When Sue's leukaemia was diagnosed, just over two years ago, I naturally decided to help her in any way I could, but it was only when the chemotherapy began that I realised that I wanted and needed to do more. This led to the idea of doing a sponsored walk in aid of Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research (the charity's new name) from our house to Wycombe Hospital, following the scenic route via Holmer Green taken by the bus, our preferred mode of transport for the increasingly frequent hospital visits. The distance is about fifteen miles, and although I would have liked to walk (and would like to have walked) a slightly longer distance, the symbolic route seemed appropriate. Family members, friends and Sue's consultant liked the idea, so I approached the charity with my plan, receiving enthusiastic encouragement, sponsorship forms, bright red t-shirts with the new logo, posters and a large banner. I began to collect sponsors months in advance, aiming at raising £1,000 but without any expectation that I would make four figures. I walked the route twice, using the pedometer Sue had given me as a Valentine's Day present. The main reason for the first 'training' walk was to see whether my old trainers, what the incomparable Robert Pires would have called 'my Pumas', were up to the job. The were, despite the snow that fell but did not lie that day, and I caught the bus back with some satisfaction. The second walk was to see whether I could improve on my time of four hours, not that the real thing would be concerned with speed-walking. Despite drizzle and then heavier rain, I walked the route in three hours and forty-five minutes.
The real thing, on Easter Monday (5 April), was very different. Responses to my plan had ranged from embarrassingly fulsome praise for 'someone of your age walking that far', although I played it down by using the modest, diffident 'shambling wreck' persona, to surprise that it was only fifteen miles and that I was only walking it. Many people had paid me their money in advance, and quite a few had added 28%, without incurring any extra expense themselves, by ticking the Gift Aid column on the form, so by Monday morning I had collected over £1,200. Six of us walked: Martin, my daughter's partner; three grandsons; John, a good friend who is a serious walker with many charity walks under his boots; and I. (Pedants, language nerds and people who don't get out much may care to notice my use of semicolons there, without which a reader unfamiliar with my family and friends could have thought there were seven of us.) Sue and Julia, my daughter, drove 'support cars' to provide food, water, lifts, first aid and rendezvous
at car parks and public toilets. Wearing our t-shirts (Come on you Re-eds!), we took photographs outside the house and set off at ten o'clock on a grey, coldish but dry day, just right for the walk. Reuben and Joseph walked the first and last sections, down to Star Yard, Chesham, aand from RGS, High Wycombe to the hospital, and did very well, but Zachary was an absolute star, walking all the way to Holmer Green playing field, where we enjoyed a windswept picnic lunch (sandwiches, tomatoes, cucumber, Tunnocks), and then the last part with his brothers, a good ten miles in all. Our arrival at the hospital was the antithesis of the London Marathon, not that it mattered to us. The doctor had rung to wish us all the best but to tell us that he wouldn't be there, as he had hurt his back gardening over the Easter weekend, and the hospital reception area itself was deserted as it was a bank holiday. That didn't matter to us; all had gone well during the five hours of the walk, nobody had blisters, was in a strop or felt anything other than quiet satisfaction ('Can we do it again?' asked Joseph), and although Zachary was aching when we went out for a family meal in the evening, we all felt we had done a Good Thing. I now think the final total will be somewhere near £2,000, but I don't think I shall accept the doctor's offer of one of his five guaranteed places in next year's London Marathon.
Five days after the event, Sue has finished her last cycle of chemo for the foreseeable future and is feeling pretty rough still, but we are looking forward to better times.
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