It's all for real

Cambridge, 1st December 2000

All throughout this week I've been waiting for the envelope to come through the door. After the interview last thursday all I wanted was to know for sure whether I'd been given a place. All the signs looked good, but you never quite know. Well this morning I got up, and (as usual) the first thing I did was to check the post - there was the letter with the Challenge Business logo on the front. Trouble was it was a thin letter. I was told to expect conformation that included lots of details about training times, money, etc - something thick! Opened the letter standing in the kitchen, and could hardly actually read the thing; thanks for doing the interview, it started... then the magic words 'I'm please to be able to give you a place as a crew volunteer for Challenge 2004'.

It's a strange feeling. Knowing that I've already achieved quite a lot - and being really pleased at this result; yet it's barely started. As well as being really excellent, and superb news, making my day, and all that, it's also quite scary. It means that I can't blame anyone else for failing the challenge! As long as I raise the money, don't get horrendously sea sick and am actually able to learn how to sail a yacht then I'll be going. I have a blind confidence in my ability to do the last of these, I can't imagine that raising the money will be impossible, so that just leaves being sea sick!

What knowing does mean is that I can start to tell more people about what I'm doing; currently I've been a bit reluctant to shout about it in case it all went horribly wrong. Now the more people I tell, the more reason I have to go ahead and succeed. This website is one way of doing that...

Well unfortunately present day work has to continue; maybe I'll spend the morning writing supervision report forms so I can claim for teaching work over the last few weeks; should help the funds a little!