Intrepid Rotarians regularly turn up at Weston Park following the annual V-Festival. Often dressed for an English summer – waterproofs – they sign in and received a stick-on number [‘I am not a number. I am a person’, said one Rotarian] before boarding a bus to enter the fray. Hundreds of tents, many of them full of camping items are scattered over many acres.
Maurice Lamb writes, “Empty the big tents, take then apart [with difficulty], pack them in their bag [impossible!] and take them to the roadside for pick up by the trailers. That was our mission. The wind starts to blow making tent folding a comedy. Small tents and mattresses fly about the site while several sedately manoeuvre up and down the roadway pretending to be vehicles. After several hours our time is up and we coach back to base and sign out.”
The collected tents, folding chairs, sleeping bags and other items tents are packed into an enormous lorry for the journey to the International Aid depot at Preston where the items are prepared for future disasters and peoples in need.