Although its title would suggest otherwise, this blog post is not an advert for a sofa or a carpet company offering their wares at cut prices only for the month of June.
It’s actually about a crazy month of fundraising. Most of which was totally unplanned.
I had one event scheduled for June – the Royal Sutton Fun Run – through which I hoped to raise lots of awareness and around £1000 for Brain Tumour Research.
By mid April my to-do list, in terms of tasks related to this event, looked a bit like this:
- Work out the best way to construct a massive top hat.
- Find someone to sponsor the cost of constructing the massive top hat.
- Find a place to construct the massive top hat.
- Construct the massive top hat.
- Acquire a suitable mode of transportation to get the massive top hat to Sutton Coldfield.
- Walk 8.5 miles around Sutton Coldfield with my team, appropriately named The Pink Mad Hatters, which consisted of 14 other people and a dog, carrying the massive top hat.
- Deconstruct massive top hat.
- Go to the pub.
- Go home.
- Relax for the rest of June.
In addition to this, I had Eli’s 6th birthday party to organise which involved creating a ridiculously large birthday cake to fit on all the Mario and Kirby figures I had been modelling for the past few weeks. AND I had to pack everything for a weeks holiday in Wales where we were planning to drive immediately after the party.
Unbelievably, most of the above happened pretty smoothly.
I had a list of materials and a plan for making the hat. My very generous friend Emma and her family had agreed to allow me to construct it in their garage and to store it there for a week to keep it secure and dry until the day of the Fun Run. My amazing brother-in-law Ade stepped in to help with transportation. I put out a message on Facebook to see if a local business would be happy to sponsor the cost of the materials and had three offers of support within 10 minutes!
The first offer came from an old colleague I taught with at Holly Hall School for a number of years, Matt Webster, who left teaching to establish the supply teaching agency, Top Up Teachers. Matt very generously offered to pay for the cost of the materials I needed to make the hat and Jason Newton, the husband of another ex-colleague (Pam) and owner of Omega Scaffolding Ltd, offered to fund the cost of 15 smaller top hats for everyone to wear on the day!
It was all going so well. Too well.
Something had to go wrong.
And it did.
The construction did not go to plan.
The heavy duty cardboard I had been hoarding in my garage for the last few months which I planned to use for the brim of the top hat was just that tiny bit too small and had gone a bit floppy.
There was no way it was going to be robust enough. It would very likely have broken to pieces at the end of the first mile – IF it had even lasted that long. I wasn’t going to be able to use it and at that point I didn’t really have anything else to use for the main structure of the hat.
This realisation occurred whilst I was standing in the garden on a lovely sunny day. And to be honest, in that moment I was filled with sudden, massive anxiety about what I was going to do! I had only left myself four free days for construction and it was all going – for want of a better phrase – tits up!
I stood in the garden, one hand on hip and Stanley knife in the other and muttered the words that my dear old Dad shouts out when his latest DIY project is not going to plan:
‘Shit and bugger!’
It didn’t really help the situation but it did make me feel a tiny bit better.
Then I put plan B into action: Operation Call-Dad-and-Persuade-Him-to-Help-Me-Sort-It-Out.
This is the man who constructed a 6ft Disney Castle for me at two weeks notice as a photo backdrop for my Fake Fiftieth fancy dress party.
If there was any man up for the job, it was him.
Turns out he’d already anticipated that this was going to happen and had conjured up a plan to help ‘just in case.’
So we bought some plywood.
Dad cut it out with some kind of power tool.
It went fine.
Not a ‘shit’ or a ‘bugger’ was uttered.
We spent the next three days sticking card to plastic tubing with duct tape and then we covered it all with pink vinyl wrap. It looked pretty good.
Then we went to Wales and had wonderful time in the sunshine celebrating Eli’s actual birthday and returned home a few days before the Fun Run so that I was able to laminate signs and stick them on with LOTS of sellotape.
It’s probably a little boring to talk about the whole process in such detail but sometimes I’m not sure people realise how much goes on behind the scenes for a fundraising event like this. They see me doing stupid things like walking 8.5 miles carrying a massive hat, dressed up in silly clothes and it all seems easy and fun. But there’s often an awful lot of planning, preparation, stress, worry and sacrifices that are made in order to pull off these events. And it’s not just me who puts in the hard work or makes the sacrifices. It’s my family too. They deal with my stress and they try their best to help in any way they can to make it all work. And they do it all out of pure love, because they know how important this cause is to me.
Take my Dad, for example, who is nearly 70 and has loads of problems with his health. He gave up three days and put in a lot of physical effort to help me when my ideas were not going to plan. My brother-in-law got up at 6am on his only day off to drive a van to Sutton Coldfield. We cut our holiday with our six-year-old short by three days so that I would have enough time to prepare everything. Then there are the endless emails, messages, organisation that happens months in advance of the actual event that stress me out – and it’s Luke who has to put up with that.
So I’d just like to take the time to say a MASSIVE thank you! Not only to the people who walked with me on the day of the Fun Run but to the people who are always there, always helping, always ready to step in at a moment’s notice to help me with raising money and awareness for this cause – you know who you are.
The day of the Fun Run all went fairly well: the weather was great, the interview with Tracey at the start was fine; the hat stayed together for the whole race; loads of people offered their support with donations, giving out water and sweets, general clapping and cheering when we passed by (some children were even squirting water at the runners to cool them down!) In fact, apart from me getting hit in the eye by a stupid kid with a water pistol it was relatively good fun. I also forgot to take the Brain Tumour Research T-shirts for everyone that I’d spent an hour ironing the night before!
Although I had people helping me to carry the top hat swapping around periodically so that everyone didn’t have to bear the load for the whole way, I actually DID carry the hat for the whole 8.5 miles. Sometimes I even jogged with it! I have to say that I was expecting to really struggle (this is coming from someone who basically does no exercise, ever) but it wasn’t as difficult as I had imagined. The pain hit me later when I sat down at the pub for half an hour and struggled to get back up. And then I had to lie in bed for a long time for the next couple of days.
But it was totally worth it because we raised…
£2915.39
Specsavers Sutton Coldfield and Mere Green raised over half of that total. Andrew Pennicott and his staff, who were participating with their own team, chose to offer their support to Brainstorm. They were also absolutely lovely and their assistance on the day and the amount of money they raised was greatly appreciated.
Great. All done. That was it for June. Time to relax right?
Well as it turns out yes. Because although June was crazy, everything else that happened is something that I cannot claim any credit for.
David Harris was the next to contact me with his plans for another epic cycling challenge. I should say, the AMAZING David Harris who, having already raised nearly 4k for Brain Tumour Research with previous challenges, decided to try to ride 250 miles on the longest day of the year from sunrise (4:45am) to sunset (9:35pm.) That’s a long time riding a bike! Well he managed 224 miles and raised nearly another £4k! What an achievement! David was supported for 25 miles of this by Deb Gascoyne who is the excellent not-so-new-anymore fundraising manager for the West Midlands for Brain Tumour Research and has also raised lots of money for charity with similar epic cycling challenges. Just to be clear, I offered zero support with this, apart from sharing a few Facebook posts, because although I am able to ride a bike, I can’t really get up a hill on the canal towpath without getting off and pushing.
Next up was the FABULOUS Brain of Stourbridge Quiz Night held on 23rd June and organised by Interact, the wonderful student fundraising team at Old Swinford Hospital School.
Aside from blagging a few prizes for the raffle and flogging tickets, I didn’t have to do much at all! The whole event was organised by Interact who did an absolutely marvellous job.
So overall, a great month for fundraising – a total of just over £2900 raised from the Royal Sutton Fun Run, plus £3840.13 from David Harris. We don’t have the exact figure for the quiz night yet but that’s expected to be in excess of £1300. That’s over eight thousand pounds, which is about enough to sponsor three days of research at one of Brain Tumour Researches dedicated research centres.
One of those days could be a day where a breakthrough is made; one small new piece of knowledge that could lead to a new discovery that could eventually lead to something big.
Every single day counts.
So massive thanks as always to the people who donated money to support one of these events/challenges. You ARE making a difference.
Special thanks to the people below for going above and beyond to help me with this cause:
My Dad.
Andrew Pennicott and the team at Specsavers Sutton Coldfield and Mere Green.
Tracey Spare – event director of the Royal Sutton Fun Run who allowed me to start the race this year.
Matt and Julie Webster at Top Up Teachers.
Jason Newton at Omega Scaffolding Ltd.
Paul and Emma Kilbride.
My sister and her husband Adrian.
David Harris.
Wendy Apperley and the Interact fundraising team at OSH (including the fabulous catering team who dished up a marvellous curry for over 100 people)
Anyone who donated a raffle prize for the Brain of Stourbridge Quiz Night.
Everyone who walked with me and kept me in jolly spirits on the day of the Fun Run.
We have lots of plans for the summer which involve travelling and spending time with family and friends so I’m going to have a little bit of a break from fundraising for a few months. But you can guarantee I’ll be cooking up my next crazy plan so watch this space!
In the meantime, if you fancy donating to either The Pink Mad Hatters or David Harris then links are below.
xx
Katie Smith is fundraising for Brain Tumour Research (justgiving.com)
David Harris is fundraising for Brain Tumour Research (justgiving.com)
Babies, Books and Brain Tumours 