Breast Cancer Care, London Fashion Show – Wednesday October 1^st 2008

Wow, what a fantastic experience! Ten members of our group took the train up to London to view this spectacular event. We arrived at the Grosvenor House Hotel by taxi and were delighted when the doorman leapt forward to let us out of our cab and into the hotel, where we were directed towards the ballroom.

Before entering the ballroom we were greeted with a glass of champagne in a large reception room where light from the chandeliers sparkled onto the mirrors around the walls giving it all a very special atmosphere. There was a real buzz of excitement as groups friends met up admiring their surroundings and anticipating what lay ahead and there were opportunities to buy programmes, tickets and envelopes for games that would be played during throughout afternoon.

After a while we were all lead towards the ballroom, stopping on the way to check the large illuminated seating plan. Was that really Esther Rantzen’s name just below Jane Ramsden’s? As we reached the ballroom we looked down in awe and amazement, just imagine the scene. A huge white T shaped catwalk dominated the ballroom, surrounded by large candlelit round tables and again large glittering chandeliers hung from the ceiling, giving the whole scene a rather sumptuous feel. We made our way to our table which was beautifully decorated with a pink table cloth. A simple, but beautiful, floral display and candles sat on a large mirror in the centre of the table surrounded by silver cutlery which shone in the candlelight. Around the table on each chair was a pink gift bag full of lots of lovely "goodies", perfume from Next, a QVC necklace, MP3 headphones with a pink glittery stone in each earpiece and several other lovely things.

As we sat down a young girl came and introduced herself as our waitress for the afternoon and made sure that we were comfortable and had everything that we needed and then the show began.

Indeed it had been Esther Rantzen’s name just below Jane’s because she introduced the show to us. The fashions were spectacular and the models amazing, they must have been so nervous waiting for that first entrance onto the catwalk knowing that there were hundreds of people watching them and that QVC were filming the whole event so that it could be broadcast on October 8^th. Twenty one models took part, all ages, and all having had breast cancer, both sexes were represented because of course men can get breast cancer too. Throughout the event, prize winning games and a raffle were held and the most scrumptious tea was served up. Lesley Joseph (Dorian from "Birds of a Feather") compared a rather exciting Heads and Tails game, where the winner won a luxury weekend away at a Spa Hotel, we watched some of the models that had been filmed earlier, talking about their breast cancer stories and one of the leading ladies from Breast Cancer Care spoke from her heart about the organisation and how it was able to help people daily. A sobering fact stuck in my mind – nationally, one person is diagnosed with breast cancer every 11 minutes, that’s 46,000 a year! The whole afternoon’s event was rounded off by Jonathan Ansall, winner of X factor who sang to us, his third and final piece "Here’s to the Heroes" he dedicated especially to all the models in the show.

As the event came to a close Gloria made her way across to the celebrities table and as you can see from our photographs we managed to get pictures taken with both Esther and Jonathan.

The whole event was wonderful; we felt like we’d stepped into another world, one of our members said that she’d never been to anything like this before. Like all of us she had felt that her world had come to an end when she got breast cancer, she had been so down and now she had joined our group, made new friends, had great fun and lots of new opportunities. The day was rather a rollercoaster of emotions, but as the train pulled into Battle station we all agreed that we had had the most fantastic day out. Check it out for yourself on the Breast Cancer Care website

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