World Wide Knit in Public Day

Well, WWKIP day has been and gone and a jolly hot day it was too! We were scheduled to hold our collection in the afternoon so I was worried about where on earth I would be able to park that didn't cost a fortune - town centre car parks charge extortionate prices for a long stay. I headed along Marina Drive getting more and more despondent as every space was taken. I turned around at the very end, heading back towards town and was just about to give up hope when I espied a parked vehicle with its engine running. I pulled alongside to see that the driver was just waiting to finish his ice cream before moving off and so my luck was in and I managed to park up - about 100 yards from the Pier where I'd arranged to meet Paul and Sarah.

It wasn't long before I met Sarah's mum and dad who'd travelled by bus and then Paul and Sarah arrived on the tandem.
Here we are outside the Brighton Pier. I sat on the back of the tandem and pedalled for a bout 2.5 hours whilst knitting using the lovely purple yarn provided by Sue at Kangaroo but my heart really wasn't in the knitting part as my knitting mojo has deserted me at the moment.

Mike had to work so couldn't be with us but Sarah, her mum and dad stood around in the intense heat with their collecting tins and managed to collect £127.56 whilst the Kangaroo team collected an additional £50.24 at the Lewes carnival. For anyone who's never collected in this way it is jolly hard work and there are so many rules and regulations to follow - you mustn't approach people or shake the collecting tins, you must stay in one designated area between specific times. It's mostly thankless work but every so often someone will make a donation and thank you for doing it and that makes it all worthwhile.

It was very busy (as one would expect for a seaside town on a hot day!) and Paul had his work cut out to avoid all the pedestrians who just walk out in front of you on the cycle track. On several occasions he nearly had a knitting needle up his bum!

I was very impressed that Simon, a photographer from The Argus newspaper managed to spot us and we ended up being featured as Picture of the week!


We encountered many different people as Brighton attracts hen parties, stag parties, street entertainers and people hawking tourist souvenirs out of suitcases before the Police move them on. A very nice young man gave us this little card about World Naked Bike Ride day and the very thought of that saddle on my bare bits made me laugh out loud - eurgh!

We were entertained by a man dressed as a clown, playing a tuba whilst balancing on stilts. The only trouble was his repertoire was rather limited and when you'd heard "Liberty Bell" for the 20th time it did begin to irritate! We also encountered a group of men celebrating a gay civil partnership. The 2 men making their commitment were dressed as pantomime dames and looked very fetching. They asked us if they could sit on the tandem and have their photo taken and Paul was very enterprising and asked them all to make a donation which they duly did, netting us an additional £12 by my reckoning. Sadly we didn't get a photo as I hadn't taken my camera with me.

The other thing was that a photographer from The Argus popped along to take some photos for an article that Siobhan had written about us so hopefully that will have gained some more publicity for the Alzheimer's Research Trust.