00.20 and I am finally ready. Ten hours until take off. Slightly apprehensive about my capacity to concentrate well enough to catch eight planes in twenty days, but I did at least realise when I checked in online just before I left the house, that my passport was still in the photocopier. And I did eventually make it to Maidenhead despite driving 20 miles the wrong way up the M20.
Time to sleep now, to wake up soon and catch an early morning taxi. If you want to come with me, just follow ...
Over the past few weeks I have had the pleasure of getting to know Carol better due to her washing machine breaking down, beyond repair. It has brought home to me how much we take for granted the machines that are now necessities and that, when you cannot afford to replace these expensive items, life becomes a losing battle.
In the course of discussions about the whys and wherefores, Carol produced her Five Year Diary. And then her Overflow Diary. Both were made from lever arch files carefully covered in hand stitched appliquéd pillowcases and bulging with the record of her everyday life. Every event recorded, memento stored, letter filed against a daily paragraph on the progress of her life.
The theft of her handbag containing credit union loan, her phone, bus pass and other life support resources was documented alongside visits to the singing group, poetry class and the knit and knatter lunch club that break her isolation.
Carol is disabled, depressed and dyslexic. Her handwriting is difficult to read, her spelling creative yet her words so carefully chosen, her life so full of challenges that this and other volumes are unique masterpieces. The journal describes in expressive detail a slice of life our Chancellor should be forced to experience before he slashes benefits any further.
After two months trying to resolve the washing machine crisis without plunging Carol further into debt, the chapel committee decided to cover the cost of a bargain new, but slightly scratched ex - catalogue Swan machine. There were tears in her eyes when I told her she didn't have to squeeze the cost out of her benefits.
So tonight she will have written in her diary that she has a shiny new, if slightly scratched, washing machine in her kitchen. For me that is worth all the things I haven't done before setting off on my trip to the other side of the planet this weekend.
My reward was a glimpse of the inspiring but overwhelming, Five Year Diary, one of many under Carol's bed. A collection that should be published..
