tl;dr: -- I'm going to ride my exercise bike 200 miles (the same distance as my quarantine hotel to AXA's legal office in Gloucester & back). I'm doing it to plug the gap in the charity's finances because AXA Insurance is refusing to pay out the £4570 for our quarantine costs. Let's see if we can be more generous than AXA?

Here's a <a href="https://youtu.be/cM998PZJea4">video</a> of me explaining why I'm doing this nonsense.

This time last week, my colleague Nina and I were in South Africa working on the Turn On The Subtitles Campaign. 

If you don't know about this, here's <a href="https://youtu.be/I-zISnJ-oao">Stephen Fry</a> to explain more.

Anyway, Omicron hit and South Africa went straight on to the red list. This meant a 12 day stay in quarantine in Heathrow. I'll be honest, it's grim (just google it, there's lots in the news about it).

But needs must, so we resigned ourselves to it. At least our very expensive super-duper travel insurance would cover the costs. The costs are two rooms at £2285 each (yes really). But at least the charity won't be out of pocket. Or so we thought....

Well, despite other insurance companies like AVIVA agreeing to pay out without complaint (well done AVIVA - brownie points to you guys), we both had policies with AXA. 

AXA have decided that because their policy is so vague in its wording they can wriggle out of paying. So they won't pay a penny. To anyone.

So the charity is now down £4570. This is money we can ill afford to lose. This is money that goes towards changing children's lives.

So I've had my exercise bike ferried here and I'm going to ride it (metaphorically) to AXA's legal offices (because I expect I'll be hearing from them soon anyway). I'll do 100 miles with the bike facing the window (west) then I'll turn it round, face the cupboard and ride 100 miles east, back to the grind of quarantine life.

Please be generous and help us plug this gap.

If you felt like (politely) asking the UK CEO of AXA to rethink this decision, his email is: claudio.gienal@axa-uk.co.uk

You can also tweet him at @AXAUKCEO and tell him how excited you are to be supporting this initiative. Use the hashtag #axa-to-grind 

Thanks all! 

If you want to know more about the campaign, please go to www.turnonthesubtitles.org or frankly you can ring me as I'm not exactly going anywhere this week: 07967 476624

---------------------------

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving - they'll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they'll send your money directly to the charity. So it's the most efficient way to donate - saving time and cutting costs for the charity.