National Hug Week
National Hug Week Background
I'm a fur, and many furs like hugs. Okay, some don't, some hate hugs, and that's fine, but as compared to the population as a whole, I'd say that Furries like hugs more than the average member of the public. And I'm no exception.
Bearing this is mind, you can probably guess that I was quite pleased to find out about National Hug Week 2002. For some reason, it wasn't very visibly publicised, but it did get posted around the Furry mailing lists. It also got a lot of publicity from the people at Slimming World - I've got nothing to do with them myself, but I do know various people who do.
World Record Attempt
The main reason for mentioning Slimming World is that they were organising a world record breaking group hug right here in the UK. In a smallish town near Nottingham (no, not Retford, that's closer to Sheffield than Nottingham).
The idea was to raise money for Sargent, a charity for helping children with cancer. Everyone wanting to take part pledged five pounds to the charity, and then joined in the group hug. It was a bit more formal than most hugs - it had to be done in a certain arrangement (mainly to fit everyone in), and the hugging had to be done in a certain way.
It was certainly interesting - I was there with my mate, and several thousand other people had turned up, too. The local radio, BBC Radio Nottingham was there, various members of the press were there (I did say a few words for the radio - not sure if they were broadcast in the end, that bit wasn't live).
The Result
Well, we all had a great time. It was great fun, and we did manage to get a new world record for the largest group hug, beating the previous attempt by several hundred. Look out for it in the next Guinness Book of World Records - hopefully nobody else will have beaten it by then!
And you you need proof that I was there, how about this certificate? Okay, there's no name there - you'll just have to take my word for that. You could ask Darac, but you may consider him to be biased. If they've still got the register of entrants, find someone from Slimming World and you should find me in there!