The Blandfords have just returned from holiday and were delighted to find two checks for the Christian Blandford Fund. One from St George’s Church in the Weald for £747 and another from LVS Ascot for £743. We would like to particularly thank Luisa Northing and her friends in Coburg House at LVS who took part in a giant cake sale, a ‘splat the teacher” event and a student leg wax!
Lu and Christian, many years ago
While waiting at Geneva Airport for departure, we spotted a piano…
Christian’s Favourite composer and musician is Ludovico Einaudi who has been a huge inspiration since Pete’s friend Sean Gardiner recommended him. Peter and Christian were both very excited to be going to Chelsea Hospital to watch him live in such a beautiful outdoor venue. What Christian didn’t know is that Marc Parish, his uncle, had arranged for a meet and greet after the show.
On the way into London, we noticed a piano at Sevenoaks station with a sign saying “feel free to play” so Christian did…
The concert was amazing and we were so lucky to go a very small after party where Christian got to spend some quality time discussing music with his hero, Ludovico, who was incredibly charming and attentive even though had just come off the stage from what must have been an exhausting show.
Thank you so much to much to Marc, Zeina from Decca, Gianluca, and of course Ludovico and his amazing team of charming musicians for giving a young lad and his father a wonderful day.
Christian, continues to excel in his music. If anybody wants to hear more of the tracks he has written, he has set up a channel on Sound Cloud. You can listen on a browser here, Soundcloud also has apps on IOS, Android and even Sonos, where you can install the app and search for him.
Christian
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Claudia’s friend, Sophie Martin has done the London to Brighton challenge for the Christian Blandford Fund. That is a 100km run! an amazing achievement and we are so grateful that she chose the Christian Blandford Fund to support. Sophie has raised nearly £1000 with gift aid and all of that money, like everything raised for the Christian Blandford Fund, will go to improving the lives of children unfortunate enough to be in hospital, particularly those affected by cancer. Sophie’s Virgin Money Giving page is here .
Sophie
Christian is in the Chapel Choir at the New Beacon School and they had their Advent service at the beautiful chapel at Tonbridge school. The junior school choir sang Christian’s composition, “The Snow”, while he played the piano.
If any parent wants photos of the event they can be downloaded from here.
This is a time of year to appreciate what we have and to help others that are less fortunate. Darren and Amy are currently ordering and wrapping toys for Santa to deliver to children who are unlucky enough to be in St George’s over Christmas. We continue to work to work closely with Martin at Samuel’s charity and look forward to continuing to improve children’s comfort in hospitals in 2016.
Merry Christmas!
Peter Blandford’s photo
Christian loves to play the piano and write his own music, this year he entered a competition run by Sevenoaks School to write a Christmas Carol for a 5 part choir. The winners and runners up in each age group got their song sung by the incredible London based Cantus Ensemble at the Christmas Carol concert in the school .
We are very proud that Christian’s lovely song got awarded 2nd place in the year 7 and 8 competition. It is called The Snow and all the words, piano music and vocals were written by him.
We strongly feel that our goal is to improve the life of children staying in hospitals. Sometimes that means spending money on buying things that make life better, but sometimes it involves putting pressure (gentle or otherwise) on authorities to make changes that we feel are important. All of the trustees in The Christian Blandford Fund, Peter, Claudia, Amy and Darren, have had children who have spent considerable time in NHS hospitals and have strong views of how to help others in that situation. One of our big concerns was the quality of the food in the wards at St George’s. At the Royal Marsden there was a wonderful chef and an assistant who took individual orders from each of the kids and made it freshly for them. At St George’s there was a trolley with pre cooked and reheated food similar to what you would get in an airplane, unsurprisingly much of the food was left untouched by the kids.
For some reason this has been a battle that has taken a long time to win, but we are delighted to have finally made some progress. Together with Samuel’s Charity we were ready to pay for the cost of having a couple of hostesses to take the children’s orders, so the food could be prepared in the kitchens. The hospital, fortunately, managed to find the funds from elsewhere and the quality of the food is now considerably improved. We are delighted, well done to Martin, Samuel’s dad, who did so much to push this forward.
There are big plans afoot to make improvements at St George’s and we hope that our voice continues to be heard so the things that we feel need to be improved upon are prioritised.
I have had a bit of time to work on the Christian’s Story Page and added a new event which I omitted the first time around….
28th September 2007
Last week Christian had a bone scan and a CT scan and the results came back today, he is clear of cancer!
We’ve got a long way to go and he is still in danger from the treatment, his kidney function, for example, is still not what it should be, but we are obviously very relieved.
There was a strange moment in the school car park when he started back at school. A whisper went around the crowds of parents and teachers when they saw Christian, and as he stood there looking confused, a round of applause went up from everybody around him.
Christian’s latest hobby is game writing, you can try his latest games here.
Christian, Henry and I decided to have some fun promoting the Christian Blandford Fund
Christian’s latest check up went well again, he will now be having 6 monthly check ups.
Christian has always loved dancing, even when he was unwell and tiny he was a funky mover…
Here he is a few years later and much healthier
Villa Rental in Begur, Spain
