I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Dave and his bostin family on a number of occasions, the first of which was just after he completed his 777 and just before one of my challenges in Peru.

He is now planning on what can only be described as an Epic Challenge, all in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support.

It is called Blind Dave’s Top2Toe Epic Fundraiser, where he will be travelling Britain from top to toe – that’s John O’Groats to Land’s End – with a difference.

In August 2011 he intends to run AND cycle almost 1,000 miles in 10 days in aid of Macmillan. He will start on 10th August which marks the birthday in 1884 of the charities founder Douglas Macmillan.

So on 10th August, he’ll be running out of John O’Groats with a marathon, then jumping on a tandem and covering the remaining miles to Inverness. The following morning, once again a marathon, then the remaining miles onto Loch Lomond. the so on and so forth till he gets to Lands End.

The Basic Route

So, one man, 10 marathons, nearly 1,000 miles and one tandem!

Please visit his website and donate online to his Justgiving page.

Checkout interview with Dave here:

Last year on 09-09-09 we had Bostin Day, of which we will be having another one later this year, we thought of finally having an International Talk Black Country Day on 9th September 2010 to celebrate the first anniversary of this.

We have also been helping spread the Brummie and Black Country dialect indirectly with our very own graphic novel called Bostin Heroes, which has now been published in an English language text book in UK, USA and Canada for students to understand more the Black Country Dialect.

Where will this day be celebrated? Well, as many of us are all over the globe, we thought we could celebrate this via your Facebook Friends, on Twitter (with hash tag #ITBD2010), coffee shops, in your offices, or wherever you want to!

Do you have to be living in the Black Country to celebrate this? Of course not. Would love to hear our European, US, Aussie, Kiwi and other friends talk with a Black Country dialect.

Let’s have a Bostin Day!

Thank you Paul Newman for such a Bostin picture of you and your children!

Paul Newman & children

Bostin Heroes first came to life back in September 2008 after a lot of blood sweat and tears and thanks to some great work by Matthew Craig and Jack Davies.

We started as a blog as we had no money and one funding organisation refused us funding as we had no experience. I have always loved reading comics and as many of you who may be reading this, may have an idea of your own that could become a graphic novel.

So after almost a year online and first print of edition 1 for British International Comic Show in Birmingham, you may understand my shock when a publisher contacted me to use our novel to illustrate the use of local dialect in an English language text book.

The book is called Introducing English Language by Louise Mullany and Peter Stockwell

Last week i finally got my copy and below is a picture of part of that extract.

Bostin Heroes extract - Introducing English language

This book, which is a resource book for students, has already been published in UK, USA and Canada.

The extracts talks about the Black Country dialect and Dudley which is where one of the scenes from the novel is used with some activity tasks for the students along with how this can cause solidarity.

In our small way, we are getting our local dialect recognised around the world.

As you can imagine, we are all very exciting and just wanted to share that excitement with you!

Thank you to all our fans who have been with us from the beginning and all of those who continue to join us on Facebook here as without you, word would not of got out about our novel.

We are also pleased to announce that for the third consecutive year, we will be at the British International Comic Show at Birmingham this year with our next print edition for your collection and enjoyment. Look forward to seeing you there there on October 16-17 2010!

We don’t make a song and dance about it, we have just been getting on with it.

There has been a lot of recent press about difficulties students have getting jobs after graduating, mainly because of lack of work experience. Graduates face record unemployment. Not good news at all.

We have a number of opportunities available, irrespective of whether you are a student or not.

Although some of these positions are not paid, we have a wide range of opportunities to help develop your skills with real hands-on experience which will help with your career development.

So if you are a self starter, have some creativity and can work to schedules, then please contact us.

Below is a brief write-up of one guy who worked with us on very different projects and has gone onto bigger and brighter things with the experience of working with Bostin Group.

Andy Robinson – Web Developer

Andy first approached Bostin Group a little over 2 years ago in response to a newsletter about future website developments.

Andy is a student at Wolverhampton University studying Computer Science and is now undertaking his final year placement.

He did say he had been following the developments with Bostin Group and was impressed  with the work we had been doing and the brand values all about being Bostin.

First task was moving the old blog to a WordPress platform, which was a standard theme with some php amendments.

In addition to this, he helped add an online to store to the blog, and a translation service for Brummie and Black Country dialects.

As well as the Bostin Group work, he also helped with a number of Social Media applications, some of which have gone live and some which are still being developed.

Andy says: Over the past 2 years i have gained invaluable experience, which has helped me gain a 12 month head placement with QRky Ltd as a head developer. I have also gone on to start a number of rapidly growing online projects including Host My Portfolio and Gig Diary.

The experience gained from being involved with Bostin Group projects helped me to gain confidence in my abilities as a problem solver and developer. Working alongside Bostin Group I managed to rapidly develop web applications and learnt how to target them at the right market.

I will continue to work with Bostin Group on future projects and always enjoy meeting up with Donato to bounce ideas around. Although Bostin Group may currently not have any formal offices or studios for our development work, Donato Esposito provides is a wealth of experience and mentorship that has been invaluable to my work progressing.

Picture from Andrew Beswick at Alor Setar, Malaysia

Andrew Beswick, Alor Setar Malaysia

Thanks Bez and keep them coming!

Don’t be shy, feel free to send us your pictures and you can add them to our Facebook page here>>

Below is a selection of some of the shirts which you can buy.

For me, it was working away from home between Reading and London and heading back home at weekends. As you may know, our Bostin idea and clothing range started 9 years ago and many people had bought our shirts over the years, but we hadn’t exactly set the world alight. Hence having to carry on with the day job!

The ethos for Bostin was to have something local we could be proud about and rather than start our own shirt producing company and compete with existing businesses, we wanted to collaborate with local businesses that would be of benefit to all of us. So far, we have collaborations with people based in Kidderminster, Halesowen, Walsall, Sutton Coldfield and Northfield.

So what happened 4 years ago?

Well, apart from Italy winning the World Cup in Germany, Bostin became a sensation thanks to Adrian Chiles.

At the time, Adrian was reporting for BBC from Germany and one of the broadcasts he was wearing one of our T-shirts which resulted with a surge of demand for our shirts.

Up to then, our sales were not enough to justify an online shop with credit card payments, so it was the good old fashioned way of emailing the shirt details you wanted and posting a cheque.

From then, we quickly moved to eBay, then Spreadshirt, BigCartel and as of today we now have our very own fully customisable shirts website at www.bostin.net

It has been quite a journey for us over the past four years, appearing on many radio shows and having extensive Press coverage as we have developed quite a cult following. As our idea has become more well known, it has gone onto inspire other people to start their own local regional shirts, including Brummie, Black Country and many more area shirt slogans.

Over the past 4 years many thousands of people, like you and me, have bought the shirts from all over the world with many people sending us pictures of them wearing their shirts.

Aswell as top celebrities like Adrian Chiles wearing our shirts, we also had top soul singer Beverley Knight wearing our shirts, who won most stylish celebrity award in 2009!

It has also been quite a journey for Adrian Chiles over the past four years. Following the World Cup in Germany, a pilot show for the One Show started in Birmingham that August and proved to be a great success and went onto present Match of The Day 2 on Sunday nights too. Having met Adrian on a number of occasions, he is truly a Bostin Bloke and is now the main man for the ITV World Cup coverage in South Africa.

What will the next four years bring?

Whatever happens, we hope to continue to support local people and businesses and also spread smiles around the world with our Bostin shirts!

Bostin Heroes writer, Matthew Craig will be in the Comics Village part of the show both days, with a new Trixie Biker comic, “Trixie Biker and the Time-Wastrel,” as well as the Beyond The Black Country Bootleg Edition. Matthew will be taking part in the Dino-Saw-Us passport programme.

Checkout the cover below for our limited edition of Bostin Heroes, Beyond The Black Country Bootleg Edition.

Be sure to get your copy quickly as there is only a small limited number!

Beyond The Black Country edition

Being from Tipton, he’s proud to be showing his love of Tipton on the other side of the world!

Gav - I heart Tipton

Send us your pictures wearing your Bostin tees, wherever you may be!