With dusk falling on a day when the sun had been conspicuous by its absence, we delved into the back of the garden shed that doubled as an overspill-garage to find a trolley jack, it’s dedicated handle and an axle stand. In the boot were a couple of bright, Dayglo-yellow Hospice tabards, two sealed containers and a variety of posters and freebie hand-outs – including a new tin of Roses chocolates. In the pocket of the driver’s door nestled five permanent marker pens; two black, a green, a blue and a red. An eleventh-hour telephone call elicited that we were going three-handed, and a small diversion was made to the next village to collect our co-conspirator. The keys to the car were passed over: I’d elected to try out the rear seat for comfort, leg-room and general ambience. The first thing that I noticed was that the rear windows didn’t open. Traffic joining the notorious A21 was heavy, with those who should know better blocking the roundabout to anyone needing to get across rather than turning right. Heaven forbid that they should lose a space to an interloper! However, once free of the confusion good time was made up the dual carriageway to Sevenoaks, and we were soon to be found parked half-on and half-off the pavement behind a large lorry waiting for the police to close the road. The police? Let’s make that a couple of workmen armed with around a dozen cones. On the other hand, it could just have easily been a dozen workmen with a couple of cones.
With the High Street finally closed to through-traffic; we could easily see our allocated pitch adjacent to an eight-foot stretch of railings. To park parallel would have been boring, so the vehicle was canted at a forty-five degree angle across the pavement with the end-post of the railings practically touching the near-side door. Less than five minutes later the rear-end was jacked up on the axle stand, and the trolley jack inserted below the offside sill. With the 100w halogen strobing like a beacon on a foggy night, we ensured that once the Lady Mayor had signed the bonnet and passed the usual mandatory pleasantries, it was turned off. A flat battery was the last thing we wanted, or needed.
As the band on the temporary stage struck up, a large crowd began to mass. The small trickle of punters with pushchairs soon turned into a heaving throng, and it was time to start touting.
The best method seemed to be to approach a pram-pusher with the words… I’m sure that you’d like to put your sons\daughters\ brats name on our bonnet…. a ploy that seemed to work with remarkable effect until we approached what looked for all the world like a family. Talking to the well-dressed man whom we took to be daddy, we were soon informed that the kids, a rather motley lot, were nothing to do with him. He did, however, have the grace and kindness to push a five-pound note into the slot on the top of our collection pot. Meanwhile, the tin containing the sweets – a reward for those cherubic kids in the aforesaid pushchairs – had been opened and stood enticingly on the bonnet.
Two strands of events were on a collision course: the railings were a regular haunt for the local band of eleventh-year students, and soon there was a pack ten-strong, boys being egged on by girls old – and mature – enough to know better. Coy, demure, enticing.
The boys soon acquiesced to their constant demands and the sweet tin was soon being surreptitiously raided. It was time to shake the Charity Box under their noses: it was pay-back time and after an initial round of vehement denials, countered by the strong bluff that there were distinct traces of chocolate around their faces, they decided to own up with surprisingly good grace, even offering to sign the bonnet for whatever shrapnel they could dig up between them. One of the lads was an optimist; assuring us that in the event that we got lost somewhere in the Gobi we should give him a call, his claim-to-fame being that he was studying geography for his GCSEs. A nice bunch, and nowhere as near as intimidating as first thought – and a high percentage of them were left-handed to boot!
As the evening wore on more minor Celebs crawled out of the woodwork: some old guy in a red suit and a pointy fur-trimmed matching hat ambled along looking myopically for his reindeer. We managed to squeeze a couple of quid out of him before turning our attention to an eight-foot dog, allegedly called Scribble. Given that this oversized brown-and-white canine had paws the size of small watermelons his signature was quite legible, and almost certainly a lot better than that of the dyslexic camel who happened to amble along dancing to something by ABBA ten minutes later. Dyslexic camel? Oh yes, the real giveaway was the manner in which his back legs were totally out of synchronisation with those at the other end of his body…