Embrace and Oxfam: end of tour blog Oxfam has been touring the country with Embrace, helping to raise awareness for our health care and education for all campaign. Now it's time for campaigner and organiser Damien to wave goodbye to the Embrace crew... "It's all over! I've managed to make my way back home and am attempting to re-adjust to normality whilst having an excessive amount of sleep to catch up on. What can I say but WOW. I've spent the last five weeks travelling around the country - I've met 1,000s of great people and loads of campaigners, raised awareness for a GREAT campaign, hooked up with old friends, lived on a bus with 13 total strangers, been to over 20 venues, and generally had an entire month of fun and excitement. While I'm here, I just thought I'd write a quick review of my favourite bits of the tour... Most embarrassing moment Now this is difficult because there are so many! Me, Danny and Richard went out in Manchester after one of the gigs and I lost my Access All Areas laminate pass whilst busting out some typically spectacular moves on the dancefloor. The next day the tour manager replaced it with an A4 version which is known as the Laminate of Shame; it's A4 to make sure you don't ever lose it again, and people can laugh at you at the same time. This got even worse when the crew, being the lovely bunch that they are, stole the A4 one! So, in the hope that they wouldn't be able to send anyone to the printers, I didn't tell the tour manager until after 5.00 pm. However, this didn't work, and within 30 minutes the biggest ever Laminate of Shame was attached to my neck despite pleas that it was my birthday and not my fault. Second most embarrassing moment Has to be onstage in front of about 2,000 people (always a good place to embarrass yourself, I've found). After introducing myself I shouted at the top of my voice, "Is everyone looking forward to the Delays?". This would have been fine if the Delays hadn't already been onstage. The crowd laughed while I made a swift recovery with the crew shouting "You're rubbish" from off-stage. Luckily, I managed to tell the audience all about the campaign without bursting into fits of tears or laughter. Best moment Waterfights! There was a huge waterfight in the aftershow party on my birthday which was great. Even a degree in peace studies won't stop you stalking pop-stars with a water pistol from behind chairs. Another best moment was being heckled by a small group while on stage in Birmingham. I managed to turn it around and get the audience to boo them back! Perfect. Best song It will always be Nature's Law for me. Favourite place Brighton. First time I've been and I love the place; really good atmosphere and people. I suspect it might even have less rain than sunny Rochdale (where I'm from). Campaign round-up We managed to get over 8,000 signatures for the petition, which is over 20 per cent of the total audience on the tour! This is an amazing number of people who have shown support for the campaign and have helped to show world leaders that there is a genuine desire for change. We've had some amazing campaigners and I can't thank all of them enough. The combination of effort from the team plus the support that has been shown by the audience has been an inspiration. It seems to me that an awful lot of people want to see global primary education and basic healthcare as soon as possible. Achieving this will give a whole new generation the tools that they require to get themselves out of poverty. And finally I personally have to thank Embrace for inviting Oxfam to tour with them, and thank Oxfam for choosing me to represent them in such an important position. All of the guys from Embrace have been great and have shown a genuine passion for the campaign to get health care and education for everybody around the world. AND a massive THANK YOU to everyone who took the time to sign the petition. Every signature counts." MORE BLOGS FROM THE EMBRACE TOUR 30 October Win loads of Embrace stuff 30 October End of tour blog 25 October Great tour pics 23 October Oxfam and Embrace - the end is near 17 October Embrace and Oxfam continue their tour of the UK 3 October Rocking out in London 29 September Oxfam and Embrace head to London 28 September More Photos from Cambridge, Norwich and Cardiff 27 September On the road in Cambridge, Norwich and Cardiff posted at 9:58 AM | Permalink 1 comments   Comments: GenerationWhy and Oxfam accept no responsibility for the content of comments in the Blog. you did well lad! we did wonder about the massive aaa pass!! By  Anonymous, November 03, 2006 9:13 AM   Post a Comment

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