Art exhibition and car troubles

James

Jul 04 |13:32

Last Updated on Mon, 05 Jul 2010 11:25

Art exhibition and car troubles

Last night was the Scilly Art exhibition - a fundraising showcase of local talent, both established and undiscovered. The idea of Jo & Jane Ash, all local island artists were invited to submit a piece of work to the exhibition, held at the New Inn restaurant. The evening was a fantastic success, with most the room completely full within half an hour of opening. The wine flowed freely (well, £2 donation per glass) and the fantastic canapes (organized by Pete Marshall) went down a treat.

The work on show was incredible - I was amazed by some of the talent from such a wide range of people; paintings and sketches, jewellery and silver work, glass and ceramics, felt and beach finds. Steve Ash's woodwork seemed to be particularly popular, having sold out within a short time of opening!

We asked each artist to donate 50% of the sale price to our charity, the Cystic Fibrosis Trust; some came back and donated 100% of the amount to us, which is an amazing contribution to our fundraising total. Jo Ash has now counted up the amount sold, and comes to an incredible £2442.85!

We still have a number of exhibition items to sell. They are still being shown at the New Inn for the next week, so please do pop in and have a look if you're around. These will also be catalogued and put up on this website, for you to buy online! We'll let you know as soon as that happens. James, Will & Nick send their sincere thanks to everyone involved in this fantastic fundraising event - Jane Ash for the idea, Lisa Roberts and Jo Ash for the organising, Rachel, Ellie and Pauline for their assistance, the artists for donating, and the buyers for buying! This is a great amount to add to the Cystic Fibrosis Total. Also a big thank you to Robin Lawson and the New Inn staff for their help.

We're still waiting for our Scilly Mission merchandise, both our team kit and those for sale to you all, but should be here very soon. The Tresco Triathlon preparations are in full swing, and we're now praying for a dry and still afternoon for the event (in particular the swim). Radio Scilly have been great in spreading the word about the rally and the Tresco Triathlon, and James has been testing his radio voice in a regular basis. We still have a completely full field of competitors, yet are still getting more applications. The response has been phenomenal - if all goes well on the day, we could quite possibly make this an annual event!

James, Will & Nick have been busy buying everything they need for the rally - everything from the equipment list, plus a lot more. The last two tents have been bought, as have all the other bits and bobs. Crazy amount will be squashed in to Pete the Saxo - we'll make a little video of our repacking efforts very soon, in the aim to highlight the ridiculous amounts we have to carry...

On the subject of Pete the Saxo; he isn't too well. We went to move the car from outside of it's public display parking spot (aka outside the shop), and we discovered Pete the Saxo had a flat battery. After a push start, we drove for 15 minutes around the island, aiming to get some juice in the battery. Had we left lights on? Was something on when it was supposed to be off? Or is it more than this? After we stopped the engine, our fears were realised - nothing in the battery.

A dodgy battery? Yet MORE alternator issues? Or could it be something else? Who knows; we certainly don't. It looks to be a job for our engineering wizard, Nick Shiles, who's able to fix pretty much anything. Anywhere. Ever. He's that good.

Just over a fortnight until we leave the island - our hunt for Visas are going well. Mongolia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan are in the bag. Russia & Uzbekistan are in the process of being acquired (leaving it to the last minute, as ever!). We're hoping that the mailbags of the postlady will be bursting at the seams with the dozens of things ordered over the last few weeks; no doubt we'll be leaving the island without a few key items, but we'll have a few days on the mainland to pick these up.

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