Xen Meal - 31st August.

Dear Everyone.

Wow! Well- this meal was amazing. It went so well.

After many negotiations with Mr. Chris Lau (owner of Xen) including a battle of him versus our Mums, we had succeeded in getting a table and meals for 85 lucky people. We had to plan the menu, the raffle, tickets...all without breaking apart L.E.N.S team in the process.

The menu was finalised within a week...almost. The first "secret" fight occurred when Nay and Em had a disagreement over whether the Roast Duck had noodles or rice. We settled on rice...much to the despair of Nay who had just printed and cut out 50 menus. Haha. So the invites went out, the cheques came in slowly and focus was shifted towards making the raffle decent.

We ran round Truro one afternoon in the hope of getting some fantastic raffle prizes, and in the end we did. Letters went out to hotels and companies for freebies :)
The second round of battle between L.E.N.S team occurred over the price of the raffle tickets. Everyone had different ideas but thankfully this was during the M&S bag-pack so we weren't able to discuss this all day as we were on our own tills. This was eventually settled and suddenly it was the 31st August and we had to put everything together that evening!!!

Frantic phone calls between Em and Nay broke up the day. Whilst Nay put the final raffle list together, then again and finally got it printed off, the last "disagreement" between Em and Nay over what they should put in the speech came about. Everything was settled, until we entered Xen and complete chaos hit. I don't think anyone could have prepared poor Mr. Lau for what was going to happen haha.

A very generous last-minute raffle prize threw us, but thankfully Roger Borton (father of friend/auctioneer) stepped up and was able to auction this off! Final cancellations kept Nay and Em on their toes, whilst Mr. Lau finally admitted that the reason he panicked over having so many coffee orders was that he only had 30 coffee cups! However, this tantrum did not take away the magic of the evening. The restaurant was packed and after everyone had sat down we realised we had the entire restaurant to ourselves! This made things slightly easier when it came to our speech; legs shaking and with a couple of prompts from each other this went quite well. There was mass cheering for Len and family which we all joined in with willingly.

I think the sale of the raffle tickets was the most impressive point of the night. I managed to go through one book on one table, and within a hour all four of our ticket books had been cleared out! This was fantastic news and with that Em and I were finally able to sit down and enjoy our meal.

The raffle was a huge success- in fact the whole evening was a total success! We all got a bit delirious with it by the end of the evening. With the auction added in, we realised we had raised over £1000!!!

We owe a huge debt of thanks to Xen in Truro for putting up with us and all our coffee orders! For such fantastic raffle prizes we'd like to thank Budock Vean Hotel and St. Micheal's Hotel and Spa. To Martin Wilson for his two amazing prizes, Rodda's, Trenance Chocolate, Seasalt, Lush, Westcountry Watersports, Merlin Golf Club, The Beauty Room and Freeriders. Also to Roger Borton for being a wonderful auctioneer - thanks for a hilarious end to an amazing evening. But I think our final word of thanks should go out to everyone who attended our meal, it was such a success and I hope everyone thoroughly enjoyed their evening...I know we did.

So, on behalf of L.E.N.S team thank you and....1 1/2 WEEKS TO GO!!!
Love
Nay xxxx