One Day To Go!

Just a quick reminder of all the times, rules etc. for the 24 Hour Piano Marathon:

Venue: Evesham Tesco, and streamed live to this blog!

Start:  12 Noon, Tuesday 5th June

Finish: 12 Noon, Wednesday 6th June 

Breaks: 2.5 minutes per hour = 1/24 hours in total, to be used for toilet breaks and the occasional rest. Bites to eat and sips to drink will be taken in as short a time as possible between pieces.

Now all that needs to be done is practice, wish me luck!!

24 Hour Piano Marathon Update

     Only 3 days to go! Today I went to Vale Pianos to finalise the arrangements for Tuesday, you can see a photo of me playing one of their pianos below, unfortunately space requires a smaller electric piano to be the one I play at Tesco...

    

 In the last few days there has been a steady trickle of publicity, first was the Coventry Telegraph last Tuesday, which was followed by the Evesham Journal on Thursday, and most recently was the Leamington Courier yesterday (photo, right). Hopefully there will be more to come!

     Now all that need to be done is to make signs and prepare all the other little things such as nibbles. If everything goes to plan the marathon should be streamed straight to the blog, watch this space!

24 Hour Piano Marathon Progress

     Things  are definitely moving on, I have started fundraising and have already got over £300 worth of pledges, many thanks to everyone who has sponsored me so far! Now with under just over a week left I'd better get practising...

     The piano marathon also marks a significant time regarding the trip as 5th June is exactly one month until the group departs and also is the day after the Queen's Diamond Jubilee I hope you'll keep in mind my comparatively modest feat of endurance. The plan is to stream the piano marathon online (probably just audio) but unfortunately the only way that seems to work is through my desktop, so hopefully between now and then we will have got it working, fingers crossed! Either way I'm sure it's going to be exciting and memorable, for te right reasons hopefully....More updates soon!

24 Hour Piano Marathon

      As you may remember last April I successfully completed my 12 hour piano marathon from my home through a web cam link to this blog. I would just like to thank everyone again who helped me then for making it such a success! It was a really challenge and I was glad to have finished it. But this year from 12:00 on 5th June to 12:00 on 6th June I will be attempting to not only keep my concentration for 24 hours (something we teenagers are not particularity well known for) whilst also staying awake (something perhaps teenagers are more infamous for). That is...a 24 hour piano marathon! The location this time will be at Tesco in Evesham, hopefully it will be streamed online again but I'm not sure how logistics would work at the moment. Arrangements have changed so much in the last two months and with just under two months to go I'm hoping that they won't change much from now but if they do, I'll keep you posted!
      Things are moving very quickly at the moment with exams, preparations for the trip and other time consuming things life no doubt will bring up. This doesn't leave me with much time between now and the Piano Marathon so wish me luck!.........

Rotary Club Presentation Sucess

     Last Thursday, 23rd February, I attended a meeting of Southam 2000 Rotary Club to give them a presentation about what I am going to be doing in Tanzania this July. I learned a lot from them about their charitable efforts such as their recent drive to eradicate polio with vaccinations in India. I hope they leaned a lot about my plans for the trip, the questions asked by the Rotarians were thought provoking and engaging. 
      On the subject of vaccinations I had my last two yesterday. The trip does seem to be well and truly closing in, as too does the fundraising. With the kind donation from the Rotary club I now have raised almost £2,000 since I started almost exactly a year ago. Not that much further to go, and with my upcoming Piano Marathon II, hopefully running for 24 hours, I will be able to make another large step towards my final payment. The arrangements for this piano marathon are being finalised at the moment and I will post updates as this develops.

     Many thanks to Southam 2000 Rotary Club once again, I'll now have to ensure I bring back enough memories and photos to show how their kind donation has gone towards this trip.

Upcoming Rotary Club Presenation

     To start the new fund-raising year off I will be presenting the trip and it's objectives to the Rotary Club of Southam 2000 and hopefully generating much needed find-raising. This will be on 23rd February, so exactly one month away! Here is a link to their website's programme of events. At school there is a pre-expedition meeting tomorrow too where I can get some more up-to-date information of the projects and what we will be doing there. Things are moving along quite quickly now, especially as the blog's title now matches the year...

Anyway I must get back to my revision now, GCSE exam tomorrow!  

I'll keep you posted...

Christmas Cracker 10k

     Well I did it, braving sub-zero temperatures and dodging icy puddles for a time of 52:16, on the left you can see me just after I finished wearing the Camps International t-shirt. It was a challenge but successful hour of endurance. Thanks to all who have donated through this event.

     Another, related, fund-raising event recently was selling programmes of the ESAA cross-country competition at my school last weekend. Hopefully that's another £30!

     There probably won't be another post before Christmas, so I wish you a merry one!