Silent auction

Our second major event of the summer, the silent auction, was also a huge success. For those not familiar with these things, a silent auction puts a load of lots on view for about two hours or so. Some of the lots are actual items, while others may be promises, like a free meal somewhere, or a quarter peal on someone's chosen occasion. Each lot is accompanied by a bid card on which people write down their bids — there may also be a reserve or a suggested starting price on the card. All punters get numbered admission tickets and they use these numbers as identifiers on the bid cards. This way no one knows who's bidding for what. The bidders wander round checking whether a higher bid has been placed and make their decision as to whether to top it or not. There is plenty of food and wine available to get people into the mood to spend money. At a specific time the "auctioneer" stops the clock and helpers dash round putting red lines beneath the final bids on each card — this is to stop sneaky last-minute bids after the auction's closed! An impressive £5634 or so was raised for the Bell Fund, which works out to an average of nearly £25 per Lot. This sum exceeded our wildest dreams. 

As with the Country Garden Fair, there are so many people to thank. Firstly and most importantly Nigel and Liz Moore for providing us with such a wonderful venue, and some sizeable Lots — it was really good to have them with us during the evening too. Then Annie Brook, who put in so much hard work collecting Lots and masterminding the whole event for us, and Don Jinks who compèred the evening so professionally. Thanks too to people from all over the parish and beyond who so generously gave us such a variety of items and promises to auction, cooked food for us and came along to place bids.

Musical entertainment	Inspecting the merchandise 1	Some of the lots
Guarding the entrance	Inspecting the merchandise 2	Settling up at the end of the evening

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