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When I tell people I am going to try and swim the channel they usually look at me as if I'm crazy and then ask, 'why?' A big part of the answer has to do with my brother.

Just weeks into his first year at University my brother Ben was killed by Meningitis. It was a sickening waste, and an enormous blow to many people. Years later, I still wonder what Ben would have done with the life that was taken from him, and I often find myself imagining what he would have thought about events that he did not live to see. 

Among the things that I shared with my brother were swimming and a love of the sea. For a long time I have wanted to do something in his memory. This September, around the time when Ben would have turned 28, I am going to try and swim to France. 

Channel swimming is an eccentric sport, pioneered by an eccentric Victorian Englishman, and this would have appealed to Ben's sense of humour. It involves swimming some 22 miles from Dover to Cap Gris Nes or thereabouts, guided and fed from a support boat, but otherwise equipped with nothing more than trunks, hat and goggles and a liberal smearing of suncream and vaseline. Assuming that the day of my swim is relatively calm, the main challenges will be the cold (although in September the Channel will be as warm as it ever gets) and having the stamina and mental pluck (another esteemed Victorian virtue) to swim for 12 hours at the very least and probably a few hours more! Adding spice to my Victorian exploit will be the tasks of negotiating the busiest shipping lanes in the world, dodging or enduring the jellyfish and keeping my mouth firmly shut whilst forging through sewage, bilge water and other human detritus.

The training has allowed me to explore my more masochistic tendencies. This year I have been been introduced to the misery of rising from a warm bed at 5.45am in the depths of winter, and heading to the Serpentine in Central London for some cold water acclimatization. But there is something perversely addictive about plunging into the lake in darkness and drizzle, when the water is literally freezing and a 100 yard 'splash and a dash' back to the changing rooms is all that can be managed. Many times I have been grateful to be training with my good friend John: it would have been harder to get up if not turning up hadn't let anyone down, and his unwavering good cheer has been entirely in keeping with the spirit of our channel swimming enterprise. But the Serpentine in winter has had its joys too- watching the sun come up as we swam, and the clear, golden quality of the water on some mornings made me temporarily forget about the numbing cold.

From May aspiring channel swimmers begin meeting on the beach at Dover under the expert and generous command of Freda Streeter and a team of dedicated people who turn up week in week out to smear vaseline over chilly armpits (and elsewhere) and pour hot cups of maxim (which is basically rocket fuel for swimmers) down the throats of near-hypothermic swimmers. The battle is with the elements, and with our own individual frailties, and this perhaps explains the supportive and cheerful spirit amongst swimmers at Dover.

I don't know if I will get to France. Even great swimmers (and I am certainly not one of them!) sometimes have bad days, and conditions in the channel are not 100% predictable or controlled. I am training as hard as I can to be as ready as I can be. Hopefully I will have some luck on the day and make it. Hopefully I will be good enough.

Meningitis is a very unpleasant illness and every year I read of young men and women, like my brother, who die just as they really begin to shine. Thanks to the work of organizations like Meningitis UK, awareness has increased and a vaccine against some strains of the illness has been found. However, other strains- such as that which killed Ben, continue to kill, and research is continuing into further vaccinations, again thanks to Meningitis UK. I hope that you will deem my ludicrous exploit worthy of a donation, however great or small, to eliminating meningitis. Please note I have covered the costs associated with channel swimming (boat and pilot hire and so forth) myself. All money you donate will go to Meningitis UK and the search for a vaccine.

Thank you for reading.

Sam