Champagne toast for Clun collectors
Champagne and canapés were served up to honour long-serving charity collectors with a town's Royal British Legion branch.
Clun and District Royal British Legion held the evening at the home of David Mansfield, The Barn, in Clunbury, where six poppy appeal collectors were given awards on their service from the High Sheriff of Shropshire Christine Holmes.
Poppy appeal organiser Barry Oldham said the event had two purposes – to honour the six on behalf of the area's 75 collectors, and also t raise more money for the Royal British Legion appeal.
He said collecting in such a rural area, covering the countryside and villages around Clun, was not an easy task, as there was no central place a collector could just go to stand to catch everybody.
"We don't have a major supermarket we can just go and stand outside of, so the appeal relies on people going around door to door," he said.
"But as an area we always do better than we ought to, raising about £5,500 to £6,000 in the three weeks each year, which we're really pleased about.
"We also unusually have another event in the year to add to that amount."
The champagne and canapés evening was one such event, and a chance to say thank you to collectors for their hard work.
Mr Oldham said: "One of the six who were given awards was a 93-year-old gent, George Morris, who still collects after 20 years. He was 73 when he started collecting.
"Another was for Florence Hughes, she started collecting in 1954 so she got an award for more than 60 years of service.
"There were two VIP guests who were set to come along – one was Philip Dunne MP, but unfortunately the day before the Prime Minister sent him to Malta.
"But he sent a very nice letter which was read out.
"The other was the absolutely wonderful Christine Holmes, the High Sheriff.
"She was such a pleasure, she lit up the evening and made such a fuss of our collectors.
"We had a grand auction of which the highlight was a holiday in the Scottish isles, we had a raffle, a 'guess the poppies in a jar' competition and all night long they brought around different canapés."
He said the amount of money raised had yet to be counted.
