Sticking your oar in

Monday evening paddling on the river in my friend Milly's canoe, plus a couple of shandies on a grassy knoll. Mils is a wise owl and she's been formative for my life in Cambridge: on the panel that recruited me into the organisation and an original member of the refugee support group that I'm now Secretary of. When she was a baby she came to Cambridge as a refugee as her family fled the Pinochet regime. She's feisty and fantastic fun.

After it was dark and we paddled back through the stretch of the Cam in central Cambridge, it was beautiful and haunting underneath the colleges. The only interruption was some inept punters struggling to navigate.

At lunchtime a colleague showed a film of when he drove an ambulance to Tajikistan, donating it to a health NGO that was in dire need. The trials of Central Asian borders and the stony landscapes with lush valleys planted in me the urge to organise another adventure to that fascinating region.