The Amazing Hursts....continued

Wow. Including gift aid the total raised from Simon & Christine Hurst's 25th wedding anniversary sacrifice stands at a staggering £710.89. Fantastic.

Today is the actual day of their anniversary so huge congratulations to them both. And sorry for the embarrassing speech on Saturday.

Simon told me that they had a romantic supper a deux and al fresco, to mix foreign accents, in their recently made-over garden so the magic is clearly still there after 25 years. Congratulations - and thanks - again.

The cumulative amount raised has now burst through the £3k barrier and I'm energized to really attack the (ridiculously ambitious) target of £25k over the remaining months. Watch this space....

A couple of other snippets of info:

• Thanks to Jon for bringing to our attention the program on Everest tonight. Frostbite, death, oedemas, avalanches...really encouraging. The colour drained from Mrs M as we watched it
• Thanks to Sarah from the anniversary party for her useful advice from her Inca Trail experience: eat a huge breakfast; eat lots all day every day; don't take Nurofen, it makes you sick at altitude - take Paracetomol; curb your competitive instincts and take time to smell the roses, metaphorically: the camp is in the same place each evening, whether you get there first or last. Enjoy the whole experience, don't rush it. Thanks, Sarah

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save

Will Rogers

The Amazing Hursts

I wrote a couple of months ago about an amazing offer from our very good friends Simon & Christine Hurst: for their 25th wedding anniversary party they asked everyone to make a donation to World Vision, rather than give them personal presents. See, I told you it was amazing. And generous, and selfless, and not a little humbling.

Well, the party was last night at their beautiful home in Sussex. 50+ people came to a great barbecue, ate mountainously, drank copiously, enjoyed Simon's eclectic music selection, marvelled at Christine's impressive garden make-over and generally celebrated their silver wedding in suitable style.

Simon had also rigged up a nostalgic continuous film show on a wide-screen TV, with photos from scarily hirsute university days, that fateful day on 12th September 1981 and many memorable occasions in their life during the intervening 25 years. (Quite glad you've lost the beard somewhere along the way, Simon).

Their son Alex and his friends were excellent bar stewards throughout the evening, and daughter Clare and her friend Renee press-ganged everyone on arrival to cough up for the raffle. A great team effort, with help from friends, neighbours, Christine's sister Pauline and her husband Richard with the huge amount of preparation needed to make it all happen so successfully.

So far their generous idea has raised £249.24 for World Vision, with hopefully more online donations to come from people who were cajoled into taking away a note of this blog address and a steer to the online charity site linked on the right hand side of this article: Sponsor us here.

I'll update the total later this week and see if my camera upload thingy is working so that I can add some photographic flavour to the words in this article.

For now a huge thank you to everyone involved with the party, to anyone who donated and especially to Simon & Christine for their truly generous and thoughtful inspiration. A simple bowl inscribed by everyone last night is hopefully a very small memento of a great party and something to look back on over the next 25 years.

Happy Anniversary on Tuesday!

(if you were at the party and have got this far without falling asleep please feel free to post a comment by clicking on the comments link at the end of the article)