Branches Has Its 25th Birthday Party
We had an interesting day. It was up early to collect the marque to be erected outside the Branches Shop in Bo'ness. Today we were celebrating 25 years of trading as a 'not for profit company'. I always think that description isn't quite right. We want to make profit, in fact we need to make profit if we are to do what we wee set up to do. It was great to have Alastair McDonald visit with us again and do some singing as our volunteers gave the Bo'ness public some birthday cake and mulled wine.
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The disappointing part to all of this was that the town being nearly deserted. The bad weather of the past few weeks has no doubt prevented people doing Christmas shopping. Today no one seemed to be shopping local. The vast majority of shoppers seemed to be heading for the larger cities and towns. All this makes me think how crucial it is that local people support their local shops. If the locals don't before long there will be no local town centres to visit and communities will be a great deal poorer. Anyway here are some pictures of the team preparing everything for the party before the shop opened earlier this morning.
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I'd like to take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to all those who helped make today a success. Thank you to those gave and helped delivered the marque. Thank you to the team who came to help erect the marque. To the folks at Kirkliston who let us borrow some of their equipment. To the fantastic staff at Branches for all their hard work over the years.
