Turning on the Christmas Lights

It's been the Winter Festival this weekend, and at the beginning of the Festival, the town also came together to turn on the Christmas Lights.
The local celebrities chosen to push the plunger this year were Vera North and Betty Weir, of the North Weir Trust, which has been helping local people to undertake special educational projects for over fifteen years.
I've known about Betty and Vera and the Trust for years. I've bought plants from them - it's one of the ways they raise funds. They also have coffee mornings and table sales, and fees for public speaking, and accept donations - but no grants of any kind.
They explained that, wanting to give something back to the community that had welcomed them, they wanted to put something in their wills. The solicitor asked them why they didn't do what they wanted to do while they were still alive, so they could get the pleasure of it, and that's how it started.
I had no idea, too, that the grants enable people to take up opportunities world wide. One beneficiary went to Nepal for three months, to care for disadvantaged children in Kathmandu. Another went to an orphanage in Tanzania, and another assisted at a clinic in Kenya. It's not all aid to the third world, either - one grant went to a student completing a mini-research project in the Nuclear Medicine Physics department of Harvard Medical School, another grant was used to have a school visit to London's theatreland, and another helped a student on a Farrier Access Course at Holme Lacy in Herefordshire.
So the Trust has had many and varied benefits over the years, and looks set to continue the good work.
Before the big moment, though, the tent (used for the rest of the weekend for the Food Festival and Hay Does Vintage) was open with local groups - there were tombolas and cakes and toys and some local shops selling a variety of Christmassy things - Dandelion Wishes flower shop, Eighteen Rabbit with toys made out of flip flops washed up on a beach in Kenya (it's something to do with the ocean currents - they get millions of the things), children's books from the Cinema Bookshop, The Thoughtful Gardener (with Castello de Haia soap). Sunderlands the estate agents were handing out calendars, and there was holly from someone's garden.
In the Buttermarket there was Santa's post box and mulled wine.
There was also the Community Choir singing a medley of Christmas songs, including one that was a mash-up of about ten together, starting with The Twelve Days of Christmas and including Frosty the Snowman and The Hills are Alive. They were followed by Hay School - I liked the one with actions, trying to convince Santa that they had been good all year!