Picking The Scab I was doing so well. Finally got u out of my head. Not feeling so raw... Thrown myself into the mountain of soulless paperwork that I have outstanding keeping thoughts of you away one long hour at a time. Starting to heal.... Then In a moment of missing you and I login and read back all of our messages going back weeks journaling the twists and turns and unraveling of us. I scratched that nagging itch... And now I'm back to feeling low and lost and bad With my open bleeding scab...

Self Sabotage Ok time to get back on track, it's been 6 months I've gained 6 maybe 8 lbs. this will be easy, I know what to do. Go back to the meetings, get weighed share my failings with the group, promise to eat less, exercise more. I can do this. Ok so I gained 14lbs. This will be harder than I thought but I know what to do. Go home clear out the 'goodies' from the cupboard. Remove all temptation. Ooh goodies on the cupboards. I forgot I bought that. Just one bite then in the bin. Ohh it tastes so good, just one more handful... Oh Lord have I really eaten all of this? All these empty packets of chocolates and crisps? I'll start being good again tomorrow.

Fuelled By Fury I decided to catch a bus to the station yesterday morning instead of waking as my legs had not recovered from our 10 mile arctic walk around the Chiltern Hills on Sunday. As I arrived at the bus stop my bus was just about to depart so I hurried towards it to board. As I reached the doors the driver closed them and refused to let me on. I tapped in the door pleading with him to be reasonable. He pulled away. As I cursed to myself while walking to the next stop I passed the bus stuck in traffic. Fuelled by fury I decided to run on to the next bus stop and give that driver a piece of my mind - and I caught that bus and I did! It felt good to be able to run for a bus and catch it though. Cheers Driver...

Seek and Ye Shall Find My third training walk was by far my hardest. I thought it would start feeling easier by now. I was feeling under the weather anyway, headache, blocked nose and feeling clammy and the sub zero temperature did not help. My legs felt like lead getting heavier with every mile and the weight of the world might as well of been in my rucksack. I was not fun. My team were as supportive as they've always been but even they noticed that I oil in my lamp was running low. But during in last energy sapping climb when I just wanted to fall into the snow with exhaustion, from nowhere a memory of a hymn from morning prayers at school came to me. The words appearing in the overhead projector in my mind

A Splash of Colour Walking in the Chilterns yesterday with my challenge team we crossed paths quite literally with another group of walkers. As we filtered past each other one by one on a narrow track, I came across my counterpart. I have been walking in the hills since Christmas and have not encountered another black woman (or man for that matter) on any of my hikes. She was dressed pretty much like me, about my age and looked as interested in me as I did in her. We exchanged an embarrassed glance and moved on realising that both of our groups had noticed our similarities and also noted our racial isolation for the first time. The silence spoke volumes...