Rae Roadley: Fairytale fun-draising for Riverview Maungaturoto

It's all an act of charity.

It was an odd Queen's Birthday weekend from the outset.

On Friday night, dressed in a white floaty outfit, bedecked with pearls, waving my magic wand and hoping I passed as a fairy princess, I went to a Royal Night, or Royal Knight, in the company of a frog and a queen.

The gathering had a higher purpose than entertainment - to raise funds for a dementia unit at Riverview Maungaturoto, our town's retirement village and rest home.

When we arrived, the farmer handed me his car keys and wallet and said, "I'm going to jump from here." I held the door open and he was off.

There was something remarkably frog-like about his movements, but then he'd been slipping in and out of his Kermit identity all week. Conversations came to a halt. People laughed. Even though his webbed feet fell off and during the evening he lost one of his ping pong ball eyes, Kermit won the best costume prize.

As is so often said, you have to make your own fun. This is particularly true in rural areas.

The Queen, meanwhile, soon presided over an investiture ceremony looking and sounding every inch a high-ranking royal. She knighted people with a wooden spoon for a range good works for the community and pinned carefully crafted satin ribbons onto chests.

As is so often said, you have to make your own fun. This is particularly true in rural areas.
The highest honour went to tireless Albie Paton who'd not only organised the evening but a massive weekend-long garage sale.

Again the dementia unit, our town's biggest community project in a long while, would benefit.

Perfect music was provided by Otherwise Fine whose members kindly donated half their fee to the cause.

On Saturday, the farmer and I gathered goods to donate and headed into town and the building Albie and his crew have dubbed The Den. Once a meeting place for Scouts it's now where gentlemen gather to build all manner of things things - or morph into busy and persuasive shop assistants.

No trace of their efforts on the weekend. The Den was packed to the gunnels with possibly every item anyone in our society that's overloaded with 'stuff' could ever need, and then some. Naturally enough, we bought a thing or two.

Sunday saw a much-needed garage clean-up thanks to the brilliant assistance of a woman who, if she could live the life she loved fulltime, would spend it tidying up other people's messes.

The upshot was another trip with more garage sale goods and a new item on our shopping list. The toaster in our cabin had blown up. Five dollars bought a new one. By the end of play, the weekend's fund had reached a dizzying $6000. Another sale is scheduled for the end of June.

Monday: Our garage tidying effort hit a towering pinnacle when the farmer, balanced on my car bonnet, dangled a tennis ball on a string so I'd know when to stop my car.

As he jumped down, I said, "That makes me feel so ... middle class." Although that doesn't really state it. Settled, grown up, established. I never expected to have a life that would involve a dangling tennis ball in my car shed.

But then, I never expected to go to a party with a frog and a queen.