#RO2ROE (Driving the route the other way round this time)

 

 

Everyone has got a limit, each individual has to learn what their limit is – not only that, the limit fluctuates – some days by ten in the morning you’ve had a belly full, other days you look back over the week and wonder how you got through it – maybe in some cases you didn’t get through it – you arrived at the end of it dead on your feet – you have an outlook so bleak you wonder if the sun will ever shine again.

There’s something to say about those hippy types. You know the ones (or maybe you don’t) – when you’re on the motorway and you overtake a clapped out old van struggling to hit fifty miles an hour. But something attracts you to them and their journey. You know they’re going to a remote campsite, or a hidden treasure of stunning beach in Cornwall, or a patch of green by a lake in the District. They’ll be drinking homemade cider and building a fire at twilight to keep warm and boil water on, maybe shove some baked potatoes (wrapped up tight in foil) in the fire and they won’t be uploading a photo of any of it, because they never have and never will own a smart phone. They are free in a way I am not. I need to get away.

Yeah, everyone has got a limit. And I reckon I’ve had a belly full. My guts were topping up in the build up to the referendum. Blokes who have drank together for years before the football were proper falling out over ‘in’ or ‘out’ opinions on my Twitter timeline. When Jo Cox was murdered, I stopped in my tracks. I decided to abstain. People telling other people how to think, work, live. On the morning of the result (leaving the EU), my Doris shoved her phone back under her pillow as Facebook statuses screamed: shame on you!, you’ve ruined my kids future!, sign this petition to have another referendum!!! – angry people screaming at other people who voted a certain way. Never a better time to Frisbee the phone into some shrubbery, go outside and breathe and hug your kids, put some music on and dance, take a grandparent for lunch, go for a drive in the countryside – England’s green and pleasant land – ladle Heinz into a bowl in a Soup Kitchen, turn the news off, reflect on what you want from life, in a slow and quite deadly way you realise technology is superglued to your palm – suffocating your systems, Poison Ivy, Japanese Knotweed, need a fix throughout the day, smack and nicotine, alcohol and caffeine, likes and favourites, uploads and downloads – one must lose oneself to find oneself, the only way is up from the bottom of a bottle.

So, yeah, my belly was full. I took my kids camping with a few others. I came home. I felt tight chested. And tired. And claustrophobic. I wasn’t happy. The next week I turned 41 and I went camping again for one night with my pals. Afterwards I felt depressed – a quick comedown after a massive high being away with the lads. So I went camping for two nights, this time on my own. But I wasn’t on my own, own. I was in my pal Big Chris’s back garden so when he and his family came back from work and school, I had company and connection, food and friendship. Canvas and ropes, sleeping bag and blanket, two pillows for good measure and hoody to keep off the chill. I sleep soundly. I woke early. I typed fifteen thousand words. I felt better.

I’ve lived around generous people my whole life. It rubs off on you. If you can give in a small way (for example giving away a quid for every tenner you earn) then as you grow older and make more, it’s the same principle, so you’re able to give the same percentage – to give away a hundred notes for every grand you earn. I’m surrounded by people that do this, and never boast about it. I’ll be honest – the way Comic Relief is set up repulses me, so I swerve stuff like that. Also, what contributes to feelings of claustrophobia, is that I find I can’t escape sometimes from charities asking for money from me. Emails, online alerts flashing like fruit machines, public transport adverts clawing at my conscience, social media links aplenty from joggers and ramblers, sky-divers and mountain climbers – and of course those TV adverts. A few years ago an advert came on CITV (kids channel) showing a toddler stumbling about in the dust without clean water. My kids melted. My daughter asked to give money. I told her we already did, but to a different project working in a different country that Mum and Dad had visited. She understood. The next day, the same advert came on the TV. My son was distraught that they were showing the advert again, he thought there must be some mistake! Surely the child had had a drink by now? Seeing the same footage of the broken, dirty, dehydrated infant upset him even more. I tried to explain. He didn’t get it, and why should he?

Everyone has their own cause that is close to their heart that they support. For some it’s a cancer charity, for others Battersea Dogs Home, for others the British Heart Foundation, Alzheimer’s Society, Help for Heroes – the list goes on. You can’t give to everything, but it feels that everything is fighting for the right to receive your coins. Each individual is inspired in different ways, usually through personal tragedy, grief and pain. I’m not after anything from you, you have your thing and you keep going with it. I’m just typing out the spaghetti junction in my head. I’m feeling angry and emotional, frustrated – depressed even. So I type hoping it will be therapeutic. My brain is full of Japanese Knotweed mate.

After a Chelsea game in March 2015, I went straight to the hospice to visit my Aunty Sue. My Mum, her twin sister, was by her side. Sue was so unsettled and in such discomfort, I couldn’t hold her hand for any period of time or sit by her bed and stroke her hair or even just hang out, like I had many times before. It struck me that her blue eyes had no sparkle. In all the years of disease and treatment, there was always sparkle. Not now. I kissed her forehead and told her I’d return after work the next day. She nodded and I left, her rasping breath killing me inside as I closed the door behind me. My wife and I held each other in the corridor. Sue died in the night with my Mum next to her. Twins had come into the world together and in those final minutes and seconds, they were together again. And God was still present. And then one sister left. Did e’er such love and sorrow meet, Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

At Sue’s funeral, I stood behind a lectern and addressed her friends and family. She lay in a coffin behind me. I listed some of the places she had loved to walk. The Malvern Hills, the Southdowns Way, Box Hill, Oxshott Woods, Eastbourne. In her retirement Cissbury Ring, Highdown Hill, the beaches and greens between Worthing and Littlehampton. I explained to everyone that we wouldn’t be buying a commemorative bench with her name inscribed on, (that many do), placed in any of these locations, because her legacy was more than that. She had left her mark on our lives. Selflessness, generosity, patience, love, graciousness and kindness. All things she lived out. All things she was. All things inscribed on our hearts, because she demonstrated those things. That is her mark. She didn’t need a bench. She had branded us all. A love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all.

I inherited some money from Aunty Sue. So I took a slice of it. I gave it to my mate Smiffy who runs Regenerate. On Saturday night, my wife and I are taking our kids to Romania to visit the village of Soard. We fly from Luton to Targu Mores. The slice of money has been used by Regenerate to pay to build a toilet and shower block for the villagers to use. I don’t write this to blow a trumpet, I write this because I have to write it out and, it occurred to me that in the future, this will also serve as a diary of sorts that my kids can refer back to when they’re older and I’m gone. Aunty Sue went to India in 1970 and kept a diary. My Mum found it when clearing up her sister’s bungalow. She’s typed it up and I’m going to read it while I’m away. I will read about her adventures. In turn, I guess these scribblings here will be a digital diary for my kids, and who knows, maybe even grandchildren.

I’m feeling proper angry, but I don’t know how or why. Maybe it’s the EU, maybe it’s because social media is absolutely relentless and I’m angry because I am addicted to it, maybe it’s because of the rich Australian that controls our media, maybe it’s because of gun crime in America, maybe it’s because Chelsea were the worst defending league champions the world has ever seen, maybe it’s because a nutter drove a truck into a crowd of people in Nice, maybe it’s because I started running on Monday to take charge of my life and health and haven’t gone running since, maybe it’s because Syria keeps getting bombed and refugees have nowhere to go, maybe it’s because Jesus was a refugee and I haven’t been to church for God knows how long and I need to feel some peace, maybe it’s because I need to sit in the dirt in Soard and lace up a kid’s trainers and watch my kids go with the village kids to a well to draw water – and I’ll sit there and watch them carry a bucket of clean water back to a house to wash, to cook, to clean. You see, in Soard, over the last five years, step by step, bit by bit, the villagers basic needs have been met. First came the wells, then a feeding programme followed so every Saturday the kids get a hot meal, then a playground with swings and a slide – and now toilets and showers and going up – Sue’s showers – and I can picture Big Chris picking up his guitar and singing Amazing Grace or maybe When I Survey The Wondrous Cross, we’ll listen and sing those words: A love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all.

My children are aged 9 and 7. They’re buzzing for it. I’m apprehensive, but that’s because I’m trying to balance exposing them to how the majority world actually live, and at the same time protect them. They’ll look and learn and feel heart break and sadness in the poverty but also taste hope and justice – and maybe a simpler life in some ways – swings and a slide and a football and jumpers rather than Pokemon Go – I don’t know, I’m still working it out myself. Did e’er such love and sorrow meet, Or thorns compose so rich a crown? The Doris hasn’t been to this area since the year 2000. The way things will work out, because they do like this, is that she’ll probably meet kids from the local orphanage that she worked in over the summer holidays between 1996 and 2000 who are now 16 years older.

We stay there until Tuesday, and then my wife and the kids will fly back to Luton and I’ll get in Smiffy’s minibus which is currently sitting at Targu Mures airport. Along with Big Chris, Royal Paul, Nev, Zack and Levi we’ll drive from Romania back to Roehampton SW15. Three Chelsea and four West Ham. First stop Budapest, then Prague, then Bruges, then Calais, then Dover, then London, then home. #RO2ROE.

In September 2013, my first trip to Soard, I went in the other direction, a passenger in a car driving from Roehampton to Romania, before flying back. I captured my journey from #ROE2RO by writing a blog of sorts along the way. It is full of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, but it’s raw and authentic. It’s less than sixty pages, and if you fancy a read then all money from sales goes to Smiffy’s charity Regenerate and redirected to the Soard hot meals on a Saturday. You can buy #ROE2RO here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/ROE2RO-Walter-Otton-ebook/dp/B00FRR7BE4?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc

I’m going to try and write something every day – Sunday 24th through to Saturday 30th July. I won’t be flustered if you think it’s a load of old flannel, enjoy the sun and have a pint, I would. And do you know what, now I’ve typed all this out and read it back, I feel a bit better. I might even go for a run.

@WalterOtton

Mum and Aunty Sue.

Glory be to Him.