DROP A PEBBLE into the water, and who knows where the ripples will end? Fifteen years ago Mrs Montague Kavanagh suggested that the Dublin Lifeboat Committee should hold an annual sale of work as a major fundraising effort. In essence it was to be a sale such as might be found in any village hall but planned on a grand scale to embrace the whole city and surrounding countryside. There would be the usual stalls for cakes, garden produce, nearly new clothes and all the other tried and trusted money spinners, a bottle stall and, of course, refreshments and raffles. There would be all the fun of team effort to lighten the load of preparation; all the enjoyment of a day spent at an attractive venue; and all the happiness of a meeting of friends.

In fact, it would have all the warmth of a familiar village occasion but with much greater scope and much greater resources on which it could draw.

The pebble had been dropped into the water and its influence spread out with enthusiastic spontaneity. Helpers were 'recruited' from all over and all round Dublin and success has grown with the years. The profit from the first Dublin Spring Sale, 15 years ago, was £500; the gross takings for this year's sale was more than £9,600.

Royal Dublin Society From the beginning, Dublin Spring Sale was planned as a social as well as a fund-raising occasion, and it has always been held in an outstanding setting.

At first Dublin's Mansion House was chosen, but two years ago the sale moved to the Royal Dublin Society, which is in so many ways the embodiment of all that is most excellent in Irish enterprise and endeavour. The Society was founded at a meeting of 14 men in the Philosophical Rooms, Trinity College, Dublin, in 1731, with the express purpose of promoting improvement in 'Husbandry, Manufactures and other Useful Arts and Sciences'.

It was required of each of those early members that by study, enquiry and experiment he should make himself master of one practical subject so that he could present an exact account of its current state and possible improvement to the Society. Among institutions which owe their foundation to the Society are Dublin's Botanical Gardens, the Irish Veterinary College, the National Library of Ireland, the National Museum, the National ArtGallery, the College of Science and the School of Art. On the one hand agricultural shows and industrial fairs have been promoted and on the other concerts and lectures. Irish equestrian enterprise has been encouraged at home and overseas and perhaps the best known of all the Society's present activities is the Dublin Horse Show; held annually in August since 1868, it has won world-wide renown and is recognised as Ireland's great social event.

Preparation Such is the setting, the nature and the magnitude of Dublin's Lifeboat Spring Sale. What of its organisation? The central planning has always been undertaken by Mrs Kavanagh herself, with the help of members of the RNLI's Dublin office. The sale is not Mrs Kavanagh's only activity for the lifeboats, for which she has been awarded the Institution's gold badge; she also set up the highly successful Dublin Lifeboat Shop, which is open all the year round and which, in 1980, took £17,000. The shop and the spring sale have much in common and, as will be seen, complement each other in a number of ways.

Once again, the ripples spread out from the centre. Responsibility for each of the 11 stalls and for the catering is put into the hands of one lady who, as leader, gathers round her her own committee of, perhaps, as many as 20 or 30 helpers. The helpers will probably come from a variety of areas round the city, and each in turn will approach family, neighbours and perhaps local firms to gather in goods for sale. The net, to change the metaphor, is indeed thrown wide. A card is printed containing the names of the stallholders andtheir helpers; at the end of each list are the words 'and friends'. How essential to a venture such as this are those two words, and how well they sum up its whole happy atmosphere.

Preparations for the sale continue all through the year, each stallholder planning her campaign to the best advantage. The Supermarket stall was originally run by Mrs L. A. White, another gold badge holder who, although now well advanced in years, intrepidly negotiates Dublin's traffic on a motorcycle, still works in the lifeboat shop and still helps her daughter-in-law Mrs Aileen White, to whom she has passed responsibility for the stall at the Dublin Sale. At one time, Mrs L. A.

White used to make about 4001b of homemade marmalade for sale beside the other groceries, but now, to stock the stall with this popular ware, each helper makes up one tin of prepared marmalade into seven one-pound jars.

No lifeboat occasion would be complete without an RNLI Souvenir stall, and at the spring sale it is run by Mrs E.

O'Flanagan, a silver badge holder who devotes her life to lifeboats, working at different times in Dublin, Dun Laoghaire and in Monkstown.

Hats, Jewellery, Shoes and Accessories . . . that is the province of Mrs P. Dwyer Joyce who has helped on the stall, originally run by the Countess of Meath, ever since the first sale 15 years ago. Lady Meath is still one of her helpers.

Collection goes on all through theyear. Shops are 'very kind', not only giving hats but also lending head stands on which they can be displayed; new shoes are contributed straight from one factory; and in response to the dozens of letters written to the committee's friends it is not at all out of the way for a once-worn Dior hat or some other model to be brought along. Often, if suitable goods cannot be given, cheques are received instead—and that is the common experience of all stallholders.

A little while before the day of the sale the 'hat' committee meets for coffee or tea and settles down to the massive task of marking prices.

The president of Dublin ladies' guild, Mrs T. K. Laidlaw, runs the Treasure and Trash stall, always one of the most intriguing at any sale—who knows what useful or frivolous, but charming, object you will find? Members of this committee all live in different areas and, by approaching their friends, stock the stall with an infinite variety of goods. Anything not sold one year is stored away for the next—it may be just what someone is looking for then.

The Garden Shop is run in much the same way—except that nothing is ever left over. The 30 helpers, all friends, collect from a very wide area so that the stall ends up as a veritable garden of Ireland, banked with flowers, shrubs, plants, pot plants, dried flower arrangements, and fruit and vegetables.

This stall is run by Brenda Clark, wife of the RNLI's national organiser in Ireland, and she is another prodigious worker for the lifeboats; in the weeks before Christmas last year she grossed £5,000 selling souvenirs 'from door to door' in Co. Wicklow.

Shop and sale Mrs Eamonn Andrews, wife of the presenter of the television programme 'This is Your Life' which has recently received an RNLI Public Relations award, runs the Boutique, a corner of fashionable clothes, crowded throughout the day of the sale with eager buyers. The Good-as-New Clothing stall, one of the largest in the hall, is run by Mrs Kavanagh with the help of a committee of 23; one member, Mrs Vera Connolly, is the honorary secretary of Dun Laoghaire ladies' guild and also one of the many people who help with the Dublin Lifeboat Shop. There is indeed a very close connection between the Good-as-New stall and the shop. To augment the goods collected specially for the spring sale, suitable stock, such as good quality underwear and especially attractive clothes, is put on one side at the shop to be brought over to the Concourse Hall in the Royal Dublin Society for the great day; equally, any goods left over at the end of the day can be taken back and sold in the shop.

Linen is another stall closely linked with the Dublin shop. Mrs Bea Woodman, another silver badge holder, and Mrs S. Dix, one of her helpers, both serve in the shop on Fridays. Linen brought in is taken home, washed, ironed, mended if necessary and stored away ready for the sale. Friends also help with gifts; Mrs O'Keefe, for instance, can always be relied on for all kinds of attractive handmade items. As Mrs Woodman says, 'Once people get to know about us, they are very good'.

Very good; words echoed in so many parts of the Concourse Hall in gratitude for the support of a most generous public. The Bottles stall team start work six weeks before the day of the sale, approaching banks ('splendid!'), foreign embassies in the Republic of Ireland's capital ('tremendous-crates of wine. . . '), firms, shops, friends, asking for drinks, cosmetics and groceries—anything in a bottle. And every one is very good; offers come pouring in. On the day, a whole pack of cards is laid out in suits along shelves and each is kept covered with a bottle of one sort or another. Customers pick a card from another pack—and every one is a winner. The organiser of the Bottles stall, Mrs R. G. Duggan, unfortunately could not be present on the day this year, so deputising for her were Mrs P. Cochrane and Mrs A.

Daly. For the helpers on this stall, as for most of the others, collection and transportation is a massive task, but, as Ann Daly sums it up, 'You have got to put something back into this life.' Sea Scouts, always ready to help, are responsible for the book stall, together with Mrs D. Vekins and other supporters.

Cakes are the responsibility of Mrs Michael Solomons, and she, her band of helpers and their many friends prepared such a feast of appetising homemade cakes and pastries that almost £600 was taken at this one stall alone at the 1981 sale.

The day of the sale So the great day arrives . . . Well, it really begins the evening before, because that is when the stalls are set up and the bulk of the goods for sale are ferried in by a seemingly endless stream of cars. Some of the cars make a number of trips, gradually emptying the many homes which had come to look rather more like warehouses than elegant dwellings, and collecting the goods packed up by firms. Inside the hall it is a hive of activity, with each group working to a pre-arranged plan and everyone intent on their allotted tasks.

And not all the hard work is at first obvious. Push through the swing doors into the vast kitchen and there you will find members of the catering team quietly engaged on an enormous 'wash up' of every piece of china and cutlery that will be used in the serving of hundreds of salad meals, snacks and cups of tea and coffee: and a hard core of devoted and tireless 'washers up' will continue their work throughout the next day.

Mrs Barbara O'Driscoll is in charge of catering, and over 50 ladies will help her. For the preparation of food they are divided into nine sections, each with a specific task. The leaders of each section meet Barbara O'Driscoll in town for coffee one day in advance to agree the plan of action, and the overriding aim of the catering team is to add to the pleasure of the occasion. In the hall there are plenty of tables, each decorated with flowers; the salad meals are attractive, ample and delicious, most of the cakes are homemade, the coffee is excellent. About half the food will have been donated by firms; perhaps a 161b ham from one, a turkey from another, a supply of soup or teabags. . .

The day of the sale itself starts very early. Last minute preparations are in full swing. Now is arrival time for perishable goods; enormous plastic bags filled with newly-baked rolls, tray upon tray of cakes; crates of apples, buckets of flowers. Masses of daffodils and forsythia, banked up, turn the end of the hall devoted to garden produce into a blaze of gold. Goods on all the stalls pile higher as people from the country bring in their contributions. Out in the kitchen, ham, turkey and chicken are carved, salads arranged. . .

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