25th June 2007 Received cheque from Mags and last Smartie Tube from Liz James. Paying in the last of the money tomorrow.

13th June 2007 Most of the sponsor money has been collected now. However, I won't have a final total until I go to Scotland next week. I have some money to collect in Prestwick and Edinburgh.

8th June 2007 Special Thanks to Alison Bridewell, Elsa Tuohey, Fi Downs, Jude Knight, Steve Walmsley, Rachel Ure, Mary Page, louise Gay, Graeme Scott and Lee Gilbert; who all seeked me out after I came back from the trek, to sponsor me.

1st June 2007 I have started to collect the pledges from around work but will need to finish off next week. Elsa, our phone engineer, hadn't pledged but took the time to find me and make a donation. Lee gilbert also found me at lunch and asked me to collect money from his office next week. Thanks to both of you.
My daughter Mags has been collecting in Edinburgh and she advises me she is sending £200 next week from colleagues at Ocean Terminal, Edinburgh. She will email me over the weekend with the names for the roll of honour.

29th May 2007 I returned from Peru yesterday to some nice donations. A full smartie tube of coins from Mum's friend Margaret, and a handsome contribution from my cousin Jim, via the justgiving website, takes the bottom line over six thousand pounds. What a great way to finish off the trip.

18th May 2007 My colleagues at the Malvern office sent me £25 in 20p coins today.
More fundraising from Nicola Biffen today, adding another £80 to the money collected by her dad earlier this week. Thanks a lot to the Biffens and to everyone who contributed at Porton and at Malvern
Sitting here packing on the last night before the trip starts, the current total stands at over £5,800. That's a fantastic response from everyone involved over the last year. I'll try my best over the next week not to let you all down. Thank you!

17th May 2007 Pam and Bridget took my sponsor form around Occupational Health at work and collected £90. Thanks to everyone who contributed.
Nobby tells me has some smartie tubes for me from my colleagues at Malvern. Nobby collected them on a visit yesterday but left them in his car so I can collect them tomorrow. Many thanks to Ivan, Tim and the rest of the team there.

15th May 2007 Kevin Biffen, from work, took a sponsorship form away to get some contributions from friends and family. I heard today he has collected sixty five pounds for me. Thank you Kevin.

4th May 2007 Mum also paid in £123 last week that she had collected from friends and neighbours in my home home town. She has been a great help all year despite some serious health worries of her own.

23rd April 2007 Nice contributions this week from Maggie Stokes, a runner in the London Marathon who took time out from training to contact me and from Steve Farley who sadly knows from personal experience, how good MacMillan Nurses are.
The Cake Sale at work has raised £156.25. Good news indeed. Thanks to Karen Ball and all her colleagues in the Library who organised it all.

13th April 2007 Another strong week with a hundred pounds donated by my customers at work, including three smartie tubes.

11th April 2007 I received the advertising pack from MacMillan and was a little disappointed. The badges, bunting and balloons were fine, but the posters and leaflets they sent were pretty poor. They sent 3 posters which were only A4 and were identical. Simlarly 4 A5 posters were identical and just too small. Nothing about Peru and no blanks, as promissed, on which to put our own messages. They only sent 6 leaflets. I will see if they can send more.

9th April 2007 I spoke to MacMillan last week and faxed over a request for some fund raising materials for use at the cake sale. They're going to send me balloons, banners, posters, leaflets and badges. The lady I spoke to said I'd receive them this week.

3rd April 2007 The Cake Sale has been confirmed as The 23rd April. All my colleagues and the staff in the Library have been asked to bake for it. I have produced posters, courtesy of the be.macmillan web site and have also printed out some fact sheets.

29th March 2007 I received €55 towards the fund which equates to around £35 after bank charges. A colleague, Tim Morgan, had the money left over after a trip and donated it rather than exchange it back to pounds.
A friend at work, Karen Ball, has offered to run a a bake sale next month, after reading the recent article in the company magazine. It will get good coverage and I expect a lot of people will turn up around 23rd or 24th April. The date is still to be confirmed.

7th March 2007 I received a very generous donation from my niece, Danielle, today. I also received more Aerobathon money so the fund total has now broken the £5,000 mark. The initial target was three thousand and I still have ten weeks to go. I have decided not to set a new target as I don't want to impose undue pressure on myself or the many people who already, and continue to, support me. I just want to repeat my heart-fealt thanks to each and every one of you.

28th February 2007 Wow! The final total for the Aerobathon was £679.85 Wallacestone Primary continue to amaze and inspire. The kids and the stafff have been generous and totally unselfish in their support over the last year. I don't know what I would have done without them. Thank you all.

23rd February 2007 A slightly disappointing final total for the Oscars sweepstake compared to last year's world cup sweepstake. Still it managed to add £80 to the fund and would have been more if I had organised myself better or found out that a colleague who was distributing the form in her building, went home Monday with a broken arm before actually distributing the form. I lost potentially thirty entries there.
There are still smartie boxes out there being filled. I got two back this week and know of three more being filled

19th February 2007 Started to distribute the Oscar Sweepstake forms at work. Used my colleagues, on-site newsgroups and previous supporters to make it widely available. Will hopefully start collecting money in tomorrow. I got the OK from Gary Hinton to use a litre of whisky he gave me for a second prize. He originally gave it to me to thank me for writing his web page but is happy for me to use it here to get more entries.

9th February 2007 I received word today that the Aerobathon this week at Wallacestone Primary raised over £400 pounds towards the Peru Trek. The sponsorship money is still being collected so a final figure is not available yet, but thank you everyone who took part.

7th February 2007 I set up a web site for a friend at work and donated the fee to the fund. You can visit www.karmacreatures.co.uk to see my handy work. The content is not finalised yet. The logo on the page is a temporary one until the professional logo is ready, and some pages need to be populated but I wrote the code.

3rd February 2007 After the success of the world cup sweepstake last year, I am doing an Oscars sweepstake. The oscars are revealed 25th February and I am arranging a sweepstake to guess the winners of each category. If I didn't catch you in person, feel free to fill out this form and send it back to me before 25th Feb 2007.

28th January 2007 The Aerobothon is scheduled for the first week of February.
Time for me start looking at the final push now that I am less than 16 weeks away. I need to follow up my press releases, talk to the in-house magazines and think of fund raising ideas to get the fund over the target line.

18th January 2007 Tim Healey, my boss' boss visited our site today and brought his full smartie tube. He has been and continues to be very supportive. This week he distributed smarties to the IS teams on the other sites on the contract and asked them to support me by filling them with 20p coins. He sees corporate responsibility as an important part of Serco's goals and would like to see other Serco staff getting involved in community based projects.

14th January 2007 I received a letter from Mrs Maconald, the head teacher at Wallacestone Primary confirming that Angus will get the proceeds of the Aerobothon. An Aerobothon is a giant aerobics session involving the whole school and sponsored for charity. Half the proceeds will go towards his trip to the rainforest in April and the other half to our Peru trip. Good luck to everyone taking part and remember those warm-up exercises.
I understand that he is also going sky-diving or parachuting in the next few months so he is going to be very busy indeed.

10th January 2007 Wallacestone Primary are holding an Aerobothon this term. More information about that soon.
Many thanks to Diane Stanton at work who is on her third tube of smarties.

23rd December 2006 Received one hundred pounds today from my youngest sister, Jill. She, her husband Brian, her daughter Robyn and her colleagues at Bank of Scotland, Ayr Branch have all been doing the smartie challenge. Thanks to all of you.

22nd December 2006 Wonderful news! Wallacestone Primary had a Christmas collection which raised £315 and it has all been given to Angus. This money includes a contribution from all the teachers; the money they saved from not sending xmas cards this year. Many thanks to Margaret MacDonald, Anne Kerr, Beth and all the teachers for their continued support.

21st December 2006 I had to reduce the current total figure this week. I was due a finders fee for introducing a new member of staff. However the award was found to be different on different sites so management decided to make it the same throughout the company. I received less than I originally expected and have had to reduce the contribution to the fund by £120. Let's be fair - Serco have been very supportive and have contributed a lot to the trek already.

15th December 2006 I paid in the cheque for Wallacestone Primary's Hamper Raffle this week. That takes the total paid forward to Macmillan, above the three thousand pound mark and guarantees participation in the trek. No backing out now!
I should point out that the "current total" figure on the web site includes all money collected or pledged whether or not I have received the cheque yet.

2nd December 2006 Mags, my eldest daughter, donated a Baxter's Food Hamper to Wallacestone Primary. It's raffle has raised £93 for the fund. Thanks again to Mags, Beth and all at Wallacestone.

19th November 2006 Talked to Beth this week. Wallacestone Primary are looking at more fundraising events this year which will help Angus. Nothing confirmed yet, but I hope to have more news soon.
Another good contribution on the way courtesy of Serco. I introduced a new member of staff back in May and my cash reward for this will be paid into the fund.

9th November 2006 Four tubes of smarties returned this week and a nice donation from Ann McAllister at work. I fixed the internet connection on her home computer and she donated to the fund and gave me a very nice jar of home-made curried apple chutney. Sorry Angus, you just won't like it; I'll just have to eat it myself.

3rd November 2006 Nigel Norman, my first employer in Wiltshire, donated generously through the Justgiving web site. I also received some cash donations when I was in Scotland for Anne's funeral and a couple of people told me that they had not brought flowers as they preferred to donate money to cancer charities instead. I expect they will be sent later via Mum, who has a number of pay in slips ready.

11th October 2006 Now that I have passed the original £3,000 sponsorship target figure I have decided to increase the target figure to £5,000. I think that is achievable given that the trip is still seven months away and considering the great support I have had from friends, family, work colleagues, Yipworld and Wallacestone Primary School.

6th October 2006 A friend at work, who would like to remain anonymous, was on a team building day out from work and collected £20, which he has donated to the fund. You know who you are! Thank you.

5th October 2006 Many thanks to Jeremy Turner from work, who today gave me a third smarties tube full of 20p coins. I appreciate your help, and the time and commitment you put into this.

30th September 2006 Visited Scotland this week and collected a lot of money on the way. Mum had over £160 from smartie boxes and over £60 from her loose change jar. We bagged it all up and paid in £230.40. She tells me she still has a few smartie boxes to collect.
I also visited Yipworld and talked to the kids about the trip. I was presented with £123 collected by the kids there and £92.76 from a recent princes Trust project. I plan to pay that in this week.
I visited Wallacestone Primary to thank the pupils for their efforts with the smartie challenge. We had a lively questions and answer session. I also met the teachers and talked to them about the trip and future fund-raising initiatives.
I'm pleased to announce that the initial £3,000 target has now been reached. Thanks to everyone who has contributed and helped. I don't plan to stop there. I will keep on going until May

12th September 2006 As you know, I have been contributing £40 per month; the money I save from giving up wine. I have decided that it will do more good in MacMillan's bank account than mine so I have paid up my monthly contributions from October to May, adding £320 to the fund.

1st September 2006 Emma Hodge from Yipworld took Robin and his sponsorship form this week and collected £75 from friends, family and neighbours. Thanks Emma.

29th August 2006 Thanks to Chloe Thomson, class 3H at Wallacestone Primary who continued to collect 20p coins over the summer holidays and handed them in to Mrs Boyiatjis on the first week back at school. Thank you Chloe.

28th August 2006 Received great news from Joyce Irving at Yipworld. The Princes Trust team in Cumnock had a "bag-pack day" at ASDA recently and raised another £180 in addition to the money they raised from washing cars last month. Nia and her team have been fantastic. Thanks again. Joyce has received these funds on my behalf and is also raising funds through sponsorship forms. I hope to be able to visit Cumnock in October or November and thank everyone personally.

21st August 2006 I was interviewed this afternoon by Rick at Castledown Radio. He read about the trek in the Salisbury Journal last week. You will be able to download a copy of the interview from their web site soon or listen to it here. They were interested in Angus and mentioned that they too have a mascott who would like to come along. More news about that in future entries. They would also like to run the story in "Pulse" a local free newsletter which is delivered to all houses in the local community. That will be invaluable in raising awareness and will help in future fund-raising events.

18th August 2006: Thanks to Jim Clement from Falkirk for donating on the web site. Jim is the father of my niece's boyfriend. Thanks too to Chris Rollings at work for a £20 cheque towards the smartie challenge.
The Cumnock Chronicle and the Salisbury Journal both carried my press release this week. I plan to scan those articles and use them to write to local businesses to ask for sponsorship.

4th August 2006: Nia Guffie, The Princes Trust Co-ordinator for Yipworld in my home town of Cumnock, Ayrshire contacted me. They had a car-wash day last week which raised a hundred pounds. They have also organised a fun day this Monday and hope to raise more. My thanks to Nia, Joyce and everyone at Yipworld for a great response and hard work on behalf of this great cause.

15th July 2006: Had a very nice contribution on-line from Cedric Fouache in France. I didn't previously know Cedric but he found the justgiving site and sponsored me. It's heart-warming to know that there are nice people like that out there. When I "googled" him, I found this site about buggy racing. Cedric competed in this event. I have emailed him back and hope to have more info and links soon.

30th June 2006: Met with senior management from Serco today and they were really supportive. Tim Healey says that rather than donate money to MacMillan, they will help by supporting me in whatever way they can to enable me to reach my target. I think that is a good attitutude and we had a good discussion. One of the ways in which he wants to help is to publicise and spread the smartie challenge to all DSTL sites. Serco will donate the tubes for this and he hopes to have this in place by the next managers meeting in two weeks time.

29th June 2006: Summer holidays have arrived for Wallacestone Primary and the Smarties Challenge has been brought to a close there. The final total of £774.90 for the school was a fantastic achievement for 7 weeks collecting. I would like to thank everyone for their help; not only the pupils and Mrs Boyiatjis, but also the school secretaries who have had the extra work of counting, bagging and banking for the duration of the challenge.
The DSTL company magazine came out today with a prominent article about Smarties on page 3. This has already prompted some returns and I will try to collect the remaining tubes by the end of July.

18th June 2006: Wallacestone Primary is breaking up for summer holidays in a couple of weeks. They had their school concert last week and Angus was on stage to publicise the trip. There were posters and reminders around the hall and the pupils will be asked to return their tubes by end of term, full or not.
The in-house magazine at work has gone to print, so hopefully will be distributed in the next week or so. It carries an article on my Smartie Challenge, which will hopefully remind people to fill the tubes and publicise the trip to a wider audience.
Joyce at Yipworld tells me that the kids are saving their loose change for me too.

9th June 2006: The world cup sweepstake is all organised. I sold 100 forms at £2 each, giving a prize fund of £100 and £100 to MacMillan. First Match is this evening and, if Brazil win the tournament, I will have an extra thirty pounds for the fund from a separate sweepstake competition held by the police post on site.
Wallacestone Primary went over the £300 pound barrier this week and the total fund broke the thousand pound mark. After just eleven weeks, I feel that is a good achievement.

2nd June 2006: An amazing day. The total jumped a full hundred pounds thanks to Smarties in Falkirk and me selling some IT equipment.

31st May 2006: Started a World Cup Guess The Score competition at work today. Like a sweepstake, except it is not restricted to 32 entrants so potentially higher prize money and profits available.
Advertised some surplus IT equipment on the company notice board and have sold £40 worth so far. Still waiting to sell other equipment worth £50.
Yipworld.com advertised my trip in the local newspaper in Cumnock, Ayrshire. It was a very nice description and included the web site addresses. I received a very good donation on the back of that from Mr Oliver Hughes. Thanks to him and to Yipworld for spreading the word.
Further Thanks to Jim Begg who has already donated money but has given me additional funds for walking boots and socks for my training. However I don't feel comfortable with this and have added all monies received into the fund total. I shouldn't benefit from people's generosity at the expense of MacMillan so I should pay for the kit myself.
Wallacestone Primary continue to excel themselves and have now collected in excess of £200. Thanks again to everybody there.

20th May 2006: Fantastic response from Wallacestone Primary. Only one week after delivery of the Smartie tubes, I already have ten tubes returned with coins. Thanks to everyone there.
Not such a good response from my raffle prize collection. Glasgow Rangers FC not only refused my request for a raffle prize but tried to turn it into a sales opportunity and wanted me to pay £100 for a signed shirt. I don't think they quite got the idea. Good luck to them in the UEFA Cup.

13th May 2006: All the Smarties have been purchased and distributed at Wallacestone Primary. Thanks to 4B (Four Best). The nursery class was not initially included but have expressed an interest in joining in so Mrs Boyiatjis (4B) will organise extra tubes as necessary.
Received a nice email from Yipworld in Cumnock, who would like to help me. I am waiting for further details from their Princes Trust coordinator.
I am planning a raffle later in the year and wrote letters to a dozen professional football clubs (local and UK wide) asking for a raffle contribution. Very nice rejection letters so far from Reading FC and Glasgow Celtic, though they were both supportive of the idea and my efforts. It's getting a bit late for Arsenal to offer me a couple of tickets to the Champions League final. They'd better hurry up :-)
Tracey at the staff canteen changed £60 pounds worth of 20p coins for me today. That's much easier than going to the bank and ensures a supply of 20p coins on site. I got permission to fly-post their tills and entrance doors with stickers reminding people to ask for 20ps in their change. Lesley agreed to print some stickers for me.

7th May 2006: The fund has broken through the £300 barrier so we're 10% of the way there.
The headmistress at Wallacestone Primary has given permission to promote the smartie challenge to the whole school. This is wonderful news. I will ask Lesley to change the label design Monday morning and send enough labels for 350 tubes. The end of term is only eight weeks away so time is of the essence.
I also got word that a youth centre in my home town may be interested in getting involved. Yipworld provide a host of services from nursery and after school care to youth club and evening classes. Emailed Joyce Irving at Yipworld to tell her about the trek and the fundraising to date.

30th April 2006: Mum did great work in my home town and sent me a cheque for £145. I also received my first returned tube of smarties full of 20p pieces. it held £12.60. Around 60 people have told me they are actively saving so I could be in line to collect up to £700 from smarties alone.
Giving up wine for the month wasn't so difficult, although I did open a bottle last night to mark the occasion :-) I plan to give up wine altogether and put the £40 per month I save into the fund.
Macmillan sent me a gift aid form in MS Word format, so I finally emailed all my address book on Monday. No response yet but it is early days. Maybe I should re-word the email for future releases. I am obliged to say that some of the cash raised goes towards the cost of the trip. However I plan to put that portion of the funds in myself, so that money raised from all other sources will go 100% to Macmillan. I need to make that more clear.

23rd April 2006: Almost all the smarties are distributed at work.
I received my first cash donation from work when Martin Clapham handed me his bowl of loose change, totaling£5.05
Mum has started to fund raise for me in my home town and is sending me £25 from her first day's efforts. She plans to talk to her tea-dance and osteoporosis groups too. In order to catch the rest of my home town, I will write to the local newspaper and pay my dues on friends reunited, updating my profile there to tell people about the challenge.

15th April 2006: The Staff restaurant at work ordered me four boxes of smarties from the cash and carry for cost price. I received them Wednesday and started to distribute them Wednesday afternoon and Thursday. However it was Maunday Thursday and much of the site was on holiday. I will continue to distribute next week. I did get a good response though and the labels were definitely a good idea.
I received the fundraising pack from Macmillan this week. There are a lot of good ideas in there, but I need to make a plan.
Asia offered to grow and sell plants in her greenhouse for me.
Missed out on a Grand National Sweepstakes at work because I thought about it too late, but it showed me to be more aware of potential situations like this. I plan to have a world cup sweepstakes next and more throughout the year.

8th April 2006: Received email from Nestle refusing to donate some smarties. They said that people might mistake twenty pence pieces for smarties and try to eat them, causing a chocking hazard. GOOD GRIEF!
Lesley has completed the labels for the smarty tubes. The font size and the amount of text we needed, meant that we had to use two labels per tube, but it seems to work, Distributed a handful on Friday but will prepare more at the weekend and distribute them this week. This idea will take a few months to build up.
I plan to write to local companies and larger organisations this week to ask for donations to a raffle I plan to have later in the year.
Told Wallacestone Primary that I will donate a prize for their biggest fund raiser.

4th April 2006:The fundraising page at Justgiving.com now stands at £70. from family alone. Thanks everyone.

Emailed Blue Peter last week to tell them about the trek and suggest they might want to talk to the school. I received a nice email back today. "We can't make any definite promises to use your idea, however we'll certainly keep it in mind for the future".

Nestle make Smarties but they plan to replace the tubes with Hexagonal boxes. I emailed Nestle today to ask them where I can buy the old style tubes. I asked them if they would like to donate some tubes for this trek. I hope they reply soon.

Lesley at work has kindly offered to design and print labels for the smarty tubes, to remind people about Macmillan

1st April 2006: I have developed this web site and hope to have it finished by Sunday evening so I can start to advertise what I am doing. This site together with the justgiving site will be a good way to publicise the cause.
My Brother-in-law is bringing a wholesale sized box of Smarties at the weekend. I plan to give them out to friends and challenge them to fill them with 20 pence pieces. Apparently you get up to £14 in a tube.

30th March 2006: I set up a page at www.justgiving.com to organise the collection and reclamation of tax of sponsorship monies received. I also emailed Roland in the Personnel Dept at work to ask if they will consider matching any donations I receive. I asked Alison if I need permission to collect around work.