C H O R L E Y – W O O D S T O C K
S A T U R D A Y 8 T H O C T O B E R
R E V I E W
It has been the talk of the town for weeks and definitely the talk of the office, with so much hard work going into organising the event, from sourcing the venue, the bands, the donations and raffle prizes from our fabulous local community to the printing of the banners (K&S Signs), the promotional photos (courtesy of Patricia @ www.Image2Photo.co.uk), preparing all of the ads and copy for the programme (from David @ APC Media), finding the hostess costumes (on loan from Kings Langley Revue variety company) and persuading half of the staff to wear them (!!) and of course to decorating the venue on the day and making sure that everyone had tickets and were reminded to turn up on the day!!
Who knew that organising a charity event would be SO time consuming, but also SO MUCH FUN and brought a fabulous sense of camaraderie amongst the Sewell & Gardner Lettings Team, who were so excited (if not a little nervous) from start to finish with a ‘mid-night on the eve of the event’ comment from Reagan Bradley (our LettingsPixie) “it feels like Christmas” and it really did!
The Setter-Uppers
Setter-Uppers: Reagan Bradley, Jane Gardner, Susie Griffiths & friends, Rianna Pacelli, Maryn Drabik, Nick Slatford (NS Property Services) & Danny Young (Wizard Electrics).
So Saturday 8th October arrived and a group of ‘setter-uppers’ descended upon The Chorleywood Club in Shepherds Lane, Rickmansworth to start the preparation of transforming the hall into a magnificent Pink & White venue, with VIP area for 45 special guests, a raffle area, bunting all around and, of course, gazebos covering the terrace (as it was a little overcast and not as hot as the weekend before!!) and BBQ area! There was hardly enough time to get home afterwards and transform into our show-girl outfits, ready for the on-slaught at 4pm!
So 4pm arrived and all the guests with children arrived for the Kiddie Disco!
All ready for the Kiddie's Disco
Martyn was on the decks playing a mixture of S Club 7, Pussycat Dolls and Rhianna for an hour and a half whilst Reagan face painted a selection of tigers, pandas and fairies – until Martyn was ready to take to the stage with his guitar and proceeded to wow the audience with renditions of popular classics from George Michael, Oasis and David Gray amongst others.
Martyn was followed by Mike Pickering playing a set of original songs and Mike Lee finished the accoustic section with more popular covers. All the guitarists were fantastic and they had a lot of feet tapping and rapturous applause from the audience!
- Martyn Drabik
Mike Pickering
Mike Lee
About this time John & Shirley Green from Measured Management had fired up the BBQ and all the food, kindly donated by Chris Blake Butchers of Rickmansworth, J J Mays of Chorleywood and Waitrose of Rickmansworth, and people were tucking into the burgers & sausages at a rapid pace!!
Next on stage were the Daytona Catchups, featuring Andy Pennell, brother of our lovely ‘hostess’ Julia on bass guitar, Mike (vocals), Martin (lead guitar), Tom (drums), playing all of their own original music and filling the dancefloor to boot!
Martin of the Daytona Catchups
Tom & Mike of the Daytona Catchups
At 9 o’clock it was time to draw the raffle prizes so our lovely compare Reagan was up on stage with her 2 helpers, Sophie & Oliver, in order to draw the tickets!
We had a fabulous selection of prizes donated for our raffle from our customers and local members of the community, including:
Oxjam Raffle Prizes & Winners
SARACENS SHIRT signed by Carlos Nieto
donated by Nina Hosking of Community Times Magazine
FORTNUM & MASON’S HAMPER Donated by Homelet
150 voucher for photo sitting from Satya (Chorleywood)
Potted Bay Tree from Wheelers (Turnham Green)
Set of 6 Crystal Wine Glasses from Poores (Chorleywood)
45 minute Facial & Skin Talk from Dove Spa (Chorleywood)
£25 gift voucher from Peppermill Pizzeria (Chorleywood)
Collection of Books from Chorleywood Bookshop
Basket of wine from The Chorleywood Club
Free Cut n Blow Dry with Cara from E.Clips (Chorleywood)
Free Cut n Blow Dry from the Hair Studio (Chorleywood)
Full Body Massage from The Rain Spa (Rickmansworth)
£10 gift voucher from The Purple Hedgehog (Chorleywood)
Car Wash from Croxley Car Centre
Antique Notebook from Fair Lilly (Great Missenden)
Fragranced Room Sticks from Eden Rose (Chorleywood)
Various wines from Dickens & Iceland
We also had a very generous AUCTION PRIZE for 2 x £140 face value tickets
to Worthington’s Armed Forces Day @ Newbury Races with meal & drinks
donated by Coors Brewery, the drinks suppliers for The Chorleywood Club.
After the raffle everyone was up on the dancefloor to be entertained by the fantastic Kings of Langley, who performed some monster hits and kept everyone entertained for well over an hour. Unfortunately our photographer had a little problem and his camera disk for the 2nd half of the evening as it turned out to be corrupt, so at the time of writing, we have no photos of the 2 brilliant headline acts!! If you have taken any and can email them to me at info@sewellgardner.com that would be fabulous!!!
The Kings of Langley
AND
- Wonderful Brocker
The Kings of Langley were blinding, with covers from so many music icons including Yazoo, Duran Duran, Kings of Leon, Haircut 100, Billy Idol, Wonderstuff, Erasure, Madness, Foo Fighters, Adele, Alanis Morissette (to name but a few) and the dance floor was heaving during their set. Having seen them play locally before, I knew that they would go down a storm and I have to say a huge thank you to Matt & Jason for organising the main drumkit for the event, which was shared by all of the bands! If you are looking for a covers band to entertain a crowd of any age, these are the guys for you: www.kingsoflangley.co.uk
I would also like to apologise at this point for re-kindling my teenage years and po-going t0 Brocker, who have a fabulous punk /ska influence to their Rock’n’Roll set and the energy was amazing when they were on stage! If you ever enjoyed The Specials or The Clash back in the 1980s, you really should check out this band at any of their up-coming gigs: http://brockermusic.org/
So that’s about it for my update of our event, I hope that you did manage to come along and join us, and I would love you to update this blog with your comments, or if you missed out this time please watch this space, because we are hoping to organise another event in the New Year!
Kind regards,
COMMENTS RECEIVED FROM THE
CHORLEYWOOD OXJAM OVERALL EVENT ORGANISER
SALLY FREEMAN:
Dear Jane
Thanks for your note and let me say congratulations on the amount you raised for Oxfam – a tremendous achievement and I know the whole team has been working on it for weeks so really well done. I have looked through all the feedback on the facebook pages and the photos and I can see that everyone had an amazing time and really enjoyed themselves which is great.
Susie and Reagan have been brilliant organising everything and done a very professional job. Martyn has been amazing too playing at the live Buskathon and at the Acoustic Rootz afternoon. Kirsty has been supportive in every way and they have been a joy to work with.
So the Sewell and Gardner team can be proud of what they achieved both individually and as a team. I have enjoyed working with everyone who have been more than helpful and kind in everything they have done and hugely hard working – you have an amazing team of people there.
I am really glad you enjoyed working on the event and having now finalised the accounts, as a group we have made over £10k, which is amazing!
Sally
Just to let you know, I have received an email from the director of OXJAM UK and I think he sums up nicely what we were trying to achieve to include the whole community for which you were a valuable part:
To all who participated in Oxjam Chorleywood 2011, Musicians, Artists, Team Oxjam and Chorleywood Village…
To everyone who has played a part in Oxjam Chorleywood this year, I most of all just want to say a huge thank you. The amount of money that you’ve raised is incredible – very few other groups of volunteers have ever raised more for Oxjam, and those that have have been in much bigger towns or cities. As well as having done an amazing thing for your local community, you should also take pride in the knowledge that thousands of lives will be changed because of the money you’ve raised.
Personally, I feel particularly inspired by what you’ve done, because I think it shows Oxjam at its finest. A whole community really coming together, united by music, showing incredible determination, creativity, generosity, and passion, and achieving so much.
For our part, we promise to make good use of every penny you’ve raised, spending it where it’s needed most across the world.
So, once again, thank you and congratulations. I hope that many of you will continue to be involved with Oxjam in the future, and with Oxfam more broadly. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to make it along to any of your events this year, but I’ll do my best to come to some if they happen again in 2012.
Many thanks,
Nick Bryer, Oxjam Director