What a mad week. I am still recovering from it all!
The start of the week was filled with final preparations, school talks and radio interviews- all great fun, particularly making the West Hull Community Radio presenter eat various dodgy ‘green’ flavoured cakes live on air…..
After 3 months of hard-work, finally, The World’s Biggest Coffee Morning was with us! And what a great day it was too.
We challenged The Lord Mayor of Hull to attend as many coffee mornings as possible in 6 hours… The current record was set in 2011 (I believe in Lancaster), where 28 coffee mornings were reached, HOWEVER, we only found out the other day that they had 2 cars… !! So we accepted the challenge, thinking we would wipe the floor with them (we did), but did not realise just how manic the day would be!
I was lucky enough to chaperone the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress of Hull, and got to sit up front with the Driver in their fancy car! So far so good. We started our tour of coffee mornings at The Hull College Student Union before whisking off to various other places in Hull and Cottingham. We went to a complete range of places including Npower, Gymophobics, Barclays, Kingspan Access Floors, The Queen’s Centre at Castle Hill Hospital, a dance studio, a pub (at 10am…) and lots of others including some private houses.
It was such a wonderful day. I really enjoyed meeting lots of the hosts and supporters, and it was really special to see how they held their event. Each one was completely different which was great. What got to me the most was to not only see how so many people support Macmillan, but how much it meant to them to have someone from Macmillan appear and say thank you! It was truly special. Several hosts went into meltdown mode when The Lord Mayor appeared in their living rooms…. That was pretty funny!
It was an absolutely insanely rushed day trying to get round to them all- we managed to do 7 in the first hour which was an incredible start! We had a few issues which held us up including traffic, and The Lord Mayor struggling up a mammoth flight of stairs (before we realised there was a lift after all!!) but that aside, we managed to attend 29 different coffee mornings, in 6 hours. What a massive achievement!
I feel that I need to point out that I only had one cake and NO tea or coffee the whole way round!!! When I got to the final coffee morning I put my feet up and tucked into a massive slab of chocolate cake and a steaming cup of tea. By the time we finished however, I think we were ALL ready for a glass of wine or two!
So that was my coffee morning experience, and what a thoroughly enjoyable one it was too. Now I only have 2 days left of my internship before I am off onto the next chapter. I cannot believe how quickly time has gone! So here marks the end of my blogging as a Macmillan Intern. I hope it has given a varied insight into the type of things you get up to with Macmillan, and good luck to anyone applying for the scheme- it is rewarding, and fantastic, so do get stuck in!
Ps. Please click the link to view all of the pictures from the above challenge-proof we did it!
Below is the first picture of the day.
Sophie x
