London Bridges Walk 2010.

It is 12am and I am just crawling into bed. I lie on my side and think “I have to be up in four hours.” I set my alarm and put it on my window sill and then close my eyes.

At 12:30am I am woken up by a text from my friend double checking details for tomorrow, wait I mean todays sponsored walk. I groan and text back with my eyes half closed and slump back into bed. She texts again. This goes on until I, as politely as I can; ask her if she remembers that we are meeting at 6am to catch the coach. She texts back finding me very funny and wishes me goodnight.

At 5:30am my mother wakes me up and asks me if I am planning to clean the house before my friends turn up. I look at the clock and my eyes shoot open and I am up and out of bed in a heartbeat. “You could have woken me.” I say half-chuckling and half-weeping as I scramble around to get ready.

My texting buddy is half an hour late but that’s ok because I told her to meet me half an hour early in case this happened. We walk down the street to the coach pick up area where we are met by other sponsored walkers, all wearing their Kidney Research UK shirts. The coach arrives and we are off!

Two hours later we arrive at Potters field just in time to hear the horns blow and the sponsored walkers go. We grab our maps and join them as soon as possible, in our anticipation however we give our clumsy friend the map and let him navigate. Five minutes later we realise that there are no purple shirts around…we have gone the wrong way. Ten minutes later we meet a check point where a woman is smiling at us; “Where did you come from?” she asks. We all giggle and tell her that we got lost. “Well you are on the right track now.” She tells us pointing ahead.

London is beautiful. We can’t help taking our time and soaking up all the sights around us. We even manage to walk through a quick festival and get our picture taken with the likes of scary moving statue man and Jack Sparrow, my bad I mean Captain Jack Sparrow.

We meet the half-way point and celebrate, realising afterwards that we have to walk the exact same distance back. Everyone is getting tired but we carry on. We have a seven year old with us who was a lot quieter on the way back, probably to the liking of londoners around us.

Exhausted but excited we arrive back on camp and are welcomed by volunteers who give us a medal. We also meet another friend there and ask him how long it took him to complete the walk. He tells us 2 hours and asks us the same. We bow our heads and mumble that it took us 4 hours.

Either way it was a brilliant day and just by walking we advertised this wonderful charity to so many people. Your kidneys are important guys take care of them.

Britains Got Talent.

Oh wow I just had to blog about this. The mother, sister, cousin and I went to watch Britain’s Got Talent the live Semi-final last night and I was very excited. For those of you who have never been to watch a Britain’s Got Talent, in between acts there is a comedian who talks to the audience and keeps them entertained. He gave us all the opportunity to ask the judges a question and this is when I saw my chance. My hand shot up into the air and when Royce (the comedian) walked past me I could not give up so I yelled as loud as I could “ROYCE!” He span around and came over to me. “I am doing a charity China Trek for Kidney Research UK and was wondering if I could get some signed stuff?” Expecting a “no” he cut me off half way through with “Yes I will sort that out for you.”

He carried on with the rest of the audience and to be honest, I expected him to  never come back. But come back he did and not only that he told me that he had gotten some X Factor tickets for me to Auction off. WOW How nice was that?

So who wants one?

The life and times of a charity girl.

Bucket Collection…or So We Thought.

I have a confession to make. No doubt you will all laugh your heads off once you have read this and trust me, I am only writing it for your amusement! The mother, the blonde and I travelled a fair distance the other day to do a charity bucket collection at Tesco’s for the Kindey Research UK China Trek 2011.

“Come on we are going to be late!”

“Are you sure it’s today Mom? I thought it was in a few weeks?”

“No it’s today lets just go.”

 We turned up in our matching purple tops and our massice buckets with a charity banner to boot. We walked in with massive smiles on our faces and were stopped by a man asking for our official letter…which we did not have.  We told him we would call the Head of fundraising and she could sort it out, while doing this the gentleman came back over to us and informed us that another charity were collecting on our turf. I was about to go and claim our land back as our own when Mom stopped me with a shocked look on her face. She hung the phone up and looked at me.

“We are a month early.”

Silence.

“I told you to listen to me!”

Yes yes, I who always rant (in a seperate blog) about the Blonde and here I was, acting pretty blondish too. We tried to sneak out but had to explain ourselves both to the gentleman and the security guard who enjoyed laughing at us as we attempted to walk out with our heads held high.

To top it off we decided to go to the uni (with our now free time) to get my results and realised I was a month early for that too!

Talk about a productive day.

This is your next installment of The Life and Times of a Charity Girl. x

Albion Grounds Bucket Collection.

We woke up this morning very sleepy and made our way over to the Albion Grounds with a myriad of charity buckets to collect before the match began. We began with a fair bit of bickering (early mornings are not kind) but as soon as we stood on our post’s each and every one of us forgot about our Saturday morning lie in, or lack there of, and really dedicated to the morning.

It was cloudy, windy and it rained with the occasional ten second outburst of sunshine but we all stood our ground (or in my case, barricaded the gateway) with smiles plastered to our faces and asked for any spare change. The guards were really great and were always close by in case anything went wrong. After 12 o’ clock they asked us to come away as with the growing crowd they could not protect us as much as they felt comfortable with, so we started off towards the car, picking volunteers up on the way and  collecting any last bits of change we could.

 We were told that  averagelye could make between £200 and £300 by doing this, so the mother, the blonde and I sat down in a circle and started counting out the cash. Guess how much we made? No go higher…higher…higher…Oh Ill just tell you. We made £980.60. I know! That you to all the lovely football fans who reached into your pockets and put your change in. There were some really generous people (one gentleman put in £4!) I couldn’t believe it!

We are really close now, we now need to raise just over £500 and we have reached our target!

This is your next installment of the life and times of a charity girl x

The Charity Fashion Show.

Last Monday we held a charity fashion show in aid of the Kidney Research UK China Trek at the Village Inn. The people there were absolutely wonderful and gave us the room for the night for free! Not to mention the waiting area and a changing room. The staff there were very accommodating and even allowed us to come up every Monday and Friday in order to advertise. We also handed out flyers around the local offices and I handed some out to customers at work. It really paid off as we had 120 people turn up to watch and buy clothes.

A company called Smarty’s brought all the ex-chainstore clothes from places such as Monsoon and sold them for up to 70% off so loads of bargains were found. They were really friendly people and even gave us 10% of everything they earned. I can not stress enough how much they have helped us towards reaching our goal of £5,600 for Kidney Research UK and if anyone is ever trying to raise money for charity I can strongly recommend these guys.

The night was a roaring success and the volunteer models acted like pro’s. Overall we managed to raise £821 on that night bringing us up to 72% of the way there!

We are so close to reaching our goal and hopefully we will have all the money by July! If anyone fancies sponsoring us then you can do so on our Kidney Research Charity Page at http://www.kidneyresearchukevents.org/ChinaTrek2011

This is your next installment of the Life and Times of a Charity Girl.

x

Practice Walk

I have been thinking that I have not done any “walking” since last year. (Ah if only walking to the kitchen to make a cup of tea counted) so I thought that after my Uni class I would catch a bus into Town and walk home. I thought pfft this will be easy…*shakes head.*

I get into town and am raring to go, in my very fashionable Comic Relief top (Shakespeare style) because what’s the harm in advertising a charity while I am training for China. I thought I would start off by getting some lunch just to power up. So I walk into Subway-and walk straight back out. The queue was waaaaaay to long and I figured it would cut into my valuable walking time. So I went searching for another Subway. Found it, ordered my sandwich, turned out that the card machine did not work so had to pay cash, and left with my goodies.

I walked for…approximatly 20 minutes, and decided that, although my sandwich was very filling and tasty, it probably was not a good idea as I needed energy. Hmm what has energy? So I stopped in a shop and picked up a fizzy drink and two chocolate bars. Now I am not a big fan of chocolate bars, but if I have to eat them in order to continue walking then, what can I say, I will.

So I carry on walking. It’s a piece of cake really, (Should have brought cake) I am surprised to see how many pretty things there are and how easy they are to miss when you are in a car or on a bus. Although I am starting to get slightly tired.

Oh my gosh this road is never-ending! It should have ended by now surely? This can’t be right. Fear not. I knew exactly where I was, but it was now 2 hours into the journey and my feet were hurting and I was very tired and this road was soooooo long. Thank goodness there is a bus stop! I grab my purse, open and pull out the contents. Darn chocolate bars! I had no choice. I had to carry on walking.

Half an hour after that and I was on the road leading to my house. The trouble is…I can’t make it. My feet are hurting every time they touch the floor, my new walking boots are rubbing (note to self, buy walking socks) and my house is sooooo far away.

I was in the final 10 yards section of the walk and seriously my feet should have been bleeding, but I made it.  

Total walking hours:  2 Hours and 30 Minutes. That is the equivalent of…. half of what I will be walking…ON MY FIRST DAY IN CHINA! Oh dear!!! Best get some more walking days set in my diary!!!!

This is The Life and Times of a Charity Girl.

How

Ok so now you know why I decided to become a charity girl, now I bet you are impatiently sitting on the edge of your seat wondering how I became a charity girl. Well it was quite simple really.

I browsed the Kidney Research UK website: http://www.kidneyresearchuk.org/home.php and looked in the events category. I originally planned to walk Mount Kilimanjaro, not going to lie after watching Comic relief a few years ago where the likes of Fern Cotton and Gary Barlow climbed the mountain, I wanted to see if it was as hard as they were making it out to be.

However after serious consideration I decided that it was a bit of a big one to start off with. Sure I could train but I was also worried about the altitude up there. So I thought that I would try something else and maybe do Kilimanjaro later in life. That’s the good thing about mountains…it’s alwayss going to be there….I hope.

Anyway I carried on searching and I saw that Kidney Research UK were also heading up a charity walk for 8 days along the Great Wall of China. remembering that a friend had previously said that this was a dream of hers, I asked her if she wanted to come. She agreed and I got in contact with a lovely lady called Sarah, who came out to see me and answer any questions I had.

Unfortunately due to unforeseeable circumstances my friend had to drop out. So there I was, had already raised some money and told people I was doing the walk now having to fundraise alone, get a plane alone with people I don’t know and spend a week in China on my own. I was terrified!!!!!!!!

Luckily Maria jumped in and said that she would come. She had always wanted to walk the wall also but did not think she would be able to raise the money.

So that was our first hurdle crossed…or jumped? and that is how I became a Charity Girl.

(Next time I will be discussing how we began to raise money.)

x

A Catch Up

Hello all,

Since being a technophobe for a good few years now I have been put off starting a blog of any kind. So imagine the distress in my bright blue eyes when we were set creating a blog as an exercise at uni (Thank you very much Mr Lecturer.)

So I decided to give it a go and lo and behold I CAN do it, so this is my second blog. (My first is http://lifeandtimesofabrunetteandablonde.wordpress.com/ )

I have a long history with a mother who has been ill with kidney failure all of her life. She has had four kidney transplant and currently the fourth is going strong (which is more than I can say about some of the previous ones.) People don’t seem to realise how difficult life can be for a person suffering from CKD. (Chronic Kidney Disease) They can only drink 1 1/2 litres of water a day (which is hardly anything when considering the water in food etc) and most food is tasteless because it has to be nuked before it can be eaten. And all this is horrid without having to dialize 3 times a week for 4 hours. This may seem like nothing to some people but taking into account having to get up, wait for the dialysis people to come and get you, take you to the dialysis place, get set up (get weighed, stick a needle in you, set up a machine that basically takes your blood out, clean it and put it back) then having to wait to be taken off, wait to be taken home and then having to rest, it ends up being like a job.

All this is hard enough but if, like my mother, you have two children to take care of it is really difficult. It was hard on my sister and I too. Your Nan comes over to get up for school, you get your own breakfast, wash up the bowl, clean the table and then get dressed, come home from school wanting to tell your mom about your day but you can’t because she is asleep. Can you imagine telling a small child they need to wait to see their mom, it is hard. We also we told that “if one day we can’t wake mommy, then we need to call Nan and she will come over.”

But saying all this I had a wonderful childhood. Not knowing if this week is your last gives Kidney patients a different way of looking at the world. Mom would wake up one morning and say “where do you fancy going?” and we would say “Blackpool” or somewhere and we would be off. We have all grown up really close because we had to. And now everything is going wonderfully.

If it was not for the lovely researchers looking into new ways for kidney patients to get a kidney transplant Mom would still be on the waiting list. You have no idea how much time and effort these people put it. My mom’s doctor/researcher would e-mail her while he was on holiday to check how she was.

So in order to say a massive thank you to them and to help them a little bit more I am spending 8 days with a group of people walking The Great Wall of China. I, along with the wicked step-mom am hoping to raise £5,600 for Kidney reasearch UK.

This blog will tell you about any fundraising events, how they went and hopefully I will be able to blog while on the wall to tell you how each day goes.

I hope you enjoy The Life and Times of a Charity Girl. x