Story
With so many bad things happening in the world at the
moment, it’s quite hard to take it all in – Brexit, Trump, Putin et al seem to be making enough of a mess of things that seeing through the myriad of cock-ups to what is really important is an almost impossible task. However, on Monday 3rd October I watched the BBC news and saw a report from Aleppo. The week previous 103 children had been
killed by Russian/Syrian ‘barrel bombs’, a ‘device’ whereby large barrel-shaped containers are filled with high explosives and either oil, chemicals or shrapnel and dropped from a helicopter.
Without going too much into the politics, Assad and his Russian friends
think targeting places such as hospitals, schools and areas heavily populated by civilians is a ‘good way’ of showing separatist fighters in Syria who is boss. And when they’ve bombed it once, they wait for the rescuers to go in, then they bomb it again, a process known as ‘the double tap’ – nice. As it stands today, circa 79’000 civilians have been killed – many of whom being children.
Those not killed in the bombings are either severely injured
or lose their homes, their families and friends. They are now in a desperate situation either requiring urgent medical help or/and food and shelter. Aid convoys are having a hard time getting supplies to those that need them, mainly because Putin/Assad keep bombing the
crap out of them. Needless to say, watching this I felt massively moved to do something about it.
My original plan was to drive a lorry to Aleppo filled with
stuff that they would need. However, I don’t have a lorry, if I did I don’t have a license to drive one and my mum would get upset if I told her I was driving to a war zone. I do however do a lot of cycling. Those that know me know that I’m obsessed with bikes and many in my office have the unfortunate spectacle of seeing me being dressed in such garments on a daily basis. I currently ride around 30 miles a day to and from the office, it’s not exactly fun but it gets my quota of riding in and I don’t have to get on a train – win. So to raise some money, begging you to put your hand in your pocket, I had to do something different.
So (eventually!) I’ve decided that I’m going to ride in to
work. Wait…what?? Yeah, I’m going to ride in to work but from
my mum’s in Suffolk. 110 miles to work (I can’t ride down the A12), a day’s work in the office then ride home (another 110 miles). So 220 miles in total. And I’m doing it in December (the 23rd to be precise) so the weather will be terrible, it’ll be dark and generally not fun. I’ll need to get up at 3.30am to be out the door at 4:00am and will eventually return home around midnight. In the dark, cold and probably rain. I would like you to sponsor me, and if not me then the people in the office near me who’ll have to put up with seeing me in lycra, more grumpy than usual and probably eating my bodyweight in food.
Anything is appreciated – I’m not going on a holiday trekking to Everest base camp or other such nonsense and wanting you to pay – I’m riding
my bike a long way in the dark and rain to raise money for children who
desperately need it. If you can afford
anything, I’d really appreciate it.