The first Friday in December is perhaps the most exciting Friday of the year for those living in and around Market Harborough. It’s Late Night Shopping evening in the town.

That said, this year, just 8 weeks before the event, the long-standing committee- with no prior warning, stepped down amidst claims that there was simply not the manpower to organise the event for this year.

Luckily for the town, a small group of local business owners decided that Cinders would go to the ball, and in 8 weeks pulled together a simply fantastic event for the town.

So, on Friday the 5th December, the town was sprinkled with fairy dust and adorned with best bib and tucker as local businesses flung open their doors, brought their wares to the town centre, played their instruments, dressed up, danced and sang for the three hours between 6 and 9pm.

Never to miss out on a jolly knees up, we decided we would join the festivities and took our Ford Skript jeep on the journey from our base here at Husbands Bosworth to Market Harborough town centre.

In true Armourgeddon style, we also dressed the team to match the vehicle, in 1940’s style original Army and American Airforce uniforms. Well, all except out Nitro- chief engineer and part time Morris Dancer who adorned with red painted face and full regalia, danced, played accordion and sang with his band of Braybrooke Morris Dancers.

There were an estimated 5000 visitors to the first of the newly branded ‘Harborough Christmas Fayre’ and we had 4996 of them come and say hello, talk tanks or have a seat in our jeep. In a competition early on, we managed to fit 11 children into the Ford Script jeep all at the same time. Despite our best efforts, we were unable to verify this with the Guinness Book of Records, but in our minds, it was a record-breaker!

If you came along to say ‘Hello’ then thank you. If you are reading our blog for the first time after finding out all about our tanks and tank paintball battles from one of us on the street, fabulous, and if you are reading from far and wide, then you should make a date for next year and head to Harborough for the first Friday in December. If you do… mine’s a Mulled Wine!