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| Volume 6, Number 1 - Autumn 2005 | |
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Over in Halton, the prospect of taking the Barmere rudder on-site proved to be too much of a health-and-safety headache and a couple of plywood models of the rudder were duly built and painted, to adorn the marquee's entrances. Other than that it was a case of David Smallshaw, Colin Greenall and myself rehearsing our speeches for our slot in the theatre tent on the opening Saturday afternoon. We knew the marquee, paid for by Halton BC, would take a fair bit of time to get properly kitted out so half a dozen of us agreed to take Friday off from the day-job. Anthony and Steve d'Asha from Halton BC were taking the rudders, loads of chairs and a very substantial off-cut of carpet over in their van so I cadged a lift having first of all deposited all the display material in what little available space was left.
By the time we arrived, Dave Smallshaw and the Greenalls were already on site, setting up the main SCARS stand. Neil Forshaw and Stuart Gardiner arrived soon after and we were on our way. Armed with a heavy-duty staple-gun we rolled the carpet out, shuffled across it en masse in heavy boots to press out the air pockets and stapled it to the floorboards. We had thought that the marquee space would be only just bigger than the space we had at the Halton Show, but in reality it seemed to be at least twice the size. By the time SCARS, the Weaver and Runcorn Locks had picked which corners they wanted, and we had set up all the HW display boards, there was still room to hold a substantial tea-dance in the middle.
Thinking caps were donned, and we decided that we would have a central group of display boards, two from each Society, with the rest spread more thinly round the walls. This also had the advantage of ensuring that you couldn't see the exit doorway from the entrance, and therefore forced people to go round all of the displays, rather than just striding straight through. Another bout of Blue Peter-esque display board deconstruction and reconstruction ensued (left). In the fourth corner we set up the new SCARS computer, projector and screen, which gave a continuous presentation of Halton waterway sites. Anthony and Steve had brought some black-out curtain which they proceeded to drape from the rafters, round the screen to give it a real 'cinema look'. The makeshift Halton Waterways banners were hoisted on the gable ends where it was hard to tell them from the real thing (and we saved about £300!). By around 5pm, after six or seven hours of almost non-stop work, it looked just about ready. The laptop and projector were removed (marquees are rather hard to protect from night-time thievery!) and we battened down the hatches in preparation for the weekend ahead. Saturday dawned not-very-bright, but dry. Dave and I had spent the previous evening testing out a good selection of the output from the beer tent before collapsing in our respective canvas shelters, but seemed none the worse for it in the morning. We were pretty much ready for the visitors within minutes of walking through the doorway and were certainly grateful we had dedicated so much time on the Friday to getting everything just-so. The site was split, with all the food, beer and entertainment at the bottom of the hill, and most of the canal societies (including SCARS and Halton Waterways) and 'serious' retail outlets at the top. In the event, while this meant we suffered less from water-logging when it rained, a lot of the visitors tended to stick round the entertainments area, and we probably didn't have as many people 'up top' as we would have liked. But certainly we saw a lot more people than we did at the Halton Show, and at times it was almost impossible to move round the marquee without treading on someone's toes; which given the size of the marquee was quite an achievement. David Long and Peter Keen helped provide cover for both the SCARS and HW stalls so that most of us could at least get some time out to stretch our legs and see what else was happening, though in reality most of us probably spent at least five hours on each of the three days standing round the displays, chatting to anyone prepared to listen and handing out leaflets.
Amazingly, the packing up was done in no time, barely half an hour (admittedly there were rather more people on hand to do it than there had been on the Friday) and Anthony's van was once more packed to the gunwales for its trip back to Spike Island. A last look round to make sure we hadn't left anything in our cavernous space:
Just three tables that we had hired in from the Festival organisers stood forlornly in one corner. All done - we crawled to our cars and made the slow journey off site and home. And then - oh no!!! We forgot to take up the carpet!!! Andy Screen All Steamed Up at the IWA's
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In essence I guess we thought that the hard work had been done. With the mad rush to get our Halton Waterways (HW) stall ready for the Halton Show in July, the six-week lay-off till the National at Preston Brook was something of a luxury. There was a bit of tinkering with the captions on the noticeboards, and a last-minute 'Sankey Link' display was also put together so that SCARS wouldn't be out-displayed by our partners, the Runcorn Locks Restoration Society and River Weaver Navigation Society. Our attempts to get some proper PVC banners with the HW logo fell through, and yours truly, buoyed by a trip to Hobbycraft and videos of old Blue Peter episodes, got to work with coloured paper, glue and sticky-backed plastic - no-one would know the difference! 
We saw fewer VIPs than we would have liked, but we managed to persuade both the Mayor of Halton (left, with IWA Chair John Fletcher) and Chief Executive of BW, Robin Evans (below), to 'tarry a while'. Other canal societies seemed to be most impressed with our displays, a number coming in with notepads and tape-measures, asking how and where we had got everything.
After two days of pretty good weather, the rain arrived on Monday morning, and the carpet, which had been faithfully vacuumed each morning (I kid you not) started to take a bit of a pounding. But it was the last day, and anyway, by lunchtime the sun was out again, and all those people who had been put off going to the beach for the bank holiday could now come and visit us. Well quite a few did, and we managed to offload quite a few bits of paper before the final hooter marked the end of the festival.
No chairs left - check.
