Extreme Mother!

Rhodri and I had an exciting night last night!
There was a Charity event for the two charities of Children in Crisis and Right to Play which celebrated the recent efforts of Sabine, the Extreme Mother, who trekked across Greenland to raise money for these charities. Here is a photo from her blog..
Now, Rhodri and I are not usually the types who attend these sort of gatherings, especially when they are in ultra-posh neighborhoods such as Knightsbridge and the venue is adjacent to Harrod's! But on this occasion, Rhodri was invited to represent the Norwegian clothing company Brynje, which had outfitted Sabine and her two guides on this expedition, since the normal representative from this company couldn't make it to the event. Ever since Rhodri stopped working for Schlumberger in Dec 2010, he has been starting a business importing Brynje clothing to the UK, so being asked to represent them at this charity event was a great opportunity.

The event was from 6:30-9:00pm and there were about 80 people there, many from the upper echelons of society. The best known personality there was Sarah "Fergie" Ferguson, the Duchess of York. She is the patron and founder of the charity Children in Crisis, so she gave a speech and shared the evening with the rest of us. The evening was mostly just mingling and drinking champagne, eating canapes, and then the speeches by CEOs of the 2 charities, by the Duchess, and then by Sabine herself. Sabine showed a video and then talked about her expedition. After the speeches was the auction, which included such items as Sarena Williams' tennis racquet, a case of special wine, a photo shoot with OK! magazine, and a weekend of cross-country skiing in Norway.

Well, Rhodri bid once on the skiing in Norway but then stopped and the item started to stall out at quite a low (ok, relatively speaking!) price. That's when the auctioneer suggested that maybe the Duchess wanted to come along too? And she agreed to it so the auction price immediately doubled. This was the last item of the auction, so after it all finished Rhodri and I went right over to the Duchess and waited for a chance to speak with her. Rhodri introduced himself as the Brynje rep and asked if she was interested in being outfitted by Brynje for her upcoming x-c ski weekend. She was enthusiastic about it and so she and Rhodri agreed to liaise through Sabine to set up sizes and so forth. How cool is that?!?!?! When we first went up to the Duchess, she held out her hand for me to shake and I'm afraid I was probably a bit too vigorous and squealy-exciteable for the occasion. I just couldn't contain my excitement at meeting her!

I also spoke with a guy called 'Dag', the Finance guy 'Paul' and the CEO 'Koy' from Children in Crisis, and a bit with a Cricket player called Tony (who used to live near where we live now!). And we both spoke with Sabine, of course, and quite a bit with her Norwegian guide Petter. What a great evening! Before catching the train back home, we stopped at a pub to have a pint and wind down a bit.

And where were the kids all this time, you ask? Well, our friends Emma and Rob stepped in yet again and picked up the kids from school, fed and bathed them and let them have a sleepover at their house with Sophie and Oscar! That was Tryfan's first sleepover, in fact, and he was perfectly fine. Hurrah!
Sorry there are no photos to go with this post - I really wanted to take a photo during the evening but just couldn't bring myself to do it.