Nostalgia isn't what it used to be

On the fifth Day of Christmas at my friend Grethic's party we have been invited to share some interesting fund raising ideas for fetes and the like. I can't say that I can offer anything novel or original but it did get me quite "soggy with nostalgia" as Tom Lehrer would say and I started thinking back to the wonderful fetes held byu the Friends of St Andrew's Hospital in the Billericay of my childhood. Now when I was a child Billericay was quite a small town, it was long before all the development that is there now and not in the least the place that is lampooned in Gavin and Stacey. There was a hall called The Archer Hall on the corner that was Sun Corner and where my first tentative steps in mateur dramatics were taken, and next to it was a big field where the Hospital Fete was held once a year. My dad was often the MC for the day and, of course, rolled out the old one about a fete worse than death! There were lots of games to play - guess the weight of the cake, a coconut shy, rolling pennies down a little slope thing to see if it landed inside a square and won you a prize (these are what a lady in a shop the other day described to me as those big brown coins - did that make me feel old!)tipping the lady out of bed, tombola, and lots of other things too. And there was the fancy dress competition. One year my mum and dad made me a costume to look like Marina (no, this was a long time before Last of the Summer Wine) She was Troy Tempest's girlfriend in "Stingray" She never spoke and she had a green floaty dress and green hair and a big pearl on a chain round her neck. They dyed a hair piece and made the dress and dad fashinoned the pearl out of a candle stub and I came second. Later I found out that I didn't come first because they thought we must have hired the costume.
So, if it isn't too late, maybe I could suggest a fancy dress competition?
By the way, I am working on a poem but it's going to have to wait until the party is over.