Gold postbox tour a charity fundraiser
FOR Paula Grant, the months of July and August are particularly poignant and by her own admission she usually spends days at that time of the year 'moping around' mourning the deaths of her two children.
FOR Paula Grant, the months of July and August are particularly poignant and by her own admission she usually spends days at that time of the year 'moping around' mourning the deaths of her two children.
Leigh had a heart defect and would have been 27 on 29 July, while Hayley, who would have been 29 on 4 August, had spina bifida.
However, this year Paula got so hooked on the Olympics and the Paralympics that she decided to embark on a journey for charity that would take her to every gold postbox in the British Isles – her Gold Box Journey.
Sark was the venue earlier this week, the 50th of more than a hundred gold postboxes she will visit, as the total includes both the Olympics and the Paralympics. Paula said she was absolutely overwhelmed by the friendliness of her reception.
As husband Andy was taking photographs of her, there was a special surprise when Pam Cocksedge, the grandmother of Sark's gold medallist Carl Hester, turned up to meet her.
I don't know which of the two was more excited, because Pam had just heard that Carl had won the British National Freestyle title – the seventh time he had done so and the 63rd national title in his illustrious career.
Earlier in the day Paula had enjoyed a carriage drive around the island and she said that seeing a dolphin on the journey from Guernsey had been pretty special. When she had posted her postcard in the golden box (something she is doing at all the 100-plus she visits) she was off to enjoy a Sark cream tea.
'This has been a wonderful day and we are certainly coming back to Sark,' she said.
The charities Paula is raising money for are the British Heart Foundation and Shine, a spina bifida organisation. But she stressed that while she would be grateful for all donations received, she also wanted those who support her journey to give to their own particular favourites if they wished.
Her adventures can be followed on her website, GoldBoxJourney.com, which has links to her comments and pictures on other social networking sites.
A few weeks ago I wrote about Jeremy La Trobe-Bateman's quest to raise funds to repair and restore La Mer Tower, a relic of the Napoleonic wars situated on Eperquerie Common at the north end of the island.
Speaking to him earlier this week, I heard that he has been promised donations which have already reached not far off the estimated £3,000 or so the repair will cost – a splendidly generous and typically Sark response, if I may say so.
F rom time to time the cost of living in Sark raises its often-less-than-pleasant head – a nine-mile journey is nothing on a motorway but it's pretty expensive when it's a stretch of clear blue sea.
Without pointing fingers at anyone (businesses here generally pass on what they have been charged) a 47kg propane cylinder costs £131.60, which is about 14.5% more than in Guernsey. However, and here's where it hurts, I looked on the internet for UK prices and found one site offering an online order at £65.09 including VAT.
On another site, one purchaser from the Outer Hebrides was moaning about the fact that he was paying £81 for the same thing.
Why is it that we in these islands are told it's the stretch of water between us and Britain that adds to our costs whereas other places in similar locations fare better?
