Teddy Bear fun, by Ann Middleton at Didcot Railway Centre

IT'S strange how the mind works. We are getting ready for our Teddy Bears’ Picnic in July and the office is starting to fill up with teddies for the tombola and prizes. If only they could do office work!

We started running the Teddy Bears’ Picnic a few years ago after a chance meeting at a Wantage Business Breakfast. Caroline Sinclair from Ronald McDonald House Charities and I were talking about our early thoughts for a Teddy Bears’ Picnic to support the charity’s Oxford facility. The charity has a lot of cuddly toys that they can’t use in the house because they cannot be kept germ-free so Caroline agreed to loan them to us for the Teddy Bears’ Picnic.

Ronald McDonald House Charities is an independent charity which provides free "home away from home" accommodation for families with children in hospitals across the UK.

Since opening in January 2007, Ronald McDonald House Oxford based at the John Radcliffe Children’s Hospital in Oxford has helped more than 5,000 families during their child’s treatment. The house welcomes more than 650 families per year from Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Bucks, Northamptonshire as well as all over the UK for families whose children are receiving specialist treatment at the hospital.

Without a local Ronald McDonald House, many parents have to sleep on a chair by their child’s bed or pay for hotel accommodation. Some parents resort to sleeping in their cars. The charity relies on the generosity of supporters and fundraisers, without whom it would be unable to continue its work.

This year's picnic is on Sunday, July 10, and we will have Teddy Crump and Chipper the Didcot Squirrel entertaining the children. McDonald’s at Benson have offered to run the ‘Name the Bear’ competition and are bringing along a badge making machine for children to design and make their own badges. We will have our tombola with teddy prizes and a Teddy Trail for children to follow. There will be unlimited train rides on our two demonstration lines and our own ‘Teddy Bear’ diesel locomotive will be pulling one of the trains. We have also been promised a flypast from a Hurricane (weather permitting) so we’re keeping our fingers crossed for lots of sun.

Children with teddies (or cuddly ducks, elephants, dinosaurs, lambs, and so on) are admitted free of charge.