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the oxfordshire play associationvisit shrivenhamThe Oxfordshire Play Association, a charity whose aimsare to ensure that all children have access to highquality inclusive play opportunities, won the tender toinitiate Armed Forces Play Days for the various military unitsstationed in Oxfordshire. This is all part of the ‘Bringing ArmedForces Families and Local Communities Together’ project. TheShrivenham Station Welfare team was approached by thecharity and largely, no, in fact, entirely due to the patienceand hard work of Martin Gillet the charity’s manager andespecially WO2 Pete Davies, the Station Welfare Warrant Officer,Shrivenham Play Day started to take shape.After numerous planning meetings and seemingly thousandsof emails and telephone calls, Thursday 7 July dawned. Withit came the promise of more dreadful weather, but who werewe to be quailed by the fury of a gale, with apologies to theCaptain of HMS Pinafore. The stall holders and various activitiesstarted arriving and were all put in place on the open grassedarea adjoining the Jubilee Centre; these included amongstothers, a Go Kart circuit, a climbing wall, various art and craftstands, a circus skills workshop, a sensory bus complete with‘chill out zone’, the Fire Brigade, a Playbus and mobile children’scentre, the Scouts, pedal carts, cooking outdoors, the local ArmyCadets and an armoured fighting vehicle (MLRS).As well as the hot drinks and food available from theCentre’s Coffee Shop, ESS also set up a barbeque tent andsold industrial quantities of hot dogs and burgers whichhelped keep peoples’ core temperatures up, well it was Julyafter all.....Despite the weather, which just got decidedly worse asthe day went on, nothing could diminish the enthusiasmof those that turned up and turn up they did! The feedbackprovided by Martin Gillet that he’d received from thequestionnaires was glowing. We were also delighted towelcome our Director General, Mr Peter Watkins who wasjoined by the Mayor of Faringdon, Councillor Dr Mike Wiseon his walk round. It is hoped we can hold another similarevent soon.Hopefully the accompanying photographs, for which wethank our Serco photographers, will give you a flavour ofthe day?ARB24