Our year in review…
Well, here we are, already a quarter of the way through the year and the festive season is just around the corner. A wise man once said that life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop to look once in a while, you might miss it. However, I sometimes find that stopping to take in the sights is often just a good excuse to procrastinate and avoid doing anything constructive or useful. I certainly don’t need any encouragement to metaphorically take my foot off the accelerator pedal and coast a little.
After a quiet start to the year plans are coming together and we are happy to announce that the A Goldstitch Christmas 2024 fundraising is now open for business, and what better way to get the ball rolling than to provide a review of 2023 and give our thanks to everyone who generously made donations throughout the year.
Firstly, a quick reminder of why we started fundraising and what we have done since A Goldstitch Christmas was created in 2021.
Those who know me, or follow our blog, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram pages will already be aware, but anybody else may not know that I have cancer. I keep it pretty quiet, rarely even mentioning it. It’s not like I crave attention, or anything like that. I talk about it purely for the purposes of raising money for our festive fundraiser, raising awareness, and possibly receiving an invitation to appear on Richard Osman’s House of Games one day.
The story started in 2018 when I was diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer. It’s not the news that anybody wants to hear but between February and October of that year I had surgery to remove the tumour, four cycles of chemotherapy and was then given the all-clear to get on with my life. Things moved quickly, and whilst I knew that it was serious, I never felt particularly unwell. I was one of the lucky ones.
Fast forward just over two years, after regular scans, colonoscopies, and blood tests, and I received the news that an anomaly had been found. My lymph nodes around my bowel were enlarged and I would need to go through a series of tests to find out why. It could’ve been nothing, but they had to be sure that it wasn’t anything sinister. Sinister. A word that doctors use often in these circumstances. We know exactly what that means, and we’d appreciate a less ominous sounding term, to be honest.
The next few months were spent draining the resources of the NHS, my consultant booked me for every available test. To cut a long story short, none of them offered conclusive results, the only thing left to do was arrange a surgical biopsy. It was then that the diagnosis was confirmed, the cancer had returned. This time there was no tumour, the cancer was back, and it was in my lymph nodes, which made it a little more difficult to treat, and my oncologist only really had one option available.
So, in October of 2021 I began a two-year course of immunotherapy, a drug designed to work with your body to fight the cancer cells and keep the disease at bay. Rather than moan and groan about my predicament, feeling sorry for myself, I wanted to turn a negative into a positive, and the idea for A Goldstitch Christmas was born. We set up a JustGiving page and hoped to raise enough money to donate into our local food bank, but my friends and family supported our cause with amazing generosity. Together with the help of some local businesses we were able to do so much more than we had originally thought possible. And since then, we have continued to raise money to help raise a smile and spread some Christmas spirit during the festive season. To date we have raised more than £8000 in cash and donations which has been used to support a number of local organisations, providing hundreds of people with hampers, toys and gifts, selection boxes, shopping vouchers and more. We haven’t broken any fundraising records, but we hope that in our own small way we have been able to make Christmas a little easier for the people that we’ve been able to reach out to.
We want to thank everyone who has donated to our 2023 fundraiser, either donating via our JustGiving page or our website, we couldn’t have done any of this without you. Thank you to everybody who bought raffle tickets, cakes, Christmas decorations, t-shirts and tote bags, and tickets to our ghost hunt. Every penny that we have raised has gone into making a difference to people who would appreciate support during these tough times, and we cannot thank you enough for handing over your hard-earned cash. Thank you, thank you, thank!
We’ve also had some fantastic support from local businesses who have made donations of vouchers, cash and raffle prizes which has helped us reach our brilliant total for 2023. A big thank you must go to all of the businesses below who were kind enough to provide donations.
The White Hart Hotel, Hayle – Gloveman Supplies – The Regal Cinema, Redruth – St Austell Football Golf – Exeter Chiefs Rugby – Cornish Pirates – The Cornubia Inn – The Cornish Arms – Polygon Bear Design – LiveWest – Penwith Pitch and Putt – Highlanes Fish and Chips – Lasermaster.
We would also like to thank the Classic Cottages team who donated a massive £830 to help us reach our JustGiving target! We greatly appreciate the generosity shown by all of the businesses who have helped us in 2023!
Thanks also must go to Hayle Football Club who offered us a pitch for a cake and bake stall during the Manchester United Legends game held at the club in July 2023, and to our friend and baking legend, Becky, who baked an array cakes and cookies.
Our ghost hunt also helped raise a fantastic total too, Shawn Curnow and his crew gave up their time and arranged everything for us, we really appreciate it and hope that we might be able to arrange something for this year too.
We also received a couple of signed albums from Irwin and Al of The Hoosiers which were auctioned with all proceeds going towards A Goldstitch Christmas. The winner of the vinyl was from Phoenix, Arizona! Goldstitch, proudly doing its bit to spread the good word of The Hoosiers across the globe.
Irwin from The Hoosiers was also one of the first to record a video for our Christmas message too. Together with Janey Godley, Martin Harley, Joe Thomas, Kimberley Nixon, Clinton Baptiste, and all to a Christmas medley by Neil from Blue Nation. And not forgetting a massive highlight for us in 2023…a message from a member of the Christmas music triumvirate, the great Noddy Holder.
And we also received a video message for the lovely Ralf Little, and the very funny Troy Hawke and Angelos Epithemiou too! All the videos will be posted on the website soon!
And, of course, last but not least, a big thank you to my mom, who spent hours wrapping Christmas gifts that were donated into the Royal Cornwall Hospital. The paper cuts were all worth it!
Most importantly, your generous donations have gone towards helping some deserving people and organisations in 2023.
We delivered toys, games, books and chocolates to the paediatric ward at the Royal Cornwall Hospital at Treliske – all on behalf of Father Christmas, obviously. We dropped off some festive treats to the staff at the Headland Unit at the hospital too. We took toiletries and other items to St Petrocs, the charity fighting homelessness in Cornwall. We donated shopping vouchers into Hayle Food Bank, and posted Secret Santa gifts to people in the local community who had been nominated to receive something by friends or family. We donated cash to Hayle Day Care Centre when we heard that they were looking to buy a new TV, and we also made a donation to the Armed Forces and Veterans Breakfast Club.
All worthy causes and we’re really pleased that we can help out in our own small way!
This year we are going to continue with the fundraising and hopefully we’ll be able to raise a few more smiles at Christmastime again for the organisation above. This year we’ll also be donating into Childrens Hospice South West and we’ll have more details about that in the coming months.
So, all that’s left to say is a massive thank you to everybody who has contributed to our fundraising in 2023, without you all it would not be possible. We’ve been able to reach hundreds of people and hopefully made a small difference in their lives, raised a smile and spread a bit of Christmas spirit. Your support makes me all warm and fuzzy inside, don’t let my occasional grumpy demeanour fool you. It really does mean a lot.