The one and only Trace (in her own words)

hey, y'all....

i'm trace; small, loud, pictish granny currently engaged in a seemin'ly endless barney with breast cancer; but bein' the typical bull-headed northerner i am, i see no reason to give up merely because my lovely oncologist (Dr Mark Verrill, Northern Centre for Cancer Treatment, Newcastle General Hospital) has run outta chemicals to fuck with my system. fortunately, due to the sterlin' efforts of one "Slick Nick" Williams of the Royal Victoria Infirmary plastics department, i may be one very sick granny, but i'm a sick granny with a set of hooters you wouldn't BELIEVE!! :0D

absolutely PIVOTAL to my survival thus far - havin' been officially told i've been dyin' twice, now - are my son, reckless rick; stacey, his wife; kieron, my grandson and centre of every known universe there is; the lovely christopher (ex-b/f & housemate extraordinaire); AND the most incredible friends anyone could ever imagine. in fact, no. you couldn't IMAGINE friends like these. to know that whatever the time of day or night, if i get "the fear", SOMEONE will be there fer me. EVERY time. people who will, at almost NO notice, get in the car at the opposite end of the country, an' regardless of their OWN shit goin' on, will drive stupidly long distances on the country's nastiest motorways jist to be here fer us. or sit at a computer hundreds of miles away on a different continent at a stupid hour of THEIR mornin', "holdin' my hand" an' shorin' up my belief in myself when the scan results come back lookin' like shit an' i quite literally have the fear of death up me. there's not a sum of money, house, car, or any of that fame & fortune shit that i would swap fer that. even if i were healthy.

an' not only will some of 'em find sponsors & RUN fer me, some will run 13 1/2 miles in badger suits so that someday no-one else will ever hafta go thru what we're all goin' thru now.

i'm still tryna work out what i did to deserve you lot. i love you much.

Why are we Mad as Badgers?

First of all we need to say that www.madasbadgers.org is not a charity itself, but has been set up with the intention of raising money for Cancer Research UK.

The website was created by Trudi and Taz and came into existence on June 5th 2005.

In April 2005, we found out that one of our very good friends, Trace, had been diagnosed with cancer. Trace, who has been through this twice before, is one of the most brilliant, inspiring and wonderful people to know, and one of our very close friends. And this news pretty much shattered those of us who knew her. Many of us have other friends and relatives who have had, or still do have, cancer, and some of us have lost parents to the disease. And so Trace's news was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back: how could something that we could not see, and could not do anything about, affect so many people's lives?

And so as despair and despondency set in, a new resolve kicked in, that although we couldn't solve this 'problem', we could at least take some positive action to raise the profile of some charities working to help people in the same situation as us, and hopefully raise some money for them along the way. Brains were stormed, and plans hatched. Not only did we want to play to our strengths (which for most of us was an impressivley in-depth knowledge of rock music) we also wanted to do some monumental and (for some of us) life changing things. Myself and Trudi agreed our first (exceedingly scary) prospect should revolve around running...a marathon. An interesting choice for two people who haven't done any exercise since P.E. was forced upon us at school a few years ago (or in Trudi's case, more than half a lifetime ago!). Our progress can be read about in the journal entries in the 'Race for Trace' section. So far we've gone a 10k race around the hilly grounds of Leeds Castle (in Kent, not Leeds!), and our next event is the Great North Run on October 1st. we're still building up to that marathon, and we're hoping by 2007 they'll take pity on us and give us places!

Whilst we were trying to come up with some brilliantly imaginative fundraising ideas, we set up a chat group on which to develop our ideas. Having announced to the world we would be donning the running shoes, and busy plotting more ideas, Trace had one response which stuck with us more than any other... 'you're all as mad as badgers'. And that we may be, but it's a trait of which we are proud - and if being as mad a as badger helps us raise money, then that's fine with us.

Also in the pipeline are a charity single (now in the mixing stages), some rather stylish merchandise, a couple of rock club nights featuring some top D.J.'s and a charity auction of some rather fab donated rock memorabilia, and, hopefully (if we can find some generous bands to play for free) a rocking gig (progress on this can be found under our gig title of choice 'Pants to Cancer'). All of this, and more, we hope, will help us raise our target of a small fortune for Cancer Research. Please help us achieve this target by donating generously or getting involved in one of these events. If you have any bright ideas to help us achieve any of this, feel free to contact us - all assistance is gratefully received. Most of all, please remember to tell other people about us, and always remember that big things grow from small ideas. Even if you have to be as mad as a badger to have them.

Taz.x
05/06/2005 (updated April 2006)