Hello everyone!
MANY APOLOGIES for not posting updates on this website. this is entirely all my fault. I wasn't aware this topic had been moved and assumed it had been binned for some reason. What I should have done is simply searched the site.
I'll bring you up to speed then add the latest update so that you know where we're at and I'll deffo keep this thread updated from now on.
Right, since the fund raiser a football tourny was held in Ireland by irishkop.com. It was a really good day and raised around £1700 for the campaign. Another major contributor recently was the Coleraine supporters club of Northern ireland who raised £600 at their annual dinner dance. Several other supporters clubs from the north where in attendance and their contribution is greatly appreciated. Myself and my son Jack held our sponsored walk up Scafell Pike, the countries highest peak, and did it in 9 hours! I'd like to say this was because Jack is only 12 and I kept stopping for him but, alas, it was all down to me. I had to sit in a hot bath for a fortnight to get over the punishment my old bones took! Anyway, jack took over the fund raising for this and raised a magnificent £400. Well done son!
the campaign got bogged down for about 4-6 weeks by a couple of companies from the north east of England that we where working with and we decided not to continue with them but thanked them for their help. After this we got going with an architect and used the experience of one of our team, who is a builder by trade, to negotiate with builders near to HLH with the right skills to help us. Since this slight reorganisation the campaign has FLOWN along.
So, here's the latest update......
The latest news in the campaign is that the final draft of the plans have been handed to Hetton-le-Hole council for their perusal and they will hand them to Sunderland City Council for the actual planning process to begin.
While that is going on we have approached a small number of builders with the appropriate level of skill for our kind of project. I left this update until very late on in case we’d had a quote back from one of them but we haven’t yet. We think we can expect that this coming week.
We know what kind of materials we’re looking for so it’s just a matter of sourcing that. All of the work will be carried out by craftsmen local to the Hetton-le-Hole area and the materials will be sourced from there too if we can.
We cannot give a date for completion until we get the go-ahead to build from the council but we’ll be ready to build as soon as we get the nod. For that reason we’re winding down the fund raising side of the campaign. Again, we’ve still to receive quotes from the builders but we’re confident that we’ve got enough funds and we don’t want to ask for money that we may not need. If we do need any more funds then we’ll step up the fund raising and hold another event, but we’d like to thank every single person who donated their hard earned money to Bob’s memorial.
If anyone still wants a T shirt they are still available, although we can only order them in certain numbers now. Please email us at paisleymemorial@hotmail.co.uk with your order and we’ll do our very best to accommodate you. The T shirt showing Bob with the old fellers in HLH is really going down well and the other very popular design shows Bob with the European Cup in ‘77.
One more thing, during this campaign we’ve had a lot of lovely letters from people telling us about when they met Bob and some have even been lucky enough to have their photo’s took with the great man. This gave us an idea. As you know, Jessie Paisley is following our progress very closely and really likes the idea of what we’re doing. We’ve decided it would be a nice idea to collect all the stories and photos in a scrap book to present to Mrs Paisley after we’ve built the memorial. We’ll include all the relevant stuff that we’ve got from the actual building, like the plans for example, and all the stories and photos will also go in. We’re calling this A Scrapbook for Mrs Paisley and it will never go into publication, it will be only for Mrs Paisley as a nice keepsake of what we’ve all done for Bob. So, did you meet Bob? Got a nice story or a photograph? Send them along to paisleymemorial@hotmail.co.uk and leave the rest to us. Don’t forget to include your name and where abouts your from (for example Ian from Garston in Liverpool) and we’ll take it from there.
Thanks very much everyone and we hope to get a few nice stories to present to Jessie when we’ve finished.
Ian.
So thats the very latest and, again, my sincere apologies for keeping you in the dark. I'll update this thread as soon as there is anything else to let you know.
Ian.
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