trigger warning – viva brazil – everest base camp

trigger warning, i am going to talk about suicide today, please do not read if this might upset you.

yesterday was world suicide prevention day, and this is suicide prevention month.

yesterday we were told we had saved another life, which makes bigmoose’s total lives saved 172, an amazing number, long may we save people.

last night we had our bbc4 (bigmoose business club) and the wonderful alison lapper spoke to our club about life growing up disabled, having her son parys, and losing him aged 19.

on our way home from bbc chloe and i talked about how raw her talk was, how extremely emotional, and how there were many in the room in tears.

but everyone i spoke to after said how amazing she was, and the power of her talk was immense, and it was lovely for me to see her meeting our team, and our supporters at bbc, as i think they won her heart, as she did theirs, and i think she saw bigmoose’s dna.

the night prior she had landed in cardiff, and we went out and had two disappointing dining experiences, one because my ability to retain basic information is flawed, my bad.

a week ago she had told me she was vegetarian, then the day she came into town she messaged me saying she had ibs and was on a fodmap diet.

i asked my old buddy chat to get the best restaurants in cardiff to go to, and one was head and shoulders above the others, ibs, check, fodmap, check.

so we met ali and elaine her p.a., at their hotel and skiddadled down to the restaurant, having booked, and feeling things were going pretty well.

the waitress seated us, and the menus were presented.

viva brazil.

one of the most meat heavy restaurants in cardiff.

the penny dropped.

noooooooooooooooo!

what an idiot.

i explained the circumstances to the vb staff, and we hot diggedy dogged it out of the door, and headed for a pizza joint that rhymes with manca franca.

unfortunately the staff were very poor with their disabled dining guest offer, and the whole experience was very underwhelming, but the conversation made up for the warm pizza.

ali has a wicked sense of humour and literally hasn’t stopped making us all laugh, and i found her spirit inspirational.

so art4good is off to the races, and we have a few more artists signed up before we officially launch, it’s happening, watch this space.

our other speaker was the effervescent cat burford, dentist by day, polar explorer by expedition.

cat’s talk was also full of inspiration, referencing how her teacher allyson who asked her class to name the world’s largest desert, and then showed them antartica, and the rest is now history, parents, teachers, grandparents, everybody, always remember how much you can influence children.

this whole week has been very exciting, as well as bbc, we received a £10,000 donation from somebody we didn’t even know, they were told about us by a friend, researched us and decided to support us, very cool indeed.

and one of my best bits of news is that i met with a company this week that do adventures, such as everest base camp, kilimanjaro, machu picchu, and lots of other trips all over the world, and they are very aligned with bigmoose, more details to follow, but we will be partnering with them on quite a big scale, which will open up lots of opportunities for us in this space, i can’t wait to share with you, i literally punched the air when i got an email from their ceo!

so it’s friday, and the sun is shining, both in the sky and on my chops, life is good, zero complaints.

inspired by alison, have a wonderful week, do cool shizzle, and tell people you love you love ‘em.

very blue skies,

jeff