No matter how much planning …

It seems that no matter how much planning you do, sometimes it’s never enough.

Why is that 90% of the activities are squashed into 25% of the year, or so it seems. Of course everyone plans their events for when they have a  better chance of good weather, but that means that the summer months tend to be absolutely crammed with things I want to do. This isn’t a complaint, because it’s great to have so many great things to do, I just wish that I had more time or more stamina.

The ESWR Ipswich Rally on Sunday was the culmination of a great deal of planning and preparation by a few members of the local radio clubs. Many more local amateurs turned out on the day to help, demonstrate their own particular brand of radio passion or just visit the rally and enjoy it.

We were lucky enough to have good weather for most of the morning, but the dreaded rain clouds did gather around midday, which worried a few of the car boot traders. However, the biggest problem was that our usually excellent venue hosts had managed to double-book the indoor area and at around 11:00 shocked us with the announcement that we would have to vacate the building by 13:00. This meant that we had to close down the Waters and Stanton stand, the Bring & Buy and the RSGB book stall much earlier than we had planned. This was a great shame because Waters & Stanton had returned to the rally for the first time in about 10 years, the Bring and Buy was very busy and I was really enjoying talking to the many visitors to the RSGB stand (and selling plenty of books too).

So, it seems that no matter how hard you work during the planning and preparation stages of an event, sometimes it’s not enough and you just have to work with problems as they occur, or just take it on the chin and apologise for things that privately you believe are outside your control. The rally was certainly a success again and I thoroughly enjoyed it as always. I hope the reputation hasn’t been damaged too much by the abrupt finish and that we can continue to improve an important local social event again next year.

As well as all the preparation, it takes me a few days after the rally to complete all the accounts and paperwork for both the RSGB book stall and the rally itself. It all went quite smoothly this year [I’ve been doing it for quite a few years] and I got it all completed last night. To celebrate, I decided to spend a few hours on the radio and had some great conversations with some interesting people – it reminds me why I enjoy it so much.