Edward Allen

Dear All,

It has been a cold week, with light snow and biting northerly winds. And my Dad this week had a 18m (59ft) tall wind turbine for generating electricity installed at the bottom of my parents vegetable patch in their sheep field. As one does.

A giant crane came along and in just a single day slotted it on to the concrete foundation that had been previously prepared. The UK is the windiest country in Europe and the government gives huge subsidies for producing electricity from renewable means so it makes good sense here to install one. Because the area my parents live in is quite flat, you can see the turbine for miles around, but hopefully the neighbours will get used to it, and it does run very quietly indeed and produces a decent amount of electricity. Hopefully it won’t chop too many birds or low flying helicopters; the British Army has based most of its Apache attack helicopters nearby making me wonder what they know about my family that I don’t…

I’ve had a lovely quiet week, it has been really great to get on top of admin stuff and relax a bit. This coming week I have my mid-term medical and psychological evaluation on Thursday morning in London and I need to do some more packing too. My health continues to improve which is obviously hugely encouraging. I still have some bad days and bad moments, and I am still on fairly solid doses of painkiller, though it has been a rather cold week. It is joyous to be actually getting better. I am still on schedule for leaving the UK on 25th February and arriving back in Laos on 26th February. The prospect of returning to Laos fills me with very very great joy, it will be so amazingly lovely to get back there.

This has been a good break, a very very good break indeed, but I have to get back up-country, back up to the mountains, back up to the land and peoples I so love. More than 4 years ago on a visit to Laos my heart was thoroughly broken for the mountain peoples of Northern Laos and my heart remains so completely broken for such people. I know there will be many of you concerned about my health but I wouldn’t be going back to Laos and back up-country if I thought there was a substantial risk to my health and well-being. A thousand times over I wish I hadn’t been sick with this ghastly disease, but as I get better I realise that this recent time of ill-health changes very little indeed. But it has forced me to take a break and I needed that. And I need to be better at taking breaks in the future. And next time I get dysentry I will take a holiday to recover fully from it.

Things are looking so so good, but Jaffa cakes are making me fat,

lots of love,

Ned