SARK’S sheep racing meeting and other events organised by the island’s Carnival Committee raised more than £30,000 this year.

The total was revealed a week ago when a cheque for £30,536.62 was handed over to the Professor Charles Saint Medical Trust. As is always the case, the money raised will subsidise the cost of prescribed medication to Sark residents.

The amount represents a combination of factors, not least the hard work of carnival chairman Puffin Taylour and her committee, stallholders, businesses and everyone else associated with the many and varied ways in which they gently but firmly squeeze as much cash as they can from those who – in the main – are usually happy to part with it.

Those thanks should also include the many hundreds of visitors, predominantly from these islands but also many from further afield, who year in and year out continue to give Sark’s principal domestic charity their valuable and generous support.

It is obvious that in the present economic climate the amount of money generally available for good causes is hardly likely to increase in the foreseeable future, which means that all charities – and there are a number that are well supported in Sark – will be hard-pressed to maintain the level of service for which they exist.

That makes the £30,000-plus raised this year for the medical trust a huge amount of money.

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While on the subject of donating to charity, Sark’s carol singers each year bring their own particular brand of enthusiasm to fund-raising by not only calling on virtually every property in the island, but also giving those residents who either can’t or don’t wish to listen the option of donating a few quid in order to strike their homes from the list.

That may or may not be true, but it sounds like yet another of Sark’s fiendish ways of extracting cash from people for good causes. Actually, the singers are excellent and this year, the money they raise will be shared between two charities close to the hearts of all Channel Islanders – the International Red Cross and the Royal British Legion.

The carol singing starts at the Methodist Chapel at 6pm on Saturday 17 December, followed by a ‘really good singalong’ at the Island Hall, with the added bonus of the hall team providing festive goodies to help keep the choir’s voices lubricated.

The following week, the choir will tour the island on the Monday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings and, as is the custom, will sing outside The Gallery Post Office from 11.30am on Christmas Eve.

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Two film-makers from Holland will be visiting the island next month to carry out initial research into a film about old tales of Sark. They intend using Martin Remphry’s Sark Folklore book as the basis for their research, but have said that they would also welcome talking to people ‘with nice stories to tell’.

Judith van Lunsen and Josephine Vollbehr have already been in touch with Martin and have also contacted Sark Scribe editor Bob Parsons to see if he can point them in the direction of real storytellers.

l The email address for comment is fallesark@sark.net.