SING your heart out, get in the mood for Christmas and help youngsters visiting hospital at the same time.Preparations are well under way for one of the most popular events of the Christmas season – the Evening Star Carol Service.

SING your heart out, get in the mood for Christmas and help youngsters visiting hospital at the same time.

Preparations are well under way for one of the most popular events of the Christmas season – the Evening Star Carol Service.

The event will help raise money for the Star Christmas appeal – Helping Our Children – which aims to raise up to £18,000 to help create a special child-friendly hospital waiting and treatment area.

St Margaret's Church, Bolton Lane, Ipswich, will host the carol service at 7.30pm on Tuesday December 14.

Minister at the church, Rev Canon David Cutts said the evening will be a mixture of traditional carols for the congregation to sing and special items by the church choir.

There will also be Bible readings telling the Christmas story of how God's son Jesus Christ was born in the manger at Bethlehem.

He said: "It will be a very traditional service with a mixture of well-known carols that everyone likes to sing at carol services, along with items which the choir will sing and will perhaps be some of the lesser-known or newer carols.

"We are all very much looking forward to the occasion at the church.

"In the past few years the service has been packed and we expect to have a large number present again this year."

There will be added festive flavour with a brass band playing outside to welcome the congregation as they arrive at the church at St Margaret's Plain, and singers from a local school will also entertain outside.

Tickets for the carol service are £1 and available from the Evening Star reception or by sending a cheque, made payable to Archant Regional Ltd, to Christine Upson, Evening Star, 30 Lower Brook Street, Ipswich, IP4 1AN.

The Helping Our Children appeal aims to create and equip a special waiting and treatment area for children at Felixstowe General Hospital's minor injuries unit.

The aim is knock down a couple of toilets which are now surplus to requirements to create a safe, comfortable and non-threatening area where youngsters can be seen privately away from adult patients using the unit.

The new treatment bay will be equipped with paediatric resuscitation equipment and asthma relief machines, as well as child-height couches and chairs, and other machines and furnishings.

It is hoped to decorate it brightly with murals, and provide toys and books, and a TV showing health promotion videos targets at youngsters.

The hospital is used by people not only from the Felixstowe area, but also families in Martlesham, Woodbridge and villages, and also tens of thousands of daytrippers and holidaymakers visiting the resort.

n To donate to the appeal, please send cheques made payable to the Evening Star Christmas Appeal to Geraldine Thompson, Evening Star, 30 Lower Brook Street, Ipswich, IP4 1AN.

Shoppers can also donate via the collecting boxes around the Evening Star Christmas tree on the Cornhill in Ipswich.