A heartfelt thank-you, a self-serving apology, a shameless plug, and a happy dolphin

[Edward Genochio]

Greetings.

The Thank-You

A fortnight-and-a-half ago I assaulted your inboxes with a volley of thinly-veiled demands for your money - and, unlike the Gentleman Highway-robber of Kazakhstan, I had absolutely no intention of giving it half of it back.

You have been marvellous. In a matter of days, you raised over £1,000 for FORCE.

Thank you all, very much, for your kind and generous donations, which I know will make a big difference to FORCE Cancer Charity and the excellent work which they do.

(Oh, and if couldn't find your credit card last time, here's the address again, if you'd like to help me hit the target of raising £2,668 - 10 pence for every mile pedalled - for FORCE: www.justgiving.com/2wheels4force. If you prefer to send an old-fashioned cheque, please make it payable to FORCE, and send it to FORCE Cancer Support Centre, Corner House, Barrack Road, Exeter EX2 5DW.)

You can find FORCE on the internet here, and photographic evidence of the removal of my beard (to which this whole fundraising bonanza was, you will recall, once tenuously connected) here.

I would like to say thank-you also to the children at Clyst St George School, who wielded the scissors during the debeardification, and did a fantastic job, as did Nathan of Energy Creative Hair, who very kindly took me into what was for me the rather alien environment of his Exeter salon and managed to tidy up the ragged remains of what the kids from the school had left me with. Thank-you, Nathan, for the hair-cut and also for your donation to FORCE.

Oh, I've just looked at Nathan's website, and I have to say that although the haircut was in every imaginable way wonderful, I'm a little upset that he didn't offer me a little pink dress like the rather fetching one he displays online.

Anyway, move on, shall we?

The Apology

Now, I know nearly all of you were planning to buy several copies of my long-awaited book for ALL your friends and relatives this Christmas, and I'm very sorry to have let you down by not having written the thing yet.

Amazon tells me there are still 5 days left for Christmas orders, but I think that given that I haven't written the first chapter or signed a multi-million pound contract with a publisher yet, it would be unwise of you to count on it being ready in time.

The Plug

However, fear not, for help is at hand: although Edward Genochio has not yet written a book about cycling across Europe and Asia, Alastair Humphreys has written a book about cycling across Europe and Africa, which, but for the deletion of one letter and the insertion of three, comes to much the same thing. It is called Mood of Future Joys, and if you don't like that for a title, I'll bet you don't even have shares in motherhood and apple pie, either.

Be that as it may, or may not, be (and, trust me, I could do even better if I were being paid by the word to write these emails), and given that you are not going to be able to read But Isn't There A Bus? for at least another month or eleven, may I heartily recommend that you pick up a copy (or two) (one for the bedroom, one for the loo, don't miss the chapter on Lesotho - but don't you step on my blue suede shoes) of Alastair's book to fill the otherwise dull and lightless void? After all, the government now recommends that you read at least one trans-continental cyclogue a month, and Dervla Murphy can't keep going for ever.

You can buy Alastair's book from alastairhumphreys.com, or you can order it here through Amazon.

(If you go the Amazon route, I get 15 pence commission, and if enough of you do it that way, I will get rich on the back of the labours of others and won't even have to write my own book).

The Other Plug

The other book which you really ought to have bought already is Stephen Lord's Adventure Cycle-Touring Handbook, which really is the Bible in its field, and I ought to know because, as Moses once said, I wrote it.

Well, alright (as Moses once said when pressed on the matter) - I didn't write all of it, or even most of it, but I did write the most important bits, which cover essential topics such as The Great Mongolian Bike Robbery, The Colonel's Trousers, and How To Read A Chinese Map Without Looking Like A Complete Idiot.  (Answer: quickly and in the dark.)


The Dolphin

Ah yes, I promised you a dolphin, so a dolphin you shall have.

This item really has nothing whatever to do with me, or bicycles. But since I am not, for once, trying to separate you from your life savings, you may read on with your mind at ease.

You may have seen the story already - it was reported in the China Daily (whose headline, Tallest man saves dying dolphins, neatly encapsulates the gist of it), and elsewhere.

In essence, a bunch of dolpins held at Fushun aquarium in China had gummed up their innards by swallowing some plastic. Faced with this intestinal emergency, the zoo tracked down Bao Xishun, the World's Tallest Man (a Guinness-certified 7ft 9ins, or 2.36 metres, for the metrically minded), a cattle-rancher from Inner Mongolia. Armed only with his fantastically long arms, Heroic Herdsman Bao reached into the murky depths of the unfortunate creatures' stomachs, extracted the offending crisp packets, and thereby saved them from a slow and painful death from what is known in medical circles as variant-Henry King's disease.

Much appreciative clicking*, we assume, ensued.

This heart-warming tale leaves me with two thoughts - with which I will also leave you.

1. How nice, and yet how rare, that a world-record holder is actually willing to put his praeternatural prowess to practical use. So often these people seem content to rest on their outsized laurels. When did the World's Fattest Man, for instance, last offer to help you squash down the contents of your rubbish bin?

2. Isn't it a shame that this wasn't a story about choking giraffes?


Until next time, good afternoon (GMT), and tailwinds all round -

Edward


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*Which reminds me, incidentally, that if dolphins had gotten themselves a half-decent trademarks and patents lawyer twenty years ago, they'd be earning 0.05% royalties every time someone CLICKS HERE TO BUY.