A Beginning

Four weeks ago, sitting in my sister’s house in London, I wrote out a roughshod profit/loss forecast for a planned fundraising party in aid of Yaung Ni Oo, the refugee school I’ll be working at on the border.

First, the worst case scenario... and alas my texas instruments calculator bleated out "£300" - causing an unfortunate feeling of nausea to grace, line and rumble down in the pit of my tummy. Kind of felt that having a party in London with the explicit purpose of raising money - and in doing so enlisting the help of many a brilliant helper friend and asking many a person to travel to it from places far and wide at their own expensive expense - didn't seem too sensible if this was to be the outcome...

So swiftly on to second the best (with not a hairy chest in sight, although at the time I was admittedly scoffing a squashed tomato): "£1000" Not bad, pretty good went the thoughts... but thoughts change fast and an equally nauseous nausea descended upon realisation that we needed to fill the venue, get everyone to buy ridiculous amounts of drink, and donate their lives away to get anywhere near this. eek!

But, with pessimistben's shouting of "cancel! cancel!" ringing in my ears, and ably assisted by a sister Katherine motivational tour-de-force (that's my sister, Katherine... I hadn't enlisted support from the local nunnery (but was beginning to consider this an option)), plans were hatched to take on this party and make something happen.

Plans were hastily hatched. The plan was afoot for a spectacular spectacular fundraising spectacular...

The Middle

You know, I don’t like middle bits. They’re the getting-it-to-happen bits that follow those (lovely, oh so highly enjoyable) idea bits. But I'm just not that good at all that nitty gritty organising.

The idea bit went something like: fundraising party drawing together far-and-wide-friends and interested folks for fun and frolicks and quirky edges with strong & positive message of freedom for you, freedom for me...

And the middle bit included such up down high & low lights as:

- 1064.5 hours designing invitations when 2 hours would’ve been fine;

- 123 trips to the post office to send said invitations (hi Marge, by the way, you’re great behind that counter, so swift with your stamp book);

- 149,000 hours of nail-biting because the venue (so boldly emblazoned on said invitations in a moment of over-confident rashness) hadn’t been confirmed;

- Sending out 49 million emails, 48.9 million of which were cheeky unsolicited pleas to friends of friends of my sister’s friend’s friend;

- 1 friend + accomplices ‘sorting’ the venue license quite brilliantly

- A £6079.00 telephone bill arising from the contacting of just about everyone I’d ever come in contact with to ask if they’d fancy coming along...

- 6079 brimming smiles for having the chance to get in touch with countless long lost friends

- 6079 pangs of guilt for realising I was doing so because of my my my party its all so me me me

- 1 friend + accomplices getting the entire tribal gathering of Toynbee Hall to show up to the party

- 1 friend + accomplices financing the buying of a thousand or so drinks for the bar, mostly er unflinching in his confidence that this shall be recouped

- Receiving 100 or so yes replies, 100 or so no replies, and being constantly caught somewhere in the middle (next to dear piggy) – complete with sinking-of-heart and heart-lifting-up-where-we-belong in equal proportion.

- 15 sickeningly creepy-crawly conversations with friends and strangers in desparate efforts to persuade them - by not very convincing means ("er It’ll be great! It’ll be positive! You’ll see! Pleeeease") - to sell themselves for money;

- 15 awesome folks who said they’d (er) love to be in the date auction;

- 15 panicked efforts on 09.10.04 to convince date auction damsels and dennis nordens that it’ll be alright on the night and they will be wondrous;

- 76.3 repeated and demanding phone calls to wonderful Burmese friends asking if they’d ‘sort’ the food, ‘sort’ the performers, ‘sort’ the guests... (and this they did, and then some!)

- 46 thoughts of why oh why am I sitting I a room hundreds of thousands of (okay, maybe a hundred) miles from London;

- 985 emails sent out asking for help with this, help with that – even for help with tit, help with tat;

- 657,000,567 hours spent downloading every party tune under the sun (or aside the singing bush) using a 56k modem (slower than a slow moving sloth which only just learned to move slowly) recorded onto 25 CD-Rs (20 of which corrupted on the attempt to burn the quantum leap theme);

- 69 calls on 08.10.04 to the intrepid DJ of the night promising the playlist was on its way;

- 38,000 sandwiches and cheesy pineapple chunks made at 6.59pm on day of party by my brilliant mom in spectacular-mom-party-organiser-supreme-mode; and

- 200-plus friends and friends of friends of friends making plans to come on down to a spectacular spectacular fundraising spectacular...

The End

Hopefully, a lot of fun (take a peek at some piccies here).

Certainly, a brilliant effort by all those who came – raising a whopping £2500 for Yaung Ni Oo.

Thankfully, it’s now over!

Kinda nervously, it’s time to get ready to leave...!

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SuperGorm using his famed red-eye-hypnotism technique to get partygoers to donate more more more... Nice tie, by the way, Supergorm.