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Welcome Gary Steadman from Plymouth!

Gary emailed us last week after finding one of our cards (which he described as 'ridiculous')

under a hedge whilst walking his dog. We got really excited and asked our first finder loads of questions and we found out the following...

He's lived in Plymouth for 10 years but was born in Wales but hasn't got the accent. He works as a butcher in Asda, he thinks thats ok but he wants to start up his own business. He thinks supermarket shopping is killing the highstreet. His dog is called Jess and will only play catch with a certain yellow ball. Gary is worried that one day he will lose this ball. When he was a boy he wanted to play for Liverpool but instead he now settles for his 5-a-side Sunday league at the Fox and Hound. His favourite place in England is Sandbanks near Poole and his least favourite place is London ( we were slightly offended) because its 'massive and clostrophobic' . He's a bit embarassed about being on the internet but after we told him its only a little blog about balloons and getting to know people he sent this picture. awww.

The balloon was Blue.

Thanks Gary!

Honey we shrunk the world!

... well we're trying at least.

So the fun began on a blustery morning in January. The tags were made, the sticky back plastic was on, the balloons were being filled (Thanks to the lovely balloon lady we forgot to ask your name) and the camera was read....er. Actually, the camera wasn't ready, far from it. It was broken. Not that we bloody noticed, there we were in the middle of a swampy field in the wind, untangling balloons in a comedy fashion for the camera, totally oblivious to the technical malfunction. Otherwise the day was a success, the balloons flew off high into the sky and so far no plane crashes have been reported. phew.
But we are not ones to leave our readers wondering, so in true Teamgirl stylee we have quickly cobbled together a dodgy montage that loosely represents our day. Enjoy...

The Dangers We Will Enevatably Face

The Plan...


Fill 20 balloons full of helium.

Each balloon will be attached to a message.

Let off 20 helium filled balloons in a wide open space in London.

See where they end up and with whom they end up with.

Sounds pretty simple but there are dangers in the way of our quest to carryout the small world experiment. One being the wind. Natures cruelest force, hater of umbrellas, enemy of wigs. The wind may be useful as a renewable energy source, but don't be fooled it can turn on you at any point. Not enough wind and our balloons won't be carried far enough up to travel any further than to the next garden. Too much and we risk are balloons being impaled on the near by trees.

The second danger is small children. They love balloons, who can blame them what isn't to love, but handing one over to a small child results in one less to find it's way to a distant land. Also don't be fooled by the ply of the child who promises to let it go for you. They are simply waiting to have it in there tiny but firm grasp and then refuse to let it go and you can't really prise it out of there thieving little hands without causing a scene.




The final danger to our quest and probably the least common, but neither the less one that Gemma feels we should still highlight is the possibility that it gets sucked into a jet of a plane. We are surrounded by flight paths living in London (i blame easyjet!) so it does seem impossible to avoid this highly unlikely event from happening and so we have no choice but to hope one of our balloons doesn't meet it's demise by take down a bowing 747.

"It's A Small World" said a man in a pub

One bright January Morning we decided to start something, something that would change the course of ours and other peoples lives. Something that would put a smile on peoples faces and remind them that the world isn't as big as we all think it is regardless of how many miles apart we are we are simply neighbours.

OK lets not get too deep. Basically we heard several stories from people, mainly people in pubs about people doing things to show how small the world really is. One involved passing jigsaw pieces around the world with the final pieces being sent back to the one person who thanks to everyone else could put all the pieces together. That may not have been the exact way it went but we were in a pub, so you know. Anyway what struck me most is the fact that these peoples paths would never have crossed. They would have never even known the other person existed until chance took over and handed them a jigsaw piece. So in the spirit of this story we set out to let chance take charge of our lives for the next 60 days, in the form of balloons, big red shiny ones!