I can’t remember helping on this gig, but it’s most likely that I was behind the bar, so I may not have heard much, if the gig was as busy as it promised to be.
To be fair, although the Lions installed the bar on the other side of the New Hall for the good of the community (and especially the village hall itself which benefited rather dramatically from the increased revenue), these promotions evenings also had a potential to raise funds for the charitable purposes espoused by the club. On this particular evening, I would have been wearing a metaphorical Lions hat, but I’d also have made sure that a reasonable bar fee was extracted from the profits to help support the village hall as well.
Apparently, from a careful reading of the minutes of the business meeting following this gig, 5th March, 2012, the evening was a great success, and everyone involved was effusive in thanking each other. The consensus was that this kind of event should be built upon. Perhaps there was too much of what some felt to be self-congratulation, as emails praising this and that individual were filling up members’ mailboxes, causing some consternation. Our role, it was agreed, was to serve, rather than to pat ourselves on the backs for the effort.
Nevertheless, we were all delighted to have generated a profit of £768.66 on the night, which boosted the charity account to just over £5k with a few outstanding expenses. With the funds in hand, we agreed that a budget of £2500 for this year’s Allendale Fair would be acceptable.
There was, however, an intriguing historical footnote tucked into the Publicity Officer’s report at this March ’12 meeting. After due consideration, while recognising that the preliminary promotion of the Proper Boys gig on Facebook may have contributed to the general buzz about the event, we decided that a Facebook page was not for us, but that we would concentrate on our own website. It would, apparently, take several more years before we Lions decided that we could be ready to face up to social media!