I know this is unusual, but we're raising money to create sports scholarships at Rosemead preparatory school.

Our plan is to create a pot of money to fund a year's worth of sports scholarships in years 3 to 6, and the school has committed to continue funding sports scholarships on an ongoing basis.

No-one's going to give us money for doing nothing, so we thought we'd do a big challenge like swimming the Channel!

We have six swimmers and two reserves:

Lynne Barry - staff
Clive Broadbent - parent
Fiona King - staff
Debbie Louks-Middleton - staff
Orlaith Richardson - parent
Alexandra Woods - parent
Andy Dorrett (reserve)
Steve Dorrett (reserve)

3 parents and 3 staff have signed up for the swim. And we have Andy and Steve as reserves. Andy and Steve aren’t Rosemead people, but they deserve a special mention because they’ll be doing all the training and preparation, knowing that they’re unlikely to get to do the final event.

Who are the other crazy swimmers? Orlaith (pronounced Orla) swims twice a week with the Saxon Crown swimming club, Alex was probably born in the sea, Fiona is Rosemead’s Director of Physical Education (need I say more?), Lynne rides a fixie (definitely hard-core), Debbie is a bit of a dark horse (wanting to prove herself with the biggest challenge of her life), and then there’s Clive (who's looking forward to the day when pensioners doing breaststroke no longer overtake him).

We’ll be doing the swim next year. Our swim window is between Thursday 16 July and Monday 20 July 2015. That’s a year of training. We’ll be going through a lot together, and we’ll certainly know each other better by the time we finish.