Oranges and Jelly Babies

Last Sunday I went along to the Great North Run to support the thousands of runners by giving out Oranges and Jelly Babies.  My brother-in-law, Craig was running to support the North East Trust for Aphasia and completed the run in a brilliant 1hour53 minutes – it’s not too late to sponsor him if you want to help support the valuable work of NETA here.

My sister (Joanne), niece (Toni),  and I were all wearing the Giving Voice t-shirts I got printed last week. Three friends also came along to help and they were all wearing black and pink!

To say I was excited on Sunday morning, would be an understatement! There is something about the atmosphere and the sheer determination of the runners that makes being a spectator an exciting event. This coupled with the fact that we were handing out Jelly Babies and Oranges as the exhausted runners reached the 11 mile mark, made for a very exciting day!      

As you may remember, we’ve been buying Jelly Babies every week over the last couple of months to ensure that we had plenty to hand out on the day.

In total we had 50 bags and 6 boxes of Jelly Babies, 480 quarters/eighths of orange and one large tin of Cadbury’s heroes. We gave them all away to lots of grateful people! I was very excited to see that Jeff Hordley (Cain Dingle from Emmerdale) got some Jelly Babies from Si’s tin (who was completely unaware of the exciting situation, as he’s not particularly a fan of Emmerdale!) I also offered Tom Lister (Carl from Emmerdale) a Jelly Baby but he smiled and said “No Thank You”. Lots of people thanked us for our support, even if they didn’t want a jelly baby or piece of orange. It really amazes me how people have the energy to be so polite after running 11 miles, which is another reason I love the Great North Run so much.  All of the runners are heroes in my eyes!

On Friday my dad helped me construct a board that I could display Giving Voice posters on. Well, I say he helped me, it was more the other way around! I was his glamorous assistant while he did all the hard work. What a superstar! We displayed this board near where we were standing and I noticed lots of people reading it as they ran past. Two people also cheered for Speech and Language Therapy as they recognised the Giving Voice logo and message J

Some of the jelly babies

My friend and fellow SLT, Mo did a brilliant job of shouting ‘Oranges’ and ‘Jelly babies’ - so much so I think the people at 10 miles might have heard her! Hehe!

Joanne did an amazing job of cutting up all the oranges, only stopping to deal with a medical emergency. Unfortunately a young man collapsed near my sister – luckily she is a qualified nurse and one of the other people helping, a qualified doctor, so the young man got medical attention immediately, before the St John Ambulance people came and took him to get an ambulance to hospital.

Toni, Me, Joanne and Mo

My dad came along and took some photos on the day and Toni did a brilliant job of cheering on the runners with the Jelly Baby mascots I got from Cadbury last week. My mam cut up some of the oranges while Joanne was assisting the poorly gentleman.

My nephews Darius and Dom, did a super job of handing out the oranges and jelly babies with me and running along with the runners so that they didn’t need to stop.

With thanks to everyone who helped out (particularly Joanne for being chief orange cutter – which is no mean feat!) 

And to finish, here's a short video from the day...

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