Non-Prophet Week - The Weekend

Mike Paynter embarked on his epic cycle ride from Bristol to Birmingham on Saturday. His preparation involved eating lots of Haribo and drawing the route on large maps. He made it to Birmingham and was in pain (obviously) after 2 days riding Greta (his bike). The highlights of his trip were: going through Bourneville, which apparently looks like something from Charlie and the Chocolate factory, visiting Semy the AHS South-West Regional Development Officer and his puppies, eating lots of food at Ellie’s (OU member and AHS Campaigns Officer) and lots of giggling at Amber’s (President of Birmingham Atheist, Secular and Humanist Society).

You can listen to Mike’s many phonecasts, my favourite being when he moans about place names and he gets lost outside Cheltenham, which is near the largest cul-de-sac in Europe. Even though he's successfully cycled the distance, please continue to donate if you enjoyed the phonecasts and tweets!

He celebrated completing the quest by being the second AHS member to donate some blood.

On Thursday Cambridge University Atheist and Agnostic society invited Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society to their society. He spoke about the religious threats to equality legislation. They donated the entry fees and all membership sales made on the night to BBC Children in Need. They sold seven life memberships and raised £97. So well done to them!

Ben Krishna, the President of Oxford Atheists, Secularist and Humanist has managed to keep up living like a Puritan. That’s no alcohol, no swearing and no meat. To fill the void he has taken up a number of small challenges including baking. At 11.30pm the night before his week started he iced swear words on cakes and sold them for 50p each after a talk by Dr Baggini the next day for Children in Need. He’s used his sly sober self to sell the remainder of the cakes in the pub to drunk people, raising £20 and he’s raised £117.54 for Children in Need so far. He is doing it until Wednesday so there’s still time to donate.

David Shorthouse also from Oxford Atheists, Secularists and Humanists will be wearing shorts until the New Year for Children in Need. Sponsor him for this crazy endeavour here

AHS Team members Jess and Jenny have continued singing and drawing your quite frankly bizarre requests respectively and have both reached their targets. Jenny is having particular problems on deciding what to draw for AHS Trustee, Alex Gibson. He’s asked for ‘a character for every atheist's favourite holiday: Winterval’. I’m sure she would appreciate being sent any ideas you have.

Leeds Atheist Society have been encouraging members and friends to donate to Medicines sans Frontiers via their Just Giving page and have managed to collect £75.

Unfortunately Bradford’s car boot sale was postponed until next week. There’s still time to donate things if you will be in Yorkshire during the next week. The Bradford Atheist and Humanist Society men have been growing their facial hair for cancer support. Interestingly Cheryl Harford (AHS Yorkshire and Humber Regional Development Officer) has raised the second most for her hairy upper lip. She’s second to Craig (Bradford Universities Humanist Chaplain and society founder). You can sponsor them here