https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/counsellingforkids?utm_term=9b8dGGR2Q

We’re excited about our upcoming golf day at Headingley Golf Club, Leeds, on Thursday 17 September 2020 – getting close to a sell out:

Thank you key workers/the NHS and all at Headingley GC who made the resumption of golf possible; see also further at the end of this post, below.

The [now even harder] challenge is to play at least 366 full rounds (18 holes) of golf in a calendar year: from 21 November 2019 to 21 November 2020.

366 rounds in 366 days. It’s a leap year after all as I’ve just realised (this update on 6 March 2020).

And I’m still working.

Why?

To raise money for local children’s mental health services.

The story:

When our teenage son came home from school one day and declared that he was feeling suicidal our world was turned upside down. We received amazing help and support from his school and counsellors at the Oakdale Centre in Harrogate. We want as many others to benefit from this as possible and are raising money to create funds to enable those in need who can’t afford to access these services. Just £750 enables us to help provide 8 week long courses in schools designed to help young people and if we can raise more than £5,000 we can get a counsellor designated to a school for a whole year.

The link to donate:

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/counsellingforkids?utm_term=GvNv847kq

The measurement:

see below for evidence of rounds played and random thoughts arising.

UPDATE (6 MARCH 2020) – the fundraising is going well; so well that we will be updating and increasing the target just as soon as I can figure out how to do that in Just Giving!

UPDATE (13 MARCH 2020) – Yorkshire Post published a feature about the challenge, yesterday, see:

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/health/day-our-12-year-old-son-told-us-he-was-feeling-suicidal-2446518

UPDATE (17 MAY 2020) – we are back playing!

It goes without saying that my family and I are grateful to key workers and the NHS (thank you) and that we are counting our blessings daily, every day we wake up alive and well.

I also want to say a huge thank you to all at Headingley GC that have got us all back playing as soon as ever possible. From talking to the greens team and the manager, the efforts behind the scenes have been nothing short of Herculean. Thank you very much.

I couldn’t bring myself to keep this site updated (or even to touch a golf club) in the lockdown, but we are back now, with a vengeance. First task is to make up the deficit of 31 rounds left by Covid-19; making progress on that, see below.

As with life in lockdown this challenge is now even more about taking each day as it comes, perhaps not a bad way to approach life in general once we get through Covid-19 and return to our [bad/good] old ways [delete as appropriate, according to your own world view] … just sayin’ …