"Call urgently, I’m helping at the Aberdeen Ball"

It’s been quite a week, here’s a quick recap!!

Our Kilimanjaro Kiltwalker’s scaled the world’s largest free standing mountain in their Kilts and Kiltwalk t-shirts and now have a lifetime worth of proud stories to tell their children, friends, family and anyone else that will listen, and so they should. Of course, in the case of John Grigor I’m sure his stories will be told in great detail on the next away trip he organises. You can gaurantee it will involve a very long bus journey to make sure his captive audience hears all of it.

Seriously though, well done, what an achievement.

Also, want to mention a big well done to Mhairi for keeping us all updated on Facebook, looks like my Facebook days are numbered now a new Sheriff’s in town. #timetohangupmypen

The next remarkable story is that I took some of my Southern colleagues to Fife for three days, and hardly had to translate. To be fair I’d given them all The Proclaimers album to listen to all weekend as homework, it definitely seemed to do the trick.

The funniest part of my 3 day adventure down Dalgety Bay way was on Sunday evening in Dunfermilne. We went out for something to eat and I insisted my colleagues ordered all the food and drinks, as it would help them “acclimatise” to the local accent. So they spent two hours ordering food and drinks, and not one of them noticed our waitress was actually Polish :-)

So in a week when Oor Kiltwalker’s reached the top of the world, why aren’t they our Kiltwalk Hero’s of the week?

Well it’s simple really as they didn’t come to The Kiltwalk’s rescue and boy did they rescue us.

You last Saturday night was the Ball of all Balls in Aberdeen, The P&J Energy Ball, where a wide spectrum of the business community from home and abroad gather at Aberdeen’s Exhibition and Conference Centre, for the oil and gas industry’s biggest night out of the year.

By big, we mean 1,500 people BIG, who were entertained by comedian Rory Bremner, and the danced the night away to Kid Creole and the Coconuts.

Our hour of need hit us on Tuesday when the team received a call from the organisers. You see title sponsors Hunting, had nominated The Kiltwalk to benefit from the event, which we knew. What we didn’t appreciate was they wanted The Kiltwalk to collect the money from the tables on the night.

With the promise of a bit of food and a wee dance, our Lifesavers who are from left to right Arlene, Dawn, Elaine, Jenna, Mairi and Loaine got all glammed up for what was a very ‘posh’ black tie ball, only to find that when they arrived, they had to don the famous “Heidless Oor Wullie” t-shirts when it came time to collect the cash.

Undaunted by the task in hand, the ladies hot footed it around 150 tables, collecting sealed envelopes crammed full of cash. This was a remarkable achievement, some may say even more than challenging than walking 26 miles.

You see when you walk a Kiltwalk you’re wearing the correct footwear, but can you imagine having to walk round the size of the AECC, with your best high heels on!! I can hear you ladies “ouching” from here.

With the money collected and “bagged” our gang whipped off their t-shirts and set about restoring their “party” look when Elaine got a “tap” on the shoulder.

That “tap” turned out to be from the organiser of the event, who informed our Lifesavers that their lifesaving wasn’t complete for the night. When the ladies then asked him to explain, he announced “you’ll need tae take awe the money wi’ yea, cause we’re nae keeping it”.

Now collecting all the cash was one thing, but ‘counting it’ and more importantly “keeping it under the mattress” was a completely different ball game.

It was at this point, that 180 miles away, an old man, with bed socks on, was climbing into bed and blowing out the candle for the night, when he just happened to take one last look at his phone, as you do. It was then he found a direct message on Facebook saying “Ian, can you call me urgently, I’m helping at the Aberdeen ball”.

That message came from Dawn, which alerted me to a similar message from Elaine.

What followed was a rather hilariously, surreal, nervous phone call which resulted in Elaine and co nipping out into the car to count all the cash, in the fading car light, so they could all agree how much had been raised.

The final sum was an astonishing £16,757.41 plus 350 Danish kroner all of which was stuffed under Elaine’s pillow until she could sneak down to the bank first thing Monday, feeling like a bank robber and depositing all the used notes in the Kiltwalk Bank Account.

Never a dull moment when on Kiltwalk duty, eh girls.

So on behalf of The Kiltwalk can I send our heartfelt thanks for all the sterling work you did on the night, at such short notice. We certainly couldn’t have done this without you.

Also a huge thanks to Hunting for nominating The Kiltwalk in the first place. It was a fantastic amount to raise and will help Scotland’s Bairns in more ways than you can imagine.