Like most folks around the world, what we saw of the Tsunami horrified us. For my wife Karen, there was maybe a little more worry and horror than most - back when she was a teenager, not so long ago, she became part of a Sri Lankan family for a year as an AFS exchange student from her native Australia. She stayed in Kalutara, or, to be more specific, in Nagasandi, which is to the north of Kalutara.

(Kalutara has become a handy shorthand for us, since it's the nearest place many Westerners may have heard of.)

It was quite a while before we managed to get word through that her immediate "family" were all OK - but sadly, not all of the friends she made there were. They'd lost so much - possesions, homes, livlihoods, and worst of all mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters...

Most of this is beyond helping. Who can ever replace a mother, a father, a child?

Karen's "father" there, Amitha, immediately increased his business production of noodles - not to sell, but to cook and package with rice and curry. Along with food parcels made by neighbours, he would go out several times a day delivering these to people who had been left homeless. It was all they could do, other than clear up.

What could we do from here though? Well, we found that many homes had gone, completely destroyed and washed away. One woman, Gunawathe, had left Sri Lanka in 1986, and worked for years as a servant in Saudi Arabia to send back enough money to support her family and build a simple house. Her new home had only recently been completed, and in an instant, was all gone. It takes about £2500 to build such a simple house there, so you can imagine how low her wages were that it took so long. Gunawathe has now had to leave her family again and go back to being a servant in Saudi to try to build another house.

We decided that rather than putting what little we could raise into a giant pot that would be slowly distributed, we'd get the money to the folks directly, cutting out the middleman and speeding up the process. (Even now, three months on, there has still not been any Western aid agency help there.)

If we could help build a house or two (or five!), get some people back to normal...

In January, we'd managed to get £525 to send to them. That let them start building a house, getting the first supplies in. Labour was being pooled from the villagers, working together and for free to get themselves back to normal.

In February, Karen managed to gain a HUGE donation of £1000 from her employers - Signs and Labels - to send directly too. We were starting to gather some momentum, there being enough money to start to realistically believe we could help them put together a very simple house.

(The Signs and Labels donation was even MORE remarkable when you consider that was only a fraction of what they raised for the tsunami relief as a whole - the wonderful staff there had book sales, gift sales, a raffle, and staff donations from their pay to raise about £1500, and then Signs and Labels as a company matched the donations and sales, AND added another whopping £3000-plus on top to take it to nearly £5000! Generous souls, or what?)

Then, in March, we tried to go to see a couple of concerts by the very wonderful band Lemon Jelly, the first in Brighton, the second in London. Now, Karen was severly injured by a dangerous driver back at Christmas 2003 and rarely gets out, even locally, and the journey from Croydon to Brighton was really just too much for her. However, we stuck it out through a brilliant concert, and got her home again. Even though the London gig was at the other end of the week, it was obvious she wouldn't recover in time to make it, and that it would probably cause her even more pain than the Brighton gig.

That left us with a pair of tickets, so we decided to auction them with all the money raised (not just any profits) to go to the village. Rather than just put them up on eBay, we let the loyal fans of Lemon Jelly know through the Lemon Jelly Forum.

When we posted them up on a thread there, we couldn't believe the response! Suddenly, we were being contacted by Lemon Jelly fans all wanting to contribute, but without even wanting the tickets!

Over the next week, we were amazed, humbled and brought to tears by the Lemon Jelly fans support and generosity.

By the time the auction was over, we'd a large bundle of pledges, the winning auction bid itself, and also the proceeds of a ticket sale by another very generous Lemon Jelly fan.

We even had someone from another great band, and one whose music we greatly admire, Sundae Club, promising their first three vinyl 12" singles from their first-ever vinyl pressing would be numbered, signed and auctioned off to help boost the funds.

We realised that with so many people wanting to donate, and with this starting to have a life of it's own we'd better get Official, and Make Things Right.

Karen came up with the name because it was Lemon Jelly's next single, they'd had a hand in inspiring us, their huge-hearted fans had propelled it along, and it describes perfectly what we want to do. Lemon Jelly's management happily agreed to let us use the name - and so we were born!

So, we've got the Official Bank Account - if you want to donate, just go to the Donate page by pressing the button under here - and we're applying to become an Official Charity.

Since then, we've managed to break through the £2000 barrier, and we're now looking forward to revealing more support from some amazingly generous musicians - folks like Howard Devoto, who's not only signed a rare 12" blue vinyl EP for us to auction, but also donated - from his own private collection - an AUTOGRAPHED MINT EDITION FIRST-PRESSING COPY OF "SPIRAL SCRATCH" - the UK's FIRST INDEPENDENT PUNK SINGLE!  It's hard to believe just how unique this is - we've seen record collectors who've been searching for over 20 years looking for a new copy of this, and now this comes along from the hands of Howard Devoto himself.  An incredible guy, still amazing us all after all these years.

There's more auctions planned for the near future, some silly, some significant, plus a few other ideas we're keeping under wraps for now... just watch this space!

Thanks for reading!

Tipper.