Normally by now, the rush is over and things are slowing down. This year the opposite has happened and November has been one of our best months, December is set to surpass it, even beating the peak period of June/July. The downside is the distances we are covering. I have drove around 1400 miles in the last 4 days. We were in London Monday, Cardiff Tuesday, Stockton on Tees to set up for the new Christmas Market on Wednesday, then backwards and forwards to Stockton twice on Thursday, at this rate the little Jag will be wore out by Easter.

The event on Monday evening was the turning on of the Christmas lights at Stella McCartneys Bruton Street store. We were commisioned to hand chestnuts and hot chocolate to the guests. During the evening we were entertained to Sir Paul McCartney, Lulu and Peter Kay singing Christmas carols about 6 feet away from us. The model Marie Helvin also made an appearance, I can only think that she has a portrait in the attic Dorien Grey style because she was absolutely stunning. If she was in her mid thirties she would be a great beauty, but to find out she is in her fifties is incredible!

We have also received another award for our recycling efforts with a silver in the National Recycling Stars scheme.

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I haven't updated this blog much lately, simply becasuse I have been too busy. We have been down to London regularly, over to Lancashire and around Yorkshire quite a bit, added to this I have been designing a new hot roast chestnut cart which has the addition of a special drop down panel to take 2 electric warmers fot mulled wine. This will allow us to keep up with the demand for these two products without having to transport and assemble two seperate carts, which will ease the situation as we are recieving an awful lot of work for these two particular products..

Anyway I can now announce that we have just signed the final contract with Stockton Borough Council to provide Traditional funfair attractions to Stockton town centre in support of their new four day Christmas market, click here for more details

This follows on from a number of events that we have worked on with Stockton over the last eighteen months. Additionally we can also announce that we have two smaller, but equally welcome events in the Northumberland town of Hexham and the Lancashire town of Leyland . Overall our strategy of adding Christmas town centre events to our portfolio is gathering pace nicely. I am off to a meeting tomorrow morning to discuss another new Christmas event in the North East so hopefully I can deliver some more news on new events before the winter season ends.

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After adapting our sidestalls for promotional use, we are continued to be surprised by their flexibility. A recent pre bonfire event requiring a combined chestnut, candy floss and popcorn stall, but with limited space saw us using the front counter set up we had designed for the Croydon Food Festival to produce a compact stall with all 3 items. The next night we were down the country at Goodwood House for a corporate event. We had been asked to provide a chestnut stall, along with a selection of pick and mix nougat, brandy snap, toffee apples, peanut brittle and cinder toffee. One of our stalls proved ideal once again as the back counter system made a perfect area for preparing everything whilst the new front counter had plenty of room to display everything along with one of our mini chestnut ovens.

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