Breaking the record for Macmillan

IT S the cake that launched a thousand raffle tickets. Vicar s wife Hilary Frost sold them for a homemade Christmas cake to be baked and decorated to order. The cake will be made again this year by Anne Papworth, from Kimbolton. Not yet in the oven, it ha

IT'S the cake that launched a thousand raffle tickets. Vicar's wife Hilary Frost sold them for a homemade Christmas cake to be baked and decorated to order.

The cake will be made again this year by Anne Papworth, from Kimbolton. Not yet in the oven, it has raised £731. This will be the sixth year she has "mixed for Macmillan".

And that was just a slice of the action. Altogether, Hilary Frost's Macmillan coffee morning in Kimbolton Vicarage on Friday raised a total of £2,260.51 - beating her previous record.

Mrs Frost started selling the raffle tickets for the Christmas cake in the heatwave of July. People say she is very hard to resist - and so is the cake.

She said: "People know they only have a one-in-thousand chance of winning the cake but they still buy the tickets. Also, we get a lot of donations. People say they won't be able to come to the coffee morning but here's a fiver."

Tragically, the woman who began the tradition of baking a cake for the Macmillan raffle herself died of cancer some years ago.

Macmillan coffee mornings took place across the district on Friday and the charity's organisers for Cambridgeshire say they expect to beat the £115,000 the county made last year.

* The Ramsey Events Group raised £2,370. Two coffee mornings raised over £800 each. Clare McNeish in Biggin Lane raised £835 and Helen Barnard in Ramsey Heights raised £870. Gill and Richard Rule in Hollow Lane raised £465. Fashion shop, Style of Ramsey, raised £146, opticians Gathercole and Ward raised £54. At Ramsey Junior School, year six prefects raised £70.

The Ramsey group's next Macmillan event is a pamper evening at Ashbeach School, Ramsey St Mary's on Wednesday, November 1. (7pm to 9.30pm, entry £2.50 plus the cost of treatments. Contact Helen Barnard on 01487 814502)

* At Great Stukeley Village Hall, £560,70 was raised by Marie Harrison, 85, and her husband Bill, who celebrated his 90th birthday on the day. They are both volunteers at Hinchingbrooke Hospital.

* At St Neots Community College, the sixth form council raised £150.

* At Waitrose in Huntingdon, staff raised £184.

* In Church Meadows, St Neots, sisters Caroline Morson, Moira Wagstaff and neighbour Diane Sherman raised £165.

* At The Tap Room in St Ives, manager Amanda Buttriss and her customers raised over £280 with their coffee morning and a "Girls Night In" (to which men were also invited) including cocktails, make-up, prizes and free nibbles.

The venue is holding another Macmillan Girls Night In on Monday, November 20.