Kitty will be zip sliding from the top of the Baltic building (left) across the River Tyne Photo: Wilka / flickr CC
Eye - 16 March 2012
From zip sliding to bean spotting
Zip sliding at 80
‘Scary’ news from Middlesbrough Meeting where the treasurer, Kitty Grove-Stephensen, is about to celebrate her eightieth birthday. Kitty will do a zip slide off the roof of the former Baltic Exchange building, which is forty metres high, to land across the river in Newcastle. The aim is the raise money for charity – MS research.
Kitty said, ‘You’re in a harness and the harness is attached to a wheel on a wire. In this case it’s going across the River Tyne. We are starting at a height of forty metres and you land at ground level in approximately fifteen seconds. It’s a bit scary!’
The zip slide is not her first scary project. She said, ‘I did abseil on the Transporter bridge in Middlesborough four years ago.’
Kitty’s fundraising has not gone unnoticed. She will shortly receive a mayor’s award for seventy years’ fundraising for charity.
For further information: www.justgiving.co.uk/Kitty-Grove-Stephensen
Dazzling peace
What is the emblem of the seaside town of Brighton? A writer in a local newspaper, musing that the town is as comfortable for a builder as it is for a drag queen, came to the following conclusion:
‘The real emblem of Brighton isn’t the Pavilion or the pier but the Quaker Meeting house; a place of dazzling peace, generosity and light.’
A great accolade for Friends who are simply living according to the Quaker way.
Greed vs need
Dorking Quakers who attended the Occupy site at St Paul’s were struck by a banner that simply read: ‘It appears there’s enough for the bankers’ greed, but not enough for everyone’s need.’
Enough said.
Spot the bean
Eye is in need of some caffeine to help sharpen his senses. Razor sharp reader Alan Pim noticed that a few weeks ago Eye labelled a cocoa bean as a coffee bean.
Cocoa is, of course, used to make hot chocolate, which is drunk to help induce sleep. Perhaps wide-eyed readers can spot the difference between a coffee and a cocoa bean in the pictures below:
