Three weeks

Three weeks from now – if all of the ducks currently shuffling around waiting for someone to tell them what to do actually get themselves into a line – we will be moving. Well, sort of. Joy will already be ensconced in Northumberland with her Grandma and Granda, as she starts her new school on 8 September. Ned will be in place at his Dad’s nearby as he’ll be studying A’Levels at Kingston College (with season ticket for the East Coast Line in hand). The fleet of juggernauts with all of our worldly goods will be heading up the M1. Yes, 17 September has been earmarked as The Day, although as anyone who has ever bought or sold a house will know, having a provisional completion date is no guarantee of anything.

I think it’s time for a gratuitous house picture. This time, in the snow.

(Squeee!)

However, I won’t be going with the juggernauts. Because 17 September is not just Moving Day – it’s also the day (well, night) of the London Night Hike in aid of Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres. So while Alan and the chattels (ooh! sounds like a 1950s pop group) head for our new home, I’ll be smearing my feet in Vaseline and eating lots of carbs in readiness for walking 20 miles around London with Ned and my Dad. (Other preparation has involved – um – hauling lots of packing boxes around and having my ingrowing toenail sorted. Ouch.)

It’s odd to think that I will actually spend our theoretical first night in a new home pounding the streets of the city that I am leaving, to raise money to support people with a disease that has changed my life. In fact, if it wasn’t for my dance with cancer, I’m not sure we’d be moving at all. I’m ashamed to say that I’m sure I wouldn’t be walking.

Although I am emphatically not saying goodbye to London – it’s holding my son, my friends, my beloved godchildren and quite a lot of my work hostage – I’m seeing the Night Hike as an opportunity to reflect on my life here and mark the end of a brilliant 20-odd years.

Ooh! A little bit of my brain is waving at me. Hold on a minute, while I… Ah…. it says, the Night Hike is not all about me. It says not everything is all about me and I should remember that. (I didn’t sleep very well and my brain gets a little tetchy when that happens.) It says, I am a very small and very lucky person and cancer is a bleak and terrible thing and I should bear in mind the real reasons I am doing the Night Hike, not just the coincidence that it’s on moving day. Quite right.

Real Reason 1:

I’m here. I’m alive. I can. And I want to show others dancing with cancer that it’s possible to live through it and grow in it and, well, just make it. And as Team Bah!, we want to show others that they are not alone with this disease; that people are caring for them, supporting them, willing them on.

Real Reason 2:

Maggie’s is a charity and it needs funds to do its amazing work of supporting and nurturing anyone touched by cancer. I’m proud to be walking with my Dad and my son to recognise this need, and this work, and to raise money. Please, sponsor us if you can. Click here or go via the widget on the right.

(In case you weren’t around, you can read about last year’s Night Hike and last year’s blister here.)