Wednesday 15 October – a message from Fife

The latest plan – canoeing across the Firth of Forth! Help ma boab!

A whisper has gone round the clubs. These Shaw people are mad. Apparently a few of them, on the last day when I’m making my stately way from Queensferry to Edinburgh, are going to canoe across the Firth of Forth with that body double wellie I told you about the other day. Now, I’ve seen the Firth of Forth. I’m gazing over its foamy brine right now, in fact. The thought of paddling across it – it’s going to take about five hours apparently – brings me out in yellow hives. Clearly these people are fanatical.

The story is this. They’re setting out from Kinghorn and canoeing over to Granton. An equally mad South African guy called Gary Shaw of Shaw Water Engineering (no relation to Shaw Marketing and Design) is teaching them the rudiments of paddles and Canadian open canoes and then he and the Shaw people are all going to launch themselves out on to the Forth on that 26 October day. Madness, sheer madness. I’ll stick to my own itinerary, thank you.

But listen. You’ve got to admire these idiots. They are dead set on raising money for the Lifeboat people that I’ve come to know, so I think you should do the decent thing and write them very large cheques (make them out to Yellow Wellie Challenge). Send them to Alastair Bruce, who is one of the paddling crew, at the address that’s opposite this little message somewhere.

This will maybe stop them embarking on other adventures which may include me, so I’d be most grateful for your cooperation here. Thank you.