As most of you know, our lovely friend Sean Guinness, Mike’s best friend of 40+ years, was recently diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma cancer. This is devastating news for Sean, his family and of course all of the people that know and love Sean and the Quad…you guys!

The prognosis isn’t good but Sean has started immunotherapy and if successful has a 75% chance of living two more years...ofcourse we're hoping for many more. Either way, this news is pretty hard to take at any time but life has been made so much more difficult for Sean and Josie by the fact Sean can no longer work and Josie has had to give up work to become his carer, so life has become difficult financially too. I'm sorry this makes for upsetting reading but it's a reality that Sean and his family are living and we want to help. We want to be able to help them do the many wonderful things that they should and could be doing as a family to make the most of their time together.

Basically, we want to ask for your help to collectively raise money to pay for Sean, Josie, Amelia and Theo…aka The Quad…to have a fabulous and much needed family holiday together.

Sean and Josie are already so overwhelmed by the love and support they have received from you all since Sean was diagnosed and of course will never accept direct financial help. This holiday would mean so much to them though, especially knowing it has come from the generosity of all their friends.

To justify a bit of a whip round for them, Team Thomson have have signed up for a series of activities where we have paid the registration fee and minimum sponsorship required to the cancer charity involved ourselves but would also like to use the events as an opportunity to get donations directly to the Guinness Family. Already so many of you have offered to sponsor us and whilst we accept these charities need our support and money (hence our personal donations) this is also a way of directly helping a wonderful family effected by cancer and all the life changing circumstances that come with it.

Our hope is to raise £2000 which will pay for a week away in the sun for ‘The Quad’ or a luxury long weekend closer to home if we can’t raise sufficient funds!

The events we are doing to raise money are as follows:

12th May: The London Moonwalk: I (Nat) will walk 26.2 miles through the night along with thousands of other woman (and men) to raise money for the fight against breast cancer.

13th May: The Royal Marsden Sutton to Brighton cycle. 54 miles on a bike for Mike. Sounds easy but apparently there are many, many hills!

1st -3rd June: London to Paris bike ride. Mike is cycling the distance with another friend of Sean’s, Dave Rock.

16th September: London to Brighton cycle - back to me to put some effort in!

21st October: Amsterdam half marathon. This is the killer as I can’t run, hate running and already regret signing up to this!

Neither of us are sporting Adonises (don’t be fooled by my Loire Fit updates) and so the training and events themselves will prove to be quite gruelling. However, if we can use the events to raise money for Team Guinness, what better way to get a bit fitter too.

I know many of us have varying and tricky finances and so I don’t like to ask for money but if you can donate, even just a fiver, we would be so grateful. It will make a difference. We want to make this happen one way or another and so will keep going until we can get enough to send them somewhere…even if I have to commit to a bloody marathon (which I said I’ll never do).

If you’d rather donate to a cancer charity directly, we understand that perfectly too. Equally, if you want to join us and sign up to events or add your events to help the cause that would be awesome.

Whilst the challenges are going to continue through the year, we’re hoping to have enough funds raised by the end of June so the Quad can hopefully get away this summer. This really will mean so much to them. All monies raised will go directly to Josie's account with a collective message from all family and friends.

Thanks so much everyone and sending heaps of love and gratitude to you all,

Team Thomson xx