Been writing songs and recording demos. Something is happening, but I have no idea whether it's magic or mere mediocrity as yet. Time and my own nervous judgment will tell.

To Las Vegas Sunday to start the MAG trek across Death Valley on the California/Nevada borders. It's a comfortable 24-29C at the moment, but could get hotter at peak times. All precautions taken, and all and any happenstance considered, but still you never know. It is an adventure all right. And I am a betting man. There will be lessons learnt and experiences that will eventually find their way into songs and stories. I have been apprehensive and distant over this, but now am feeling that tinge of excitement, the one you feel a day or three before the holiday starts, before Christmas, before the big day. It's something like nervousness, but in a melange of so many emotions it's never going to be pinned down. The adrenalin is starting to pump, I guess. It's not performing, but it's something like that.

50+ strangers to live amongst for several days in a semi-wilderness: arms-length for a time these days, if only because with the immoral chequebook journalism that pervades old Fleet Street now, together with the world wide web, there really is no hiding place, no matter how honourable your intentions. I will have to put my trust in a lot of people I have never met and may never see again once the trek is completed. A man has to watch his step these days, when a man is in the public eye.

The Paul Horton painting is complete and framed (it is a substantial 42 x 38 inches in size) and I am overwhelmed. It is a fabulous image, a wonderful metaphor on the theme of struggle, honour and commitment. "Onward and Upward," it is. The rolling hills, almost human buttock-like, and the factory smoke evolving into dark and threatening clouds give it an air of foreboding, but our hero must soldier on, bike at hand on the long, steep incline, his destiny mapped out in industrial geometry and nature's own testing-grounds, the verdant slopes innocent and benign but at the same time challenging.

The challenge is on. Many have given support to my trek. A good sum has been gathered for MAG to help train young men and women as de-miners in the blighted plots of SE Asia and Angola. I've been there and seen the sadness of whole villages unable to send kids to school, where the men can't fish from the river-banks or tend sheep or grow crops, where street sides and banks and fields are mined with dirty unexploded ordnance left behind as a farewell gift by retreating armies, mostly courtesy of the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot is long dead; yet, I am almost ashamed to admit that even as a Christian I have no compunction in believing he will by now have rotted in that peculiar Hell assigned to the truly evil.

It is not too late to give support to this cause. If you share concern with me, to any degree, you are welcome to show it by donating to MAG. This website will lead you to the form, as will their own. Or send a wee cheque to MAG at 47 Newton Street, Manchester, M1 1FT. Every fiver counts.
My intention is to report to this diary every night of the trek. But we are talking cowboy country and there is (allegedly) no cellphone signal. But a stopping-place or three has WAP connection, so my laptop will be up and running each night a connection is available. I'll do my best. Keep in touch.

Yours, saddle-sore from training,

SH