A man who spent a year trying to create the world’s longest LOOM BAND accidentally took it – to the TIP.
Devastated Lister Paige, 48, had sat for hundreds of painstaking hours building the 220m colourful band.
Dad-of-five Lister, of Mevagissey, Cornwall, was aiming to reach 360m and set the world record for the longest ever made.
But his giant 220-metre twisted rubber band creation got mixed up during a recent house move and was accidentally included with items he sent to the dump.
Lister, who was making the band to raise money for the feast week in his village, said he has been left gutted after all his hard work was wasted.
He said: “I’ve been working on it for more than nine months and there is only a couple to go.
“There’s no way of getting it back or knowing where it has gone, so the challenge is over.
“We lost a couple of other boxes of our own stuff as well but those things can be replaced – my loom band can’t. I’m totally gutted. I’d got quite attached to it.”
Lister was introduced to the loom band hobby by his youngest daughter Bethany, 14, last year.
He was attempting to make the world’s longest band, which he then intended to auction off to raise money for Mevagissey Feast Week.
Businesses in the village had also promised sponsorship money for each metre completed, and Lister started work on the band on the first day of feast week last year.
His aim was to complete the challenge in time for this year’s opening at the end of June.
He has spent time most evenings adding to it, and local people have donated the rubber bands to help him.
It had even been taken on the ‘loom band tour’, accompanying Mr Paige on visits to Sheffield, Solihull, Torquay, Wigan, Birmingham and Coventry, and even a Lee Evans gig in Manchester.
Lister added said: “My daughter had made a loom bracelet in 10 minutes and I said, ‘How do you make them?’ She showed me and I thought, ‘that’s brilliant’.
“So, on the first day of Mevagissey Feast Week I started making one and I thought, ‘Well, if you can make a bracelet, can you make a necklace?’
“It got so many inches long that I said to my wife, ‘This is the first day of feast week: I wonder how long it would be if I carried on to the first day of feast week next year?'”
Whether he is watching the World Cup highlights, taking a coffee break or flicking over to watch the tennis at Wimbledon, Mr Paige had his rubber bands at hand
At 360 metres the rope would have spanned the entire stretch of Mevagissey harbour.
