When Peter and Connie Watson walked into Egremont Parish Hall on the afternoon of their 50th wedding anniversary and saw it transformed into something magical by the skill and devotion of a team of elves from the Copeland Rungwe Link team they realised that something amazing had happened that was beyond the scope of their deserving. Peter especially is incredibly bad at organising celebrations of any kind, and this time it was all done while they were away with the leprachauns in the bogs of Ireland. Recognising that their basic incompetence was complicated by the need to squeeze the party in between two editions of Egremont Today and a brief holiday searching for sunshine in the unlikeliest of places, Lyn Walby and Paul Connor responded to their cries for help.

Peter explained that they wanted to encompass in their celebration the lives of people in Rungwe. As we report on pages 10 and 11, the Link not only enables money to work incredibly effectively in the economy of Tanzania, but transforms the outlook of the young people who have come back from living with families in rural Africa.
Who better to turn this dream into practical reality than Lyn Walby who had celebrated her own 60th birthday with a magnificent fund-raising party only last year? She and Paul Connor got together a brilliant team of Link members to festoon the parish hall with gold balloons, engage the Feonix band, led by Mary Kipling, fresh from leading the Link visit to Rungwe, and prepare a splendid feast. Lynne Baker baked and decorated such a magnificent golden cake, with fifty roses on it all fashioned with her impeccable sugar craft, that it seemed heartbreaking to have to cut it, and she refused any payment for it, declaring that it was a gift. The Link, again, benefited from her incredible generosity. More than 100 guests not only brought their love and delicious dessert dishes and drinks with them, but dropped bountiful cheques into the Link bucket.
Peter recalled Connie telling him, shortly before they were married, that all she wanted from him was fifty years. He was overjoyed at the time but now feels a little worried, all the more because the memory is as fresh as yesterday. Mocking the idea that when people get married they become one, he told the truth about what happens at 6.30 on Thursday mornings, when they are fighting one another for space in the kitchen, Connie trying to bake scones for the country market while Peter is preparing the paper for the day's printing, so that the paper and the flour all gets mixed up together. In spite of this Connie has had the endurance to stay with him and give room to his preposterous obsessions as well as the little matter of Rosie, our press, and rooms full of paper and computers.

The only things that went wrong were the things that had to be left to Peter. Only on the day of the party did he realise how many dear friends he had failed to invite and this record has to include a note of apology to them as well as thanks to all those who came and proved so generous. He did not get his head round the need to fix a time to cut the cake, or perhaps he could not bear the thought of damaging anything so beautiful. And there were all those unopened bottles of champagne. Well, you can't have everything. What is important is that after all costs were covered, £1730 was paid into the Link account.

This will help to settle some unfinished business. Last year we told readers that we had donated £2470 to the link to pay the estimated cost of connecting Kisondela school to the national grid. Immediately after that an American company put up its charges for supplying generators by a factor of four. The money raised at this party will be added to Egremont Today's original donation and ring-fenced for the project of bringing that school on line, while serious negotiations take place on the cost of installation. Anyone who looks at the picture on page 11 showing the faces of students and teachers at Lubala school, taking in the power of the tools that have just come into their possession, will appreciate why we must not fail Kisondela.