FleeWinter.com

Almost before I could write and definitely before I could ride, it was up there
at the top of my list of 100 Things To Do Before I Die! Maybe it was down to
Kipling and his ‘Cameelious hump’, or maybe it was down to the magic of our
local Wildlife Park, but one day, I knew, I was going to ride on a camel.
Well, the years went by and, except for one tantalising near miss, when the
queue for a ride on the huge, exotic King of the Desert at a summer festival
proved too long for us to wait, I was no nearer to fulfilling my dream. By the
time I reached my teens, the camel had, inevitably, moved further down my
list of priorities, but he was still on the long-list and, after all, I reasoned, I had
all the time in the world.

And suddenly I didn’t. Suddenly the whole thing became a lot more urgent.
I was nineteen when they told me I was dying. Frankly, the softly spoken
doctor at the end of the bed told me, it was a miracle that I was still alive at all.
Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia is a fast-moving cancer of the blood. Even
with treatment I may only have, she said, until the end of the week. So there I
was, with all those things to do before I died, and no time in which to do them.
Which, it struck me, was the big irony about those ‘must-do-before-you-die’
lists. Just when it becomes imperative to pack all those things in, you are too
poorly even to write down what they are. All I knew for sure was that I had a
new number one: Staying Alive.

And I did it! Not just until the end of the week, but twenty years later I am
still here! Which is wonderful and amazing, though Staying Alive is not quite
like the other things on my list - the canoeing down the Zambezi; writing a
book and the marrying Prince Charming, (how fortunate I have been in making
so many of my dreams a reality) - I can’t just cross it off. Severe
complications caused, ironically, by the years of brutal treatment that originally
saved my life, mean that every day Staying Alive has to stay at number one. It
is a fight. One which my sympathetic doctors say is impossible to win. Last
winter they were almost proved right. This winter we, Lorenzo, my Prince
Charming, and I are determined to keep proving them wrong.
And I am going to ride a camel!

It was the name of the company that caught my eye. ‘Fleewinter.com’. Brain
and endocrine damage caused by my cranial radiotherapy mean that my fragile
body does not cope well with the cold, descending into a hypothermic-like
state, with violent muscle spasms and fits, with increasing severity as the
temperature descends. To avoid the horror of last winter we would, we
decided with the advice of my doctor, flee this one, and, in doing so, embark
upon a Big Adventure, the like of which has been an ever more impossible
dream as my life becomes progressively more restricted and bed-bound. So...
Morocco here we come!

The riad is waiting - it is ours for three months. The air tickets are booked and
my battered copy of Kipling is on the top of my case. ‘Staying Alive is up
there at number one - we know that, however strong my spirit, even the
journey itself might be too much for my fragile body to survive - but that
camel ride is close being at number two. And I am more determined than ever
to make it happen..!

Watch this space! ‘Humph!’