I was pleasantly surprised today when checking my emails. No, make that gobsmacked. On two counts in fact.

Firstly I have two fantastic emails from Henry, whom I have told I will book with to climb to the roof of Africa. (That sounds so good I feel like writing it all over again). As ever, he is tremendously responsive, and I get all the information I request and more besides. I have told him that I will either book on his trip at the end of February for Rongai, or will ask for a separate trip date, depending on what flights I can get out there. He is totally fine with this, and says whatever I choose is great. He has given me so much help on this it is incredible. Perhaps he is a great salesman – and I think that is in fact true, but I know that he is a lot more than that – he is first and foremost someone who loves Kilimanjaro, and has shared his experience with so many people. I admire him greatly, and am in fact envious of the fact that he has climbed the mountain and I have not, and that I may not even make it (though that I know now will not be for lack of effort). I dispel quickly those selfish thoughts from my mind – they are gone.

Next the really gobsmacking part. Yesterday I set up a page to link via Yougiving to make a commitment to drum up support for Bowel Cancer UK. Today I receive an email from Saira, who is Assistant Community Fundraiser at Bowel Cancer UK. She tells me that she has read my blog, and thinks it is “brilliant”. This is fantastic! Even better still – she asks me if it is OK with me if they feature my fundraising efforts on their website, as they would like it if other people could be inspired by it. Is it OK? Is it OK???? Errrrr, yes it is!! I am delighted, not for me, but for the fact that this thing has got legs now. This I hope means that the charity link can be seen by a whole lot more people than I could ever reach, and so hopefully the charity gets to benefit a lot more from it – that makes me very happy. I vow to be even more determined to make sure that I raise as much money as I can for them. I need to think of some good fundraising events to get things started as soon as possible…..

Meanwhile, tomorrow I am still going to do the bleep test. If it all goes very badly, I avow not to share my results here and to say that I decided to postpone it :). Lets see what happens then………truth or dare perhaps?