WALKTALK

Okay, so today I participated in something called WALKTALK.

When the London bombings happened, the last person to be pulled out was a lady called Gill Hicks, who lost both her legs in the attack, but still managed to walk down the aisle 6 months later. She really is an amazing woman, unbelievable, and I got involved because my friend Kimberley helped organise the event. The idea behind it is that Gill and her husband are going to walk from Leeds to London in a month, and people can join in along the way, but they must talk as well as walk. It's about people who would never normally meet or mix, just talking to each other as equals. Gill's philosophy is that there's too much of a 'Them' and 'Us' society these days, and perhaps if people communicated a bit better, there wouldn't be so much hatred and misunderstanding. The first part of the walk, which was launched today, ended up in a place called Beeston, and it's actually the place where the bomber came from. I'm not normally sentimental or anything like that, but I thought that was quite profound. I can't imagine being in a terrorist attack (and I hope I never am) or losing my legs, but then reaching out to the community that raised the guy, well I just couldn't do it. It was very poignant, and as I don't normally do anything like this, I actually felt quite proud to be involved. I know it's corny, but I did, so there. It's going on for the next month anyway, they'll be working their way down the country, which again, I mean, she's got prosthetic legs, I only walked 5 miles and I'm knackered!!! Here's the link to the website anyway if anyone's interested:

WALKTALK

When we reached Beeston, we had lunch, and then Colin Jackson appeared out of nowhere (just like the shopkeeper in Mr Benn), because he's been following the initiative on Sunday LIVE, a programme on BBC1 (think it's on at 10am tomorrow). I didn't speak to him, but I noticed he had some nasty tracksuit bottoms on. Still, that's not really important! See, I had a moment of compassion and now I've slipped back into my evil ways....
Anyway, we then let a load of balloons into the sky, which looked really cool! And then everyone went on to the next bit of the walk, where there was a picnic going on, but me and Kimbers headed off. It was really interesting though, and I did talk to loads of people who I would never talk to normally. I discovered how dull I was, as I didn't think that saying I was a Lady of Leisure would be a particularly good barrier-breaking conversation topic, so I just told people what I used to do, and let's face it, accounts isn't a talking point in any social situation! But it was still pretty cool, even if I am not!

Right, have to go, dinner has arrived!

Ciao for now peeps!

iP

I'm now recovering from doing the most exercise I've done all year, by having Chinese food and watching Dexter.