UPDATE ON 7th FEBRUARY 2008

Once again, apologies to everyone for not updating the website more regularly. For our family, 2007 ended and 2008 began in the same vein as the early part of 2007. Since March 2007 the family have had eight bereavements, including Terence's dad on December 16th and Laura's nan on January 16th. As the caravan site where Margaret and Terence have been living was due to close for January and February Margaret booked to fly to Cyprus for two months from 2nd January. However, because of Terence's dad's funeral she delayed it and rebooked for 13th January. In early January Dennis (Sarah's dad) was diagnosed with terminal cancer so Margaret cancelled her trip to Cyprus to help other family members care for him at home. After a week or so it became necessary for Dennis to receive 24 hour care and so he was admitted to The Countess Mountbatten Hospice in West End, Southampton, where he still remains. At the present time Terence is working in Westbury in Wiltshire and staying four days a week with his mum and when the caravan site closed Margaret was virtually homeless and so has rented a bedsit for three months, by which time it is hoped they will have completed the purchase of a permanent residence as the romany life is not to their liking!! So you can see that life for all the family has been a turmoil and the website has been a victim of those events.

Having said all that, things are moving on, albeit still slowly. We originally thought we had to register the charity before we could open the bank account but discovered that, in fact, we had to open the bank account first. What with Christmas and how everything seems to take so much longer around that time of year, the opening of the bank account took longer than anticipated but this is now open and the papers to register the charity have been submitted. We have continued to raise money and we now have a healthy bank balance and are due to have consultations with various care agencies in the next few weeks so that we can start helping families in need. Obviously this is all very new to us so we are taking things quite slowly to make sure we get it right. Many people have very kindly donated money to our fund and we want to make sure we spend it wisely.

We still have lots of ideas for the website and really hope that our lives will calm down a bit so that we can put some of these into place. Also we are still working towards the campaign against violent crime but, again, we are having to feel our way forward slowly to find the most effective way we can help. We have had talks with various people in the police and crime prevention and hope to be able to have something definite to report shortly. Margaret applied to be part of Radio Solent's "100 Lives" and is due to be interviewed by Julian Clegg on The Breakfast Show early on Friday 8th February 2008.