Goldie's golden tweet

The Random Acts of Kindness Festival (RAOK) in Clonakilty lived up to its name when Hollywood star Goldie Hawn randomly tweeted her approval of the festival at the weekend.

Goldie's tweet which said "@ClonRAOKFest We can all learn from RAOK and grace others with random acts of kindness" was the icing on the cake for what had already been an amazing weekend according to festival committe member Jenny Murphy.

"We couldn't believe it when we saw that Goldie Hawn had sent us a tweet. It was brilliant and we were all going mad. It really topped off what had already been a brilliant weekend!"

The RAOK Festival took place from last weekend 20-22 July and was hugely successful. Over 1000 people gathered on Connolly Street from 6.30pm on Friday evening for the opening event which was a bubble blowing ceremony. Highlights over the weekend included the Sports Day which took place on Saturday at the showgrounds and the jungle picnic on Sunday which was held at Emmet Hotel who provided a free barbecue.

Jenny said: "It was fabulous, there was an astronomical turnout and the whole weekend went without a hitch. Considering that two weeks ago the town had been hit by floods and to see how far everyone had come was great.

"Lettercollum Kitchen Project had been submerged in water two weeks ago and on the Friday night they fed hundreds of people with two massive paella dishes, it was so fun and exciting just to see how happy everyone was and it was all such a simple idea."

The entire town was turned into a kindness zone and small gifts of all descriptions were distributed including locally made Irish Yogurts, passes for the Park Cinema, passes for Rossmore Theatre, ice-creams from Walshes Londis, car wash and hoover at Clonakilty Car Centre and teas at O’Donovan’s Hotel. As a further incentive, all who carried out any act of kindess were entered into a free raffle, with prizes including treatments at the Inchydoney Lodge and Spa, family passes to the Model Railway village, Glenilen hampers and Clonakilty Black Pudding Hampers.

"It was all very random," said Jenny "so the festival certainly lived up to its name. Anyone who lived in Clonakilty was involved in one way or another and then we got the news about the tweet from Goldie which was really cool, hopefully it can become an annual event judging by the success of this year's festival."