DAY 218 - KOGENHEIM TO STRASBOURG: 19.8 MILES (37,600 STEPS)

27 November, 2011

19.8 miles (Total: 2177 miles) –37,600 steps (Total: 4,663,001 steps)

Remember that feeling you would get when there was a knock at the door and it would be a friend asking if you were ‘coming out to play?’ I can’t think that I ever said “no” perhaps because it didn’t happen that often. Times change but the child is still the man. After my fall, I received many offers from friends and family offering to come out and help with my rucksack, which I can’t carry on account of my broken arm. I could barely contain my excitement as the offers came in and I would immediately respond ‘yes please!’ and then run upstairs to get changed.

After Tom Hall and Stephen Bates last week, it was Sir Peter Vardy and Rob Parsons this week. We managed to connect at Kogenheim late at night on Saturday with relative ease, thanks to SatNav and GPS. Peter and Rob are two of my oldest, correction, longest standing friends. The great joy of having people who you know so well coming out, is that there is no awkward getting to know you phase as you slide effortlessly, in the visitors esteem, from just north of Mahatma Ghandi to something just south of Homer Simpson.

Both Peter and Rob have known me at my best and my worst and they still stick around; I suppose because a friend is someone who gives you permission to be fully yourself on the understanding that you will afford them the same courtesy. There is a mutuality at the heart of friendship: it reminds me what my father used to say—“if you want to know what some one thinks of you, ask yourself what you think of them, because the answer will be exactly the same”. This is one of life’s truest statements. Many times people wander through life thinking that the person they are talking to is a complete idiot or of no importance, but believing that he is thinking how brilliant and special you are, when of course they are thinking exactly the same as you.

Rob Parsons and Peter Vardy are two of the people I admire most. Every time I am with them I am thinking how remarkable they are with the amazing projects they are engaged in and the countless lives they are touching for good through the Vardy Foundation and Care for the Family. I am inspired to be in their company and honoured to count them as friends. But even better than that, they are fun to be with and we have a tremendous time as we share stories, jokes and news. There is so much to catch up on. I confess that as with Tom and Stephen last week, I find it a wrench to have to go out and walk, because I want to just hang out with them.

I managed to hype up my chafing and my arm injury to the extent that I granted myself a day off on the Sunday so we can go and visit the Strasbourg Christmas Market and wander around with a glass or two of hot mulled wine to warm our hands and our hearts. Peter is a master organiser and has bought us tram tickets and highlighted the key sights on the map, whilst Rob and I are practicing card tricks in the lobby of the hotel. We even managed to make it into the Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg before Holy Communion and out before the collection, which is like a Christian’s ‘triple word score’. In the evening Peter managed to get a top tip on a restaurant which was close to the hotel. The restaurant ‘Papa Lisa, 67100 Strasbourg’ is in a heavily industrialised zone and from the outside you would imagine it to be a very downmarket working men’s club, but inside the restaurant is packed, the atmosphere warm and welcoming and the food sublime.

We debated and shared ideas for new projects into the early hours and by the time I turned in for bed, I realised for probably the first time, I am homesick. I realised how much I miss my friends and family and how much I find myself inspired by them and wanting to help them as they help me in our various endeavours. I wanted to just hang out with them again the next day, but knew I had to complete the section from Kogenheim to Strasbourg; it was the equivalent to having all your friends playing football in your back garden and having to stay upstairs and do your homework—not that that ever happened with me. Then disaster struck…. we found that ‘Papa Lisa’ was closed on a Monday –sometimes we face trials and tribulations for a purpose other times you think that it is just because you were having way too much fun, which I suppose is fair enough, we were.

Into the levity came the shock news of Gary Speed’s death. It sobered the mood. It is such a mystery; such a waste of a life that seemed to have it all and have so much still to give. When faced with death we want to believe that there is a ‘why?’, but sometimes there isn’t. We want to have the events heavily trailed…addiction, rejection, depression etc. but when someone goes from being happy, successful and cheerful to taking their own life over night, it scares us. It scares us because it holds open the possibility that it could happen to us. Ultimately suicide is a selfish act because whilst it provides an escape hatch for the person, the other victims, family and friends, are forced to go on living with not only your loss, but the guilt that they perhaps could have done something to stop it.

I went to bed that night giving thanks to God for the family and friends in my life who have been there and are there in my hour of need as I have hopefully been in theirs, and to savour every precious moment that I am able to spend with them; for the box of life is marked fragile and it needs to be handled with care because you can never be quite sure what is inside.