Wednesday Wanderers is the name we’ve given ourselves because we’ve developed this habit of wandering around the various roads and paths of West Swindon on Wednesday lunchtimes.  As much as we enjoy plodding around in the heat and rain, we thought it might be good fun to run 10km and a suitable event was found, the Bromham Pudding Run; the deal being we run 10km and if we finish we are entitled to claim/devour a little Christmas pudding.

 

Earlier this year our dear friend Lou (Louise McDermott) sadly succumbed to an illness which tragically cut short the life of someone who was very important to many of us for several different reasons. One thing we all remember about Lou is her amazing ability to pursue her goals and ambitions, whether it be trekking to the top of Mt Kilimanjaro, or helping someone with day to day issues. Two weeks before she died, she somehow managed to complete a gruelling 5km walk which is simply remarkable given the day before she could barely walk 5 paces.

 

Dorothy House was able to help care for Lou, her family and friends at a time when it was most needed, both physically and emotionally. Perhaps you or someone you know and love is only too acutely aware of what support the Hospice Care movement can provide but unless and until we’ve realised for ourselves just how important such care is, it is difficult to put the value of this support into a few simple words.  Maybe we need to spend a few minutes checking this out for ourselves, chatting with one another to understand how important this is.

 

Hospice support is not directly funded by public finance, it is not part of the NHS and their very existence relies purely upon the donations received through fundraising efforts, giving schemes etc. We would encourage you to think about how you might be able to support your local hospice. In entering for this run we thought we would try to raise a few bob for Dorothy House in memory of our dear Lou and if you would care to donate to this and are a UK tax payer, we would be absolutely delighted if you would take up Mr Osborne’s kind offer and ‘gift aid’ your donation. This is because Mr Osborne has agreed to allow Dorothy House to reclaim some of the tax that we’ve already paid him and we think that if Dorothy House can recover £12.50 for every £10 given then that is good!

 

Any words or encouragement or even abuse for what we planning on doing will be welcome; for us there may be some fun, pain, joy and sadness in our efforts, but provided the event goes ahead we will enjoy eating our puddings and as we do so we might be thinking of a certain someone referring to us as “numpties”, and then we’ll smile.