Why I'm doing this – the honest version

I'm doing this because I don't want to be 70 and wish I had.

That's the real reason. Everything else is decoration.

As children we explore and experiment with everything.

First everything goes in our mouths and as we grow we get more adventurous, we go places we disobey rules, we touch stuff to see if it’s hot.

Then we discover ideas and a whole new world blossoms. Right and wrong, equality, justice freedom and then we are told about responsibility, community and money.

For most of us that is the start of an invisible change that is so gentle it goes unnoticed. We still have fun, act irresponsibly, do anything we want.

At some point in our thirties we notice that we have responsibilities and begin to worry that our dreams are slipping away and that we will have to give them up.

We don’t need to at all but we may have to do them later.

That’s a long way around to say I have always wanted to explore the world and test its limits.

Around 5 years old I disappeared from home for few hours. Police were called and parents started to search but I had walked a couple of miles to the local playground where my mum found me.

A year later I set off in my new wellies across the fields on an adventure to test them properly.

Family holidays on the Isle of Arran our parents hired us bikes safe in the knowledge we could explore Lamlash at will as we “wouldn’t climb the hill out of the town” 🫢🫢. I never explained that error.

So it turns out that I still love discovering new things and seeing what I can do myself’