Imagine selling 53,000 secondhand books for £2.00 each in, and around the outside of, a church in Edinburgh’s George Street in just short of a week. By simple arithmetic that's £106,000.
That is the simple way to explain the St Andrew’s and St George’s West Church’s amazing contribution to Christian Aid Week for 2010. But it is a little more complicated because some of the books were sold for a lot more, and it was not all books on sale. There were pictures, music scores and other useful ephemera.
The annual, week-long Book Sale, which ended on 14 May at the end of Christian Aid Week, has been going for 36 years. Organisers have raised £1.8 million for Christian Aid over those years, in what is the charity’s largest fundraising event anywhere.
Mary Davidson is the mastermind. While the Sale is in progress she views all that goes on from the pulpit, whether it be on the floor of the church or in the boxed galleries. It is she, with her late husband, Lord Davidson, who have stored the left over books for next year, kept in touch with a myriad of volunteers, consulted book experts to ensure nothing slips by too cheaply and when it is all over every year writes a long report thanking everybody without missing even the smallest volunteer’s contribution.
It is a finely honed operation that starts for next year almost immediately this year’s has finished. But first someone from Christian Aid will speak at a Sunday morning service in the Church and collect the handsome cheque. I had that honour thirteen years ago when working on major projects in the Charity’s office on George IV Bridge. But long before that my late Father had been lugging the books into place, my Mother rubbing out last year’s prices and my Aunt scripting some of the signs. That’s a tale many Edinburgh families have shared over the years, whether on not they have been members of the congregation.