55 for Christies and in total, £854.96 was collected for Christies on the day which was well more than had been hoped for... I think we were a huge hit with the fundraisers!
A huge thank you to Ken, Craig, David and Jim [sorry Ken, but you left before the post troop photo] and to Matt and Vicky and Matt's family for making us feel so welcome and taking over their front room!
