Embankment at Night, before the War: Charity

DH Lawrence (1885-1930)

By the river
In the black wet night as the furtive rain slinks down,
Dropping and starting from sleep
Alone on a seat
A woman crouches.

I must go back to her.

I want to give her
Some money. Her hand slips out of the breast of her gown
Asleep. My fingers creep
Carefully over the sweet
Thumb-mound, into the palm’s deep pouches.

So, the gift!

God, how she starts!
And looks at me, and looks in the palm of her hand!
And again at me!
I turn and run
Down the Embankment, run for my life.

But why?—why?

Because of my heart’s
Beating like sobs, I come to myself, and stand
In the street spilled over splendidly
With wet, flat lights. What I’ve done
I know not, my soul is in strife.

The touch was on the quick. I want to forget.

Shooow meeeee the moneeeeeeeyyyyy

We're off in two weeks from this morning... and we need another 123 pounds and 76 pence to get to 800 -- from there, we have pledges worth 200 quid and that's the 1000 we aimed for. We only have a few days left, so dig deep, people.

Education is not only a basic human right but also probably the only long-term solution to those annoying little problems, like war, poverty, disease and the old-time favourites, stupidity and intolerance. Go on, buy a desk and some pens and paper for a little kid learning to read. It'll make you feel good :-)

Some baking action shots

When our hands weren't messy, we took a couple shots of the cooking..

Dan working the batter

Me shredding chocolate

Dan laying the batter on the cookie sheets

Me working the chocolate mix

We're done and ready to bake sale!

Cookie and truffle sale at St Hugh's bop

So we went to St Hugh's bop to sell some legendary truffles that Nachi made with passion and some pretty average cookies that I made with a pre-made powder (but I added a personal touch: two shots of Captain Morgan in the pre-mix). We raised about 60 quid -- neither awesome nor tragic -- and felt uncomfortable asking drunk people for money.

For me, a big part of this trip is about looking into some parts of human nature laid bare, that I don't know much about (and might not want to know much about). Last night we got a preview. A guy who, if there was a "dickhead of the year" contest, would be in with a shot at the crown, grabbed a couple of the cookies, stuffed them in his ugly face without paying, laughed and walked off and decided to push one of us on the way. Nice. But just as I was considering kicking him hard in the crotch and running away, his friend, who we hadn't met, came out of nowhere, apologised for him and dropped two pounds in the cup. What a ripsnorter.

The best and the worst that mankind can offer, all inside of 2 metres squared and 30 seconds. Welcome to the jungle.

Dan

Our first blog entry

In March 2007, we're hitchhiking from the centre of Oxford to somewhere in Morocco, to help raise money for Link Community Development (www.lcd.org.uk), a UK charity that builds schools and trains teachers in Ghana, South Africa, Uganda and Malawi. And as a bonus, it'll be a kickass adventure, while having huge potential for misadventure as well, which is cool. Someone could get hurt badly. So we're going to keep a blog and maybe make a road movie out of it, just on the off chance that it's going to be a life changing experience or something wanky like that.