A Blazing Display

Once again, we showed our support to other service clubs and their community initiatives by turning out for Billericay Round Table’s annual Fireworks Display.  We jumped at the chance to join them, and members of the Lions, Mayflower Rotary Club, Scouts and others in Lake Meadows on Saturday November 2.

“Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head …”

Would we have volunteered so readily if we had known that we’d be walking to the park for the safety briefing at 4.15pm, in pouring rain?  ….Who knows?  However, it did nothing to daunt our worthy team of club members Ed Harrison, Mike Sinclair, Peter Greene, Patrick Rothon, Roger Kettle, and nonagenarian Bert French.

Luck was on our side. The rain stopped and we had good weather for the whole night – even warmer than last year!

We again manned the entry at Hillhouse Drive.  Roger, Patrick and Bert were provided with scanners and along with one of the scout leaders, were to scan the tickets of everyone coming through “our gate”, whether the tickets were on paper or on their mobile phones.

Ed moved to the sales tent and helped manage sales of light sticks to the incoming hoards, while Peter and Mike were positioned at the park entry.  Their job,  to make sure that everyone coming through had tickets and that they were ready for scanning further down the path, as there were no sales being made at the gate.

A Sell Out?

We were kept busy since, thanks to the positive change in the weather, we seemed to have many more coming along than previous years.

A steady flow of people from when the gates opened at 5.30 pm, and even about twenty plus queuing from around 5.00 pm.  At one point the queue stretched out of the park and nearly 100 yards down the road, but our “ace scanners” processed them quickly and everybody was passed in without any significant delay.

Good Spirits

Most people had already bought their tickets, with just a few turning up "ticketless", but all but one of them were in good spirits and happy to go on-line and buy them from the website and download the tickets to their phones, despite the length of the process.  Advice was given on how to find the website address and help to navigate to the correct page ensured that everybody who wanted them was able to get the tickets they needed.

In previous years we had the “bad luck” stories from those trying to get in without paying, such as “my friends have my tickets on their phone and are already inside” etc, but this year there were none – everybody was well organised, no sob-stories and all polite. 

Congratulations to Round Table. Great organisation and the change in the weather ensured that the stunning display kept the thousands enthralled.