1 June. On a freezing cold first of June day we are off on a week�s Lakeland therapy! We hope it warms up. But on the way we must call in at Leytonstone to deliver most of the kit we got from Dorchester. Soon it will be on the way to the Sudan.
11 June. Things have been a little slack recently. The hearing aids testing at the prison has been shut for a while for security treasons, so we have no aids to send! One or two consignments are held up while a safe way to send them is found. Then we have a request from the Salvation Army in Hinckley, to help a school in Uganda with an audiometer. We can help but they must find a way to move it and I am sure, knowing what a great organisation they are, they will.
12 June. A promised audiometer for Thailand is about to be sent to a UK address for onward carriage. Rotarian Howard �Onestop� is paying a flying visit to home from the Philippines and wants quite a bit. Unfortunately all he will get are some batteries until stocks build up.
13 June. I have promised some speech trainers to Dr Kate Cushing, to go to Minsk and must get her the details so she can beat the bureaucrats in Belarus.
16 June. From Nepal our old friend Lion Bodha Bahadur Raut Chhetr sends a message to say that they desperately need ear mould facilities and tubing. Things we usually rely on the recipients to provide. I am at my wits end to find a solution apart from being able to supply tubing.
19 June. The Leonard Cheshire solution works again, hallelujah! He said that when you are desperate for something it sometimes turns up and it has. Two boxes of hearing equipment containing ear moulds arrive from an audiologist�s in Bradford It may only be a quick fix for Bodha but then it might work for some poor people. I use the term deliberately, bloody marvellous!
4 July. As if by magic a batch of thee boxes of hearing aids are received from the prison. Now we can get issuing, though at present we have only one outstanding request for the Sudan and I have lost the address from my PC!
7 July. A chap called Paul Farmer who lives in Kenya wants to help a group of deaf children badly in need. Alas, local facilities are basic to say the least but eventually I hope we can help.
7. July. Leonard Cheshire syndrome strikes again! I am not sure if my date is exactly correct but we have been contacted by Lion Dilshad Mohamed of the Lavington Club in Kenya to ask for more hearing aids. Dilshad is in Canada at present but I hope that she and the Club can help Paul Farmer�s children in need?
23 July. John Braybrook of Eastbourne Lions has a box of hearing aids, which we pick up at a lions zone Chinese lunch on a sweltering hot day. Many thanks to you Eastbourne.
26 July. John Bonny of the Leatherhead Lions Club sends two of his late mother�s hearing aids, wondering if they might be of use? Thanks Lion John, they certainly will!