On Saturday 18th October I fulfilled a dream of mine that was to be a zombie for the day.  For years I have wanted to get the make up and gore on and stumble about as an old school zombie and the lovely folk at Barnsley Hospital Charity made my wish come true.

They held the Zombie Run, a charity fun run where competitors take on a 5K race through the zombie infested Worsbrough Mill in Barnsley in the hope of getting to the end uninfected.  The event is to raise money for the fantastic charity of Barnsley Hospital and is a brilliantly worthy cause.

We arrived on site at 8.30am already dressed in our zombie outfits of choice, my teenage son came with me and together we became the undead.  His chose to be a zombie school boy whilst I decided to go for the clothes I have worn the most over the past year and went for a sleepy zombie in pyjamas.

We then had our make up done by a team of fantastic artists who muddied up our skin with vaseline and cocoa powder, messed our hair by back combing with conditioner and then applied makeup and prosthetic bits of skin, painted our teeth, finished off with a lot of fake blood!

We were given a briefing and then put into position around the course, our section was two abandoned cars and our group were to moan, groan and stagger around the area being as terrifying as we possibly could whilst the runners tackled the obstacle and tried to keep their three ‘lives’ intact (they had belts with velcroed strips on that the zombies could snatch)

It was a lot of fun and the other zombie volunteers were lovely, it was great fun despite the mud, cold and long day and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  The only problem were there were a lot of school children zombie volunteers who came along after we had been designated our areas, that meant the stretch of track that should have had 10-15 zombies along it, suddenly had around 50.  There were no teachers or adults around who were responsible for the school kids and they refused to listen to me or the other adult volunteers and for me, it ruined the day quite a bit.

I think going forward it would be an idea to ensure under 16s are only allowed to be zombies under the supervision of an adult.  I was really excited about the day but didn’t sign up to try and babysit a load of teenagers who refused to listen… It might be an idea to ask for a donation to be a zombie, I would have happily paid a tenner to be a zombie for the day to raise even more money for the charity and that fee would mean that people who really want to get into the zombie spirit of the day could do so.

I was all meant to be fun, I don’t want to sound like I am a method actor (HA!) but for me I believed the day was meant to be a really fun way to raise money for a good cause.  I thought my role was to be scary, add atmosphere and grab a few tags as and when.

One of the other zombies on our area had gone all out and had ‘intestines’ filled with pink spaghetti attached to his costume, I thought it was hilarious and got a photo of us together.  As I have no large intestine, I thought I would try and nick a bit of his!

All in all it was a great experience, I LOVED getting into zombie character and staggering about groaning and growling.  So much so that I have almost lost my voice!

Would I do it again? Abso-braineating-lutely!

Love Sam x