Tyseley Loco Works Open Weekend

Wow! what a weekend!
PJ and the Tuesday crew were sorting out the car park which, although we arrived at 08.00hrs, was starting to fill up, people waiting in their cars and gathering round the gates.  Lawksamissy! we didn't open until 10.00hrs.
I was helping out on the 6201 - Princess Elizabeth (yeah! the one on the bridge at the Pageant!) - stand, helping to sell momentoes to aid funds to support the cost of keeping the engine on the rails.
We were on the platform but two more stands - with gazebos etc - were also there, the Duchess of Sunderland and the Shakespeare Express engines.  I didn't think we would do very much as we didn't have any gazebo or anything smart but ..... we did have jumping spiders!!

I wish I had taken photos of some of the faces as they watched these big plastic things jumping all over the place!!!  There was a big - and I mean big - bag of these things which had been donated, must have been at least 100.  I decided that I would sell these, all of them.
So I opened my little fold up chair and sat myself down putting one of these spiders on the table ........... slowly moving along. .............
Once the children saw this they had to come and look, then I offered to let them have a go .......... then they had to have one!!!  Amazing!  The adults were also watching and then they perused the stall and nine out of ten bought something.  By the end of the day I had sold over half of the bag and was looking forward to Sunday.

M came up from Watford, I didn't recognise him at first as he had shaved his beard off, and we have since heard from him that he had a fantastic day, even sent us some short films that he had taken - all four steam 'Castle' engines together, I will try to upload it but don't hold your breath!!!
It was very busy and I was very naughty ........ went over to my garden and  .... all the Delphiniums (on the left of the photo) had been trampled down, despite my putting two lots of red 'do not cross' tape across the whole bed. 

Some people will do anything to get a good photo, I know where the farmers are coming from when they complain about people trampling their crops when a steam train comes past.  My other bed was fine as the model railway gazebo was right up against the fir tree so no-one could get past - I shall be forever grateful to them.


Sunday dawned miseralbe but dry - cut down on the visitors by half but we were still busy, the spiders went to work and we had sold out by 15.30hrs and C&J were amazed, selling is like riding a bike!!

We came home tired and it took a couple of day to get over it!!!  We went in on Tuesday and I managed to straighten up as much as I could, some of the Marigolds were broken where people had sat on the wall but I didn't mind as they will recover.  I moved down into the Signal box garden and cut the 'wheel' and dosed the pots with vine weevil remover as I had  spotted one on the hostas a few weeks ago.  Looking good now ................