Halton Personnel have their Cake and eat it!
Coffee mornings in aid of Macmillan Nurses, Cancer Support and Alzheimer’s charities have been held over the last fortnight at RAF Halton. The main ones were in The Defence Centre of Training Support (DCTS), Supply Management Training Wing (SMTW) tea bars and Station Workshops. The amounts collected are well on the way to being over £900.
Sponsored by Marks and Spencer, the now-annual event is held all over the world with the funds raised going towards Cancer Care and Macmillan nurses.
Quality Assessor, Karen Anderson, with a team of helpers, arranged the morning in DCTS, and said: “It went really well! We were absolutely mobbed to start with, it was brilliant. We sold two cakes straight away to hungry students. The amount of goodies we had was staggering with one of our staff making three lemon drizzle cakes, which all went. The sugar-free lemon drizzle cake also went down a treat, especially with the PTI’s. We also had gluten free chocolate cake and rocky road and I was glad to see the Station Commander enjoying herself, as was the SWO. We went around the building in the afternoon to try and sell some more and get some more guesses for the ‘Weigh the Cake’ competition, and the general phrase was ‘I’m all caked out!’. It’s pleasing to know there was enough to go around and enough left to go into the next day and everything was sold, so it was a huge success all round.
“The main team of helpers was myself, Kyleigh Haines, Sam Lippett, and Rebecca Reid, all of whom were serving cake during the busiest periods. Flo Mercury, Michael Harrison, Luke Ritchie, Mandy Clay and Natalie Brundle also helped us out in various ways, lifting tables, putting posters up, or just tidying up. We had quite a team! I’m sure there were others who helped us, but I can’t remember all of them.”
Wendy Sommerford from SMTW said: “We had a great three days of cake sales, culminating in our Big Brew on Thursday 29 September. We would like to thank all who came and supported. We raised a massive £520 which has been split between MacMillan, Cancer Research and the Alzheimer’s Society.
“The fun included a mystery ingredient cake, we asked for people to buy a slice and to guess what had been added to it, the answer was – tomato ketchup!!!!! The jar of sweets contained 244 and this was won by a student. The Guinness Cake silent auction did really well with two members of staff competing against each other and we also had a Guess the Baby Photo and Paper Aeroplane competition.
“A great morning was had by all.”
Sally Phillips from Station Workshops also held a coffee morning and still had cake to sell two days later. She said: “We had a Station Workshop Open Day on Friday 30th September and after losing Ian Ludlow (from Station workshops) to cancer earlier this year, we decided to incorporate our Open Day with the ‘World’s Biggest Coffee Morning’ helping raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support. It was a great success, a large number of people attended both from Serco and RAF Halton, as well as a large number of cakes being donated. We were overwhelmed by the support.
“We had an incredible cake, baked and donated by Kathy Shelley, wife of Serco Contract Manager, Keith Shelley. It was so amazing we decided to have a secret auction, and the largest bid was for £6.80, which Guy Davidson from the Airfield won. We also had ‘Guess The Weight Of A Jar Of Sweets’, Tracy ‘Tilly’ Lennard won as she was the closest. So far we have a grand total of £295.00.”