Aiming low... (sea level, to be precise)

I have a cunning plan: next year, some time between 28th July and 6th August (weather permitting) I'm going to swim the Channel. It'll be tough, physically & mentally, and in a strange masochistic way I'm looking forward to it and enjoying the training.

I've been asked if I'm going to raise money for charity: no, I'm not. I'm doing this for me, me, me & me, and I'd just feel wrong saying I was doing it for charity. In any case, I don't much like asking people for money - however good the cause - and just imagine the embarrassment if I got all that way and only raised £23 (or I raised £23,000 but didn't complete the swim). Doesn't bear thinking about!! So I'm having a nice, selfish time making sure I do as much training as I can whenever work lets me out early enough and popping along to the Serpentine of a Saturday for a quick swim and breakfast with the swimming club there.

All well and good - but if you know me well you know that I'm a bit into working with the poor, the downtrodden, the given-up-on.... and so that's where this blog comes in. I'm still not going to raise money - but I want to try to use the blog to raise awareness of different groups of people and some of the organisations working with them. The idea is to talk a bit about my training / experience, and then try to link that (however dubiously) to whichever group I'm talking about. If you have an organisation you'd like me to briefly profile, let me know a bit about them and I'll do my best (no promises). If you like what you see, tell your friends - I'd like for my swim to have some positive effect on someone!


Before I go, here's the basic linking idea: I'm going to swim from England to France because I can. The sea is there, the accompanying boat and pilot are booked, the passport is in order, I have the money.... I can just go. There are people who don't have that choice - they can't just go to another country on a whim, maybe because they can't afford to, maybe because they're prisoners of conscience in their own country; there are people who've managed to leave their home country but are now living in poverty here or on borders closer to home; the list goes on. Those are the things I'm going to try to profile. I'm not raising money for any of the groups - it's all about awareness - but I'll try to include information about how to give as and when I can if it helps.

Thanks for reading - please come back