Yesterday was the annual Garrod Day Coffee Morning. We celebrated Sir Archibald Garrod’s birthday. Garrod Day is a day coined by the AKU Society; this is our fourth year celebrating Sir Archibald’s birthday. We celebrated it on the 26th of November this year as his birthday is the 25th and, wanted to celebrate it on a working day in our office in Cambridge.Sir Archibald Garrod was an English physician who first described AKU. He is best known for his study on inborn errors of metabolism. He was intrested by how the colour of urine changed, and due to this, he began to study Alkaptonuria. He collected family history information as well as urine from his patients and in 1902, he published a paper called The Incidence of Alkaptonuria: a Study in Chemical Individuality. This was the first published account of a case of recessive inheritance in humans. Due to these remarkable achievements, we celebrate his birthday every year.

At 11 am we started selling our cakes and AKU Christmas cards, 

which can be bought online here. Four delicious cakes were on offer; we had homemade lemon drizzle cake that Juliet’s mum made, Malteser tiffin made by Ciaran, pumpkin pie and vanilla cupcakes made by Juliet. All of these were very popular and went as a great dessert for everyone’s lunches.We finished our coffee morning at 2 pm but continued selling our raffle tickets today, so everyone had a chance to win our fabulous prizes. We still have a few leftover cakes in our office.

We then handed out our fabulous raffle prizes today. The prizes up for offer were:–    Two cinema tickets at the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse–    A £5 voucher at Scotsdales Garden Centre–    Yummy coffee and cake for two at Cambridge Cookery School Café–    An exciting adventure for two at Shepreth Wildlife Park–    Paintball tickets, valued at £100, for up to 10 people at Delta Force Paintball

Congratulations on all the winners, we sold 54 raffle tickets! Overall, we raised £67.50 through people buying our yummy cakes, Christmas cards and raffle tickets. All the funds will go towards our patient support, community building and medical research.  Garrod Day was a great success, and we’re all excited for our next coffee morning next year.Got an idea for a fundraising event? Keen to get involved in our community fundraising? We are always looking for new and exciting ways to fundraise. Why not get in contact with our 

fundraising officer Juliet, and share your ideas!