Swanky Soirée

Libra Aries Books First Birthday Party

On Thursday the 11th August 2005 at 7.30pm Libra Aries Books celebrated one whole year of the shop on Mill Road with a Swanky Soirée. "A what?" I hear you exclaim. "A Swanky Soiree" I reply, which is a posh way of saying we're having wine & nibbles instead the usual tea & biscuits, splashing out we were.

Tim & I immensely enjoyed the flow of friends & aquaintances that passed through the shop that evening. People stopped & chatted & scoffed & quaffed, there were many familiar faces from Cambridge pagan community, and from local Romsey residents & workers, as well as supporters who'd travelled far from Essex and from Leicestershire just to congratulate us. We also received emails & cards during the day all wishing us the best etc. We were very flattered.

We ended the evening much later than the "not very late" we'd put on the invites. All the same we managed to end with a flourish - a grand raffle!

The prizes were parts of the "marketing pack" Bloomsbury sent us to promote the Harry Potter book. We didn't stock Harry Potter in the end, so all the promotional material was in mint-condition. At 20p per raffle ticket, and what with the free-flowing wine, its no surprise that the tacky T-shirts, foul-tasting jellybeans, stick-on tattoos and 50 cheap cardboard bookmarks just flew off the table. I think everybody who stuck it to the end got a prize, and some of them seemed almost pleased!

We raised £3.20 in total, which was gratefully received by the Libra Aries Rent Fund (not a registered charity, yet!).

So, Tim & Jean would like to thank everybody who came to the soiree, and to all those who sent us messages. We're surprised that a year has passed, but all of it was down to your support, we couldn't have done it without your custom. Hope we can keep going for another year, Thank you all.