'Living on borrowed time' - Peggy's Story

Cley-next-the-Sea

“I’m living on borrowed time”. She must have said it three times in the space of a few brief conversations. Peggy is 81 years old and we met her at Cley Windmill in Norfolk. Peggy was staying in the room at the very top of the Windmill and the only way you can reach those rooms is up flights of open wooden ladders that are as steep as you can imagine, with a trap door that needs lowering at night so you don’t fall down if you sleep walk!
“I love fast cars” she said. “I want an Audi TT next. I did hot air ballooning last month” she continued.
Jane ventured to ask, “So, what are you going to try next?”
Without missing a beat she said, “Go kart racing”

Peggy is truly living on borrowed time. She has a full blood transfusion every month to keep her alive. For the first week she feels awful. For the second week she feels wonderful….and then its downhill again until her next transfusion. She is living life to the full in between. And, oh yes, Peggy has a toy boy! True. Her words not mine.





Dawna Markova says in her life affirming poem “I will not die an unlived life, I will not live in fear of……..” (Fill in your own gap). So, in the spirit of Peggy, we are going back to Africa, for a year. To continue what I started 8 years ago and to continue to ensure a legacy that outlives us, which we began last autumn.

Cley isn’t just famous for its Windmill. The North Sea went on the rampage again around Christmas time with a massive tidal surge. We are walking around the devastation. Houses swamped, sea wall broken, whole beaches rearranged upside down from how they looked when we saw them last summer, boats sitting on top of sea walls or in fields or just in pieces. Life is full of the unexpected, the unplanned for. Fragility.







Nasim Taleb said in his important book that the opposite of fragility is not resilience. Peggy isn’t just resilient. The opposite of fragility is….anti-fragility; the ability to take the mess and the blows and the pains and the confusions and use them to
grow into someone bigger than we were before.

What are we doing in Africa? We are making our own small, attempt to build ‘anti-fragile’ lives and anti-fragile communities. It is, as it always was, an adventure. We are in the process of sorting out arrangements in the UK and Kenya and South Africa and are heading out around 20th March. We aren’t in Peggy’s position but we do feel the challenge of the ‘borrowed time’ of the years passing by and we are just enjoying our version of rooms at the top of Windmills (daring), Audi TT’s (exhilarating), hot air ballooning (perspective on life) and GoKarting (a crazy whirl wind of a ride).

We would love you to come with us on the next chapter of our story...

- TW