Charity Fundraising

The Greatest Storm – A Virtual Pantomime

Devon FrancisLeave a comment

Devon Francis – d.francis@pgr.reading.ac.uk
Max Coleman – m.r.coleman@pgr.reading.ac.uk

Every year the Met-PhDs put on a Christmas pantomime and perform it to the rest of the department. The autumn term always seems to drag: the mornings are dark; the evenings are darker; and no matter how hard you try, the term just feels so busy! So what better way to finish off the term than with department jokes, terrible singing and unnecessary Benny Hill chase scenes?

Met Panto 2020 virtual group photo

And despite of a global pandemic that is in full swing, this year would be no different – the show must go on! On 10th December we premiered the very first virtual Met panto: The Greatest Storm! – A spin-off of the 2017 film ‘The Greatest Showman’. The Greatest Storm follows Professor Sue Gray Barnum (or PG Barnum for short) on her journey to find the greatest storm. On her way she meets her “misfit” team: Helen Dacre, Pete Inness, Tom Frame and Javier Amezcua, and recruits her right-hand man: Philip-Craig Carlyle. Together they develop a new instrument: DOROTHY, the Data recORding unit fOr in-siTu sting jet measurements High in the skY. But with COVID lurking around every corner, will they ever be able to measure the Greatest Storm? (…although it will actually just be the greatest storm on record…)

Panto 2020 poster – designed and created by Meg Stretton

This year, Max and I were persuaded volunteered for the role of panto organisers, with the promise that running the panto would be ‘much easier’ than previous years as everything would be online. This was partly true, though there was still a lot of last-minute tweaking…

We were very fortunate that Kris Boykin brought forward the idea to recreate The Greatest Showman, with a detailed plan for the plot, which fought off the other (very good) competition for plot ideas. This made the script writing relatively pain-free as we filled in the details and decided on which of the staff should be included.

Next was the song writing: in retrospect, the songs we chose were quite difficult to get right, as it was challenging to stay in time when singing for most of them, especially when we had changed the lyrics to include meteorological puns! In a live panto this might not have been so bad, but as everything had to be recorded individually and put together by our audio editing experts Dominic Jones and Beth Saunders, we can only say, Dom, we’re very sorry…  

The next 9 weeks were filled with read throughs, character selection and filming. In a normal year, these weeks would be relatively relaxed, with rehearsals spanning the full 9 weeks, however as we were aware that the video editors Lauren James and Wilson Chan had a lot of work to do in putting all of the scenes together, we tried to film as early as possible to give them more time. Our initial plan was to meet up on a weekend to film the parts in a socially distanced setting, but as the second lockdown was announced, we had to quickly change our plan. Some scenes were filmed individually, but the majority were filmed over Zoom: although this had reduced camera quality, it was much more fun to see each other every week and laugh at everyone’s wacky costumes and improvisation!

The last week leading up to Thursday’s showing (tomorrow as we’re writing this!) was slightly busier, with reviewing footage and making final edits, in the knowledge that in these unprecedented circumstances most of the cast will not have seen a complete run through before the final showing! In the end it all came together with an entirely smooth and seamless virtual viewing experience / it all went horribly wrong and we should never have been entrusted with panto (delete as applicable), which everyone viewing hopefully enjoyed!

Screenshot of scene 2 – the misfits’ entrance.

With that, we’d like to say thank you so much to everyone involved, from script writers, band, editors, cast and everyone that helped both on and off our virtual stage! It has been so lovely to see everyone come together, and although has been a very tiring process, panto 2020 has been a very welcome distraction to the rest of 2020!

This year we did not sell tickets, but instead asked for donations to cover our (reasonably small!) running costs, plus any extra will go to the Reading Meteorology department’s charity: San Francisco Libre Association. If you didn’t donate on the night, but wanted to, here’s a link to our donations page – https://paypal.me/pools/c/8uIzsVEQwB. We were so humbled by everyone that has already donated, both small and large amounts, we really appreciate it!

Thank you to everyone that watched The Greatest Storm on Thursday, we hope you had a fun evening! And we look forward to next year’s panto; who will be next to volunteer for this incredible tradition, with panto 2021…?

Macmillan Coffee Morning / Bake-Off 2017

KajaLeave a comment

(Written by Hannah Gough & Kaja Milczewska)

Following on from last year, the Macmillan Coffee Morning 2017 proved to be another storming success in the Met department. Four tables full of cake and other goodies were sold across the morning, raising well over £300 for Macmillan Cancer. We combined this with a ‘Bake Off’, where two tables of bakes were entered into four categories: ‘traditional’, ‘pumpkin’, ‘WCD’ (weather and climate discussion) and the technical challenge: scones. Competition was fierce, with no bake being disliked by our judges: Steve Woolnough, Claire Morris, Rob Thompson and Michael Jonhston.

The goods which did not make it into any category (but definitely into our bellies!) made up two other tables, featuring the likes of rum cake, banana bread, Swiss roll, cookies and cupcakes of various flavours and a very shiny-chocolate topped salted caramel slice.

Those with allergies were well catered for with gluten free chocolate orange iced cupcakes and chocolate fudge cake. Vegan entrants included chocolate muffins and a lemon and chia seed loaf with rain cloud decoration!

Josh Talib won the scone category with butternut squash, thyme and goat’s cheese scones, Rebecca Frew won the traditional cake category with a tasty Bara Brith (speckled bread), a Welsh speciality. The pumpkin category was won by Wendy Neale with some scrumptious pumpkin and ginger cupcakes, whilst the lightning bolt biscuits by Dan Hodson zapping the competition in the WCD category.

A big thanks to all who donated cakes, time and cash to this event. Macmillan Coffee mornings are held frequently all over the country, raising money towards cancer care. We hope this continues in our department in the future! For more information on the work Macmillan do, visit https://www.macmillan.org.uk/

 

Meteorology Ball 2017

KajaLeave a comment

Email: K.M.Milczewska@pgr.reading.ac.uk

On Friday 17th February, the annual Meteorology Ball provided a great excuse for members of the department and their guests to dress up for the evening. But for all the excitement of this year’s masquerade theme, the Ball is mainly a charity event. Through the sale of raffle tickets and an auction of promises, the event aims to raise money for the David Grimes Trust, administered by the Reading San Francisco Libre Association (RSFLA), in honour of the well-remembered academic from our department who devoted a great deal of his time to the charity.

RSFLA supports environmental and educational projects in the rural Nicaraguan town of San Francisco Libre, which was ‘twinned’ with Reading in 1994 in order to encourage the exchange of culture and knowledge. Over the past few years, the Meteorology department has supported this link through regular cake sales, running the Reading Half Marathon and, of course, the annual ball.

David Grimes was a respected, integral member of the department and there are many among us who reminisce about his goodwill, interactive lectures and Panto appearances. There are also those among us who, despite never having had the chance to meet David, can easily imagine the positive impact he had both in and outside of our department, through our continued support of the charity under his name. The money  raised is mainly spent on educational support in the San Francisco Libre district: helping to fund a scholarship programme, build a library and toilet facilities among various other projects – and the people who benefit directly have a special message for us all!
https://youtu.be/vWsf9TWwWp4

The generosity of over 80 people attending made the event a great success, raising over £1500 through bidding on bizzarre auction items and lessons, as well as purchasing raffle tickets. To add to this, Santander will be chipping in with an extra £1500 to match, bringing the total raised to over £3000 for the charity! Such success would never have happened, had it not been for all the help we received from Santander, local businesses offering prizes for the raffle, and most importantly: all of those who bought a ticket to come! On behalf of all the organisers, I would like to finish this post with a massive bout of thanks for making the evening worth all the effort and continuing the important tradition of fundraising for the David Grimes Trust.

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Macmillan coffee morning

Hannah GoughLeave a comment

Email: h.l.gough@pgr.reading.ac.uk

If there are two things that keep the Met department running it’s cake and coffee. This year the department got involved in the Macmillan coffee morning on the 30th September and raised a whopping £282 within three hours.

There was a bake off, a general cake sale and a guess the number of spots on a cake game, which got very scientific! The bake off had four categories, each with a prize: Savoury, bake your research, green theme and free-from, ensuring that there was something for everybody. As always the competition was good-natured but fierce and the judges (2 members of staff, 1 post-doc and 1 PhD student) had a sugar crash at around 3pm.

Here are some of the creations from the event:

First up (left) a chocolate cake carved into the shape of Africa, complete with wildlife, sprinkles and clouds. The judges didn’t want to cut this one, choosing to eat Madagascar first!

The next bake (top middle) went on to win the Best in Bake-off award, vanishing within minutes of being put on the sale table! Each slice was a decadent mixture of chocolate and lime.

The marvellous creations in the bottom middle image were free from everything except nuts. Using vegan marshmallows and chocolate alongside gluten free biscuits created a wickedly dark rocky road with plenty of crunch and just the right amount of marshmallows.

These gluten free wind turbines (right) were entered into all four categories of the bake off. Making gluten free pastry is no mean feat and unless told, no-one was aware that these moreish snacks were gluten free!

Finally, a shot of the table before it got too full of goodies! There are the edges of vegan pretzels (front left), a shop brought Victoria sponge (front middle), a supreme chocolate cake with Malteaser decorations (right) and a hazelnut and pear chocolate brownie which really captured the autumnal flavours and was the first to be completely sold!

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Fortunately the department has its own running group to help counteract some of the cake eating.

That’s it from me for now, hopefully they’ll be more foodie posts soon!