SINCE THE FORMATION of Spalding and District branch five years ago we have always spent the second weekend in May working very hard raising money for the RNLI at various stalls dotted around the route of the spectacular Spalding Flower Parade.

We had often thought of entering a float in the parade but it was not until the theme of "Maritime England' waschosen for 1982 that we decided to go all out to see that our branch represented the Royal National Lifeboat Institution in the parade.

The parade itself consists of about 20 floats decorated with millions of different coloured tulip heads with several marching bands interspersed between the floats. The local bulb growers remove the tulip heads as soon as they come into bloom in order to prevent the bulbs being drained of strength by the flowers. The discarded heads are then used to produce this glorious Flower Parade.

The steelwork for the floats is built around existing frames which bolt on to unseen tractors which provide the motive power. The tractor for our float was lent by a farmer friend, Charles Ostler, a keen lifeboat supporter. Straw mats, specially imported from the Continent, are used to cover the steel frames. This is an extremely skilled task as the 'strawers' must ensure that the correct proportions and shapes are retained.

Work on design begins as early as the September before the parade in May.

We are able to work closely with the designer in planning our tulip lifeboat.

As I have close connections with- Cromer branch, I suggested a half scale model of Cromer's 48ft 6in Oakley lifeboat Ruby and Arthur Reed as our design. We were very impressed with the resulting float and particularly the attention to detail.

Once the 'strawers' have finished, the tens of thousands of tulip heads have to be pinned on. This arduous and sometime tedious task begins on the Thursday morning, two days before the parade. As much help as possible is needed to ensure the mammoth task is finished in time, and committee members, relations, friends and supporters of our branch were drafted in to help. In addition to the 'heading' we also had our usual five RNLI stalls to set up, stock up and man, so understandably life became very hectic towards the Friday evening! Nameboards for the float were hand painted by committee member Ian- Walker and gave credit to local branches of the Leicester Building Society who, thanks to the persuasive powers of Long Sutton branch manager Jeff Sutherland-Kaye, kindly contributed towards the cost of the float.

The local Police lent us a blue flashing light which was wired to the tractor battery. There were also mock radar and radio aerials.

We were very pleased to have our good friends Motor Mechanic Donny Abbs and Crew Member Eric Love with us from Cromer, adding authenticity to our float.

More than half a million people visit Spalding to see the tulip floats and not only do we feel we attracted much publicity for the RNLI (including regular spontaneous applause and the throwing of coins on to the lifeboat) but our overall takings for the weekend at our stalls and static collecting boxes were boosted from around £1,000 to over £3,250. That was a result which obviously made us feel all our efforts were worth while..