The South East section would like to thank all of those that helped raise funds for Parkwood Hall School via the fish auction held during our 2003 Open show.
Started by the initial donation of a 'National' prize winning fish (3rd size 3 Kohaku) by Martin Plows, MD of KoiKeepers magazine, and followed shortly thereafter by other fish donations from Koi Water Barn, Clearwater Koi, Northern Koi & Aquatics and Walcott Koi & Bonsai; the auction raised £1,370.
As an added interest for the students at the school, the staff ran a competition to name the 'KoiKeepers' fish. Despite early reports that one of the students had suggested "Phil Mitchell", the names that eventually won turned out to be far more appropriate.
In 3rd place was Gareth Flannagan who suggested the name "Red Dragon"
In 2nd place was David Pithouse with "Bubbles" (look at the picture)
................and the winner was Jackie Tuong with the original name of "OKI" (an anagram of Koi)
The new owners of the Koi (members Vi & Tony Hussey) have decided that the koi will keep all three names, but will be known as 'OKI' for short.
On the 22nd of September Show Chairman Terry Wells led a group of 6 section members to the school to present the prizes to the winners of the competitions and the cheque to Headmistress Helen Dando.
The presentations were concluded with a rendition of a Welsh hymn "Clodidduw" sung in the Welsh language by the students. Before leaving we were invited to attend a practise session of the school's steel band who regaled us with two numbers, one of which was entitled "Red Dragon". Amongst the musicians was 3rd place winner Gareth Flannagan, so no prizes for guessing where he got his inspiration from.
With this years Young Champion being a size 4 Kohaku owned by a Welsh couple, memories of the show came flooding back making us recall the cooperation we have received from the school over the years and making us proud to feel we are giving something back.
Special thanks go to Martin Plows for donating "Oki Bubbles Red-Dragon" which gave us the means and the impetus to dream up this idea and to Mark Gardner for the publicising this effort via the Koichat.com web-site.