"I feel like a bootlegger's wife!" - Mary, It's A Wonderful Life

Well hello there, where've YOU all been hiding?

The last 24 hours have been a headspinning, grin-bringing, heartswelling time for us. Collectively you've put in nearly 4 grand since yesterday. I would say I'm speechless, but I'm not. I wanna babble at you and tell you how great it feels to not only have local support but now, thanks largely in part to Owen Williams' Guardian article and Simon Pegg's blessing, international renown! Messages have flooded in from California, Japan, Lebanon, Brazil and Australia wishing us well. It's a huge boost to our morale as we've been beavering away the whole time thinking 'well, this is going to be cool for us to do' and just sort of trusting that people might dig it when we're finished. We're still sanding wood and drilling walls, and to have people express their faith in what we're doing is a huge source of comfort. Thank you thank you thank you.

It's easy for Joe and I to forget about the outside world: we've been pulling 7 day weeks and abandoning whatever social lives we had to the project. People pop in and say hello and wish us well, but the scale of what happened yesterday was bewildering. We don't have internet there yet either so it wasn't unti texts from friends and family started coming in saying we should check out the buzz that I was made aware of it all. It was like the world came bursting into the shop, picked us up, patted us on the back and (with a sly tenner in the palm) shook our hands.

As a result, it looks like we might smash our target. Not only is Simon Pegg's cheque in the post (he's solemnly promised it really is), the donations are still flooding in. So, like Ponyboy, we're golden.

I'll write more when the official ending comes around, but til then I'll leave you with a highlight from today. Neil from Bristol Design Forge brought in a selection of the Genre signs he's doing for us. And they are beautiful. If you wanna see what other work they do, check em out here www.bristoldesignforge.co.uk

Thanks again all of you. Not only for providing me with the closest I'll come to a George Bailey Experience, but in making possible something I'm sure we'll all be able to enjoy and be proud of long into the future. 

A bien tot

Dave Taylor

20th Century Flicks.