Thursday, October 05, 2006

Medium size, hold the tassel

The place I work picks a different charity to support every year and carry out a variety of fundraising events throughout the year for that charity. This year's Charity of the Year is Breast Cancer Care and this month's event is "The Giant G Cup Challenge".
This involves a huge pink bra being transported to all 51 branches of the Society throughout Wales and the borders with money being collected along the way. The initial plan was for money to be put in the bra itself as well as the collection tins and the wording in the intranet article was "there are money slots in the bra – and like a surgically enhanced harlot's bra – we want it overflowing".
This however turned out to be a problem as loose change gets to be quite heavy in large amounts and the bra was only made out of foam. The tactics were revised to the bra just being used as a device to draw in the crowds while those of us who weren't strapped in to a support garment rattled collection tins.

Our shift took place on Tuesday afternoon in Cowbridge, a fairly affluent village outside Cardiff. Lots of schoolkids around when they should clearly have been terrorising a supply teacher or something. Most of the older boys would womble past and make comments along the lines of "bet you feel like a pair of tits" to the guys manning the bra. We would try and remain dignified so as not to tarnish the good name of the Society. However, after the 5th or 6th similar comment Ant and I both started muttering "This is the closest you're going to get to a bra for a few years yet" after the little Wilde wannabes.
The younger kids were more amusing. One group of 10 or 11 year olds were standing about 10 metres away from us obviously psyching themselves up for a drive by witty comment. After the third advance and retreat attempt one of them finally plucked up the courage to go for it, sauntered past us, poked Ant's cup and shouted "Fatty!". We were so disappointed
Apart from the kids it was actually quite a fun way to spend 4 hours out of the office. A lot of people would stop and share their stories of how breast cancer had affected them or their families. One little old lady of about 70 or so stopped to chat to me:

Sweet little old lady : "My daughter has just gone through this"
Me : "I'm sorry to hear that. How is she doing now?"
S.L.O.L : "OK at the moment. She has to take tamoxifen for 5 years or so and then go for more scans"
ME: "I hope she stays well"
S.L.OL : "She's just had a new replacement breast made"
ME: "Oh..."
S.L.O.L: "She paid extra for a nipple."
Me: "..."

We also got mooned by a sixth former on a school bus. Fun times.

Gary used to be in the Navy so he knows how to put men in a bra.


Ceri makes the minor strap adjustments.


Ant and Chris. Pink and proud.

5 comments:

Damien said...

Lair of the Swamp Duck: She paid extra for a nipple.

Anonymous said...

So where's the pics of you in the pink bra? :-D

Damien said...

I heard it was too small.

gorbash78 said...

Craig and I decided we were quite happy rattling tins so declined the offer of wearing the bra!

Anonymous said...

Bah, it would have complemented your green environmentally friendly superhero outfit quite....uhm..nicely ;-)