A full calendar month since we wrote anything about what we've been up to. The majority of our time has been spent preparing for the Manchester Golf Show. We saw this as a great opportunity to raise the profile of our challenge and to kick start our fundraising activity. We invented a sweepstake game where the winning ticket purchased for just £2, will be decided by the scores Andy and I achieve on the 3rd round of the 1st day on each of the 5 courses. The prize £100 in cold hard cash and some other fantastic prizes including a fourball voucher and some beer related 2014 World Cup items.
So we had all the material printed, 5000 fliers, over 3000 sweepstake tickets, posters and a couple of roller banners. Everything was brilliantly designed by our good friend Lee Bearton and the printing was completed by Aylesford Printing services who did a fantastic job at keeping our costs to an absolute minimum.
We met a few times to go through preparations, how it would work, who would be there and when, timings and preparation for what we would say when interviewed on the stage. It was fair to say that none of us had any idea how big or small the event would be, what the best strategy was and realistically what would success look like. So we were prepared for the best and worst cases.
We left at 5am Friday morning to get up there from Bedfordshire, we arrived at 8.15am and by 8.45 we were ready to go, show didn't open until 10am!! so we spent the next hour pacing and wandering about, nervous about the day ahead. It's safe to say that Friday was not our most successful of the 3 days. With the crowd numbers a bit low due to school and work we spent much of the day being rebuffed by senior golfers who weren't at all interested in what we had to say and looked like they were just passing some time whilst their wives shopped in the adjacent Trafford Centre! Like rabbits in headlights we were equally inept at networking with our fellow exhibitors, not really knowing the best way to spark up a conversation. Anyway we did our best and managed to get about 70 tickets sold! It was clear by this point, actually much earlier than this point, that we were unlikely to sell 3000 tickets and would be lucky to sell 300.
Day 2 and the show was noticeably busier and the public somewhat younger in demographic. Our team was slightly different too as the other 3 lads had to be home and my wife and brother came up. Saturday turned out to be much better and we sold twice as many tickets as the first day. We started to feel a bit more comfortable in our surroundings too and made some inroads into getting to know some fellow exhibitors.
Day 3, the final day, and brother and wife had returned home and 2 of the lads had come back up. Strategy for the final day was speak to as many fellow exhibitors as possible and see if they'd be interested in sponsoring a hole in return for a bit of promotion and PR. We were tired, but we stuck to our task and came away feeling that the show was a success for us. We made about £500 to go to charity and met some great contacts all of whom were very supportive. Thanks if you came to see us and support us.

During the month there were 2 significant developments in the arrangements for our challenge. Unfortunately The Shire confirmed that they were unable to host our final day which is a real shame given the Seve connections. So Kevin is busy working away on Luton Hoo with a hope they may be interested in hosting us. The better news is that the Hilton Templepatrick in Northern Ireland confirmed they are happy host us, so we have 4 out of 5 courses confirmed and we are in contact with all of them to make arrangements for each of the days and get some support from them to raise our profile and get some donations.
Which leads us on to the focus for the next 8 weeks. We have started our fundraising campaign in earnest and we're exploring every avenue and badgering anyone we know to help us get ourselves known and get donations in. We're tweeting pro golfers and famous people, we're trying to get into local press, national press, radio, we've even written to the One Show!! We're contacting local courses, hounding work colleagues, tapping up cricket club members and our oppositions and pushing the hole sponsoring at anyone with ears!! 
So if you've managed to stay awake to get to this point then we'd like to appeal to your generosity and ask that you make a donation to our challenge and make sure that you tell anyone and everyone about us. We're doing all of this for such a great cause and to help all of those out there that are affected by the devastation that brain cancer brings.
Thanks for reading and all you support, please keep following, tweeting and re-tweeting and help us make this challenge the best it can be....