Josh still smiling after 40 lengths

Parents and their swimmers post-swim

Jane Asher, holder of 26 world records in Masters swimming and member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame, has organised a Swimathon at Kings College School, Wimbledon, in aid of Angelfish. Twenty children will be taking part in the Swimathon, who will swim as far as possible in an hour. The Swimathon will be held on Thursday 28 February 2008.

Should you wish to sponsor the event, please make a donation here. Why not buy a T-Shirt aswell? (pictured opposite). To buy a T-shirt, please email info@angelfishcambodia.org.uk

We are pleased to announce the first Angelfish pub quiz to be held in London on Sunday 16 March 2008. To download the official flyer please click here.

Entry is £5 and all proceeds will go to Angelfish. Please get your ticket in advance by e-mailing Claire Cohen at c.cohen@ucl.ac.uk .PRIZES for the winning team include a bottle of Champagne and vouchers donated by Starbucks. There will also be a raffle, where you can win tickets to a top rugby game, and official Angelfish T-shirts will be on sale.

The quiz will be held at The Carpenters Arms (upstairs bar) at 68-70 Whitfield Street, London W1T 4EY.

30 January 2008

The inaugural Angelfish gala, held on Saturday 24 November 2007, was a historic first in the history of completely amateur swimming. In this unique event, sold-out weeks before its due date, forty-eight swimmers were baptised in the name of Charity by throwing themselves down the 25 metre pool in blacked-out goggles; carrying rubber eggs; with crossed legs; and in outrageously flowery hats. The total raised from the event was an outstanding £800.

Races ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime, with fully grown men sporting such florid caps to make the swimsuit-clad Audrey Hepburn appear underdressed. Eggs went flying from their spoons and down into the depths of Impington swimming pool, to be retrieved moments later and passed onto teammates in a series of eight unusual relays. The first heat, held between 6pm and 7pm was fun and friendly and definiately family, with adults helping their children into overly large T-shirts and adults chasing their tails in the doggy paddle race. Not a hair went out of place in the W.I. Breaststroke and the seahorses showed more style than speed with much whipping and a few ye-hahs echoing down the pool.

The 7pm-8pm heat was a whole other ball game. With participants ranging from world-record holding Masters swimmer Jane Asher, who made her debut in the egg and spoon race with a very respectable time of around about 20 seconds or so, to the talented team of Cambridge triathletes headed up by Chris and Helen Eggar, the taste of competition was definitely in the air. The doggy paddle was more greyhound than basset hound in this new take on the gala, and inquiries by the Protection of Cruelty to Woggles may be made after seahorses took a serious beating. One team even got caught cheating by failing to perform doggy paddle in the proper fashion, and extra points were given to the vociferousness of the barking of other teams.

The Impington A team emerged victorious, and all teams were rewarded afterwards by the culinary talents of Gabriella Del Valle who concocted a feast of Aubergine Nan Breads; Smoked Salmon and Cream Cheese Bagels; Carrot Soup and Angel(fish) cakes. Teams then retired to the Red Lion, Histon to test their wits rather than their speedos in the Angelfish Pub Quiz. Fifty people turned up to the quiz, with varying degrees of success helped/impaired by the real ale and Belgian lagers whipped up by the Red Lion team.

Praise for the Angelfish Gala:

"the whole gala was great...it was quite a unique sort of event, as well as being such fun...the children were really proud of themselves." Sally Abbot, CDKSC

"I thoroughly enjoyed the swimming evening...I bought some lovely food and I hope you raised lots of money...." Angie Hall, spectator

"Thanks very much for a real good, fun night. I really enjoyed it." Jane Asher, EAST

"a very unusual and extremely fun swimming gala. What a lot of smiling faces and cash raised for charity...the pub quiz was also very professionally done and we got some lovely food." Carl Myhill, Impington Masters

Thanks must go to the Red Lion in Histon and Impington Sports Centre for allowing us to hold the event. We look forward to coming back in November 2008!

For more photos of the event, please see our events page.

Family teams discuss tactics

World Record holder Jane Asher

Flowery Hats for optimum resistance

Another kind of water at the Quiz

Angelfish is pleased to announce its very first Fun Swimming Gala, to be held at Impington Village College (3 miles North of Cambridge) on Saturday 24 November.

The event will feature races such as: The Egg and Spoon Race, The W.I. Breaststroke in Flowery Hat Race, The Great Underwater Obstacle Race, The T-Shirt Race, and The Great Angelfish Race. Races at the pool will be followed by a Pub Quiz at the Red Lion, Histon (under a mile away).

Teams are mixed (men, women, children, pirates) with six members in each team. If you do not have a team or not enough for a full team, don’t worry - we can get you a team on the day. A lifeguard will be on duty but participants must be able to swim 25 metres unaided. Please ensure you arrive twenty minutes before the race to change.

There is only space for 48 participants (8 teams) and there is no entry on the day, so enter today!

How to book? Pay online here or send a cheque (please telephone or e-mail for the address - details can be found here).

To download the Angelfish Gala Flyer, click here.

• Where? Impington Village College
• When? Saturday 24 November
• Race 1: 6.00pm-7.00pm
• Race 2: 7.00pm-8.00pm
• Pub Quiz: 8.45pm              
• Awards: 10.30pm
• How much? £10 adults; £5 children; £3 for quiz

On Sunday 15 July 2007, two of the Angelfish team competed in the Bath Olympic Triathlon, involving a 1500m swim, 40k bike ride and 10k run - all at once. Both finished and managed to raise £500 in sponsorship in the process - thank you to everyone who donated!

"It was at about 8am on the Sunday morning - just after they had written my race number onto my legs in black marker pen - that I started to feel sick. I would like to say it was all downhill from there, but the countryside surrounding Bath felt like the Alps compared to my Cambridge cycling training rides, with four challenging uphill climbs. The swim was comfortable, but running outside with just my costume on was very bizarre. Overall it was a tough event: at least eight jelly babies had their heads torn off throughout the race. Needless to say, the jacuuzi in town after the race was well deserved."

February 2007, during a week spent in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, saw the completion of a feasibility study for the establishment of a swimming programme for disabled and deprived children in Cambodia.

The feasibility study shows research into NGOs currently working with disabled children in Cambodia; swimming pools and facilities within Phnom Penh; local schools and orphanages and desk-based research into the disability issues, landmines and poverty within Cambodia.

You can download a PDF copy of the Feasibility Study here.

2008 (date to be announced): the Angelfish programme is to be piloted at the waterpark in in Phnom Penh. The waterpark has use of a swimming pool that will be dedicated to Angelfish, and children will be able to use the VIP changing rooms. Children will have thirty minute lessons in the pool with a qualified instructor, and then will be able to use the waterpark facilities. The emphasis of the swimming programme will be on water confidence, basic stroke techniques and survival skills.

For anyone interested in helping out, please contact us.

In January 2007, Angelfish took 27 children from a local orphanage to the beach at Sihanoukville in Kampot Province, Cambodia.

We were up at 5.30am to get the bus that we'd hired for 6am. As I struggled down the dark, unpaved street to the orphange, rubbing my eyes, the children shot out of their side street like arrows. I was nearly kicked to the street in their enthusiasm, which was soon channelled into songs which lasted us nearly to the half-way point of our four hour journey to Sihanoukville (a coastal town named after the wayward king who abdicated in 2004). It also happened to be a national holiday to celebrate independence from the Khmer Rouge, so the sea was amass of people swimming and floating about on rubber rings in their pyjamas (Cambodian swimwear).

All the children are in the orphange because one or both parents has HIV or AIDs and are no longer able to care for their child. One parent has three children in the orphanage, who are sent out by their mother to beg everyday in order to get money; and so cannot attend school. The other children do receive an education however, and the orphanage runs extra curricular activities including Khmer Culture, Dance and English Language teaching. Many children (aged between 6 and 18 years old) had never been to the seaside before and unable to swim, despite living by a river and lake.

It was five hours of watery chaos, punctuated every now and again by some actual swimming and swim teaching; in the future we hope to organise the teaching and games more fully in order for the children to achieve their potential and have fun at the same time. Rachel, who offered to volunteer on the day, managed to get a boy off the ground and swimming pretty well by the end of the afternoon and I had success co-ordinating some of the kids' frontcrawl and getting the smaller ones off their feet and doggy paddling. The children sleepwalked home at the end of the day, but still had time to give me a hug and tell me they wanted to do it again - I told them I'd try...