Borders Folk are nothing if not generous to a fault. The wife has been doing a series of talks to local organisations about our charity Cerebral Palsy Africa: < www.cerebralpalsyafrica.org > People will then insist on making a contribution-perhaps £30 from a very small Guild, £100 plus from the University of the Third Age, Eyemouth. But we were staggered to hear from St Andrews Church of Scotland Berwick that their Christmas collection had raised a staggering £500 for the work of CPA. And this on the basis of a 10 minute presentation made by the wife in December during one of their services.

All these acts of kindness (like our local tax accountants giving their services free) are crucial as it is very uphill work in extracting significant sums of money from the donor community-the big trusts, Banks, Business-with-a-conscience, the government organisations who have the big bucks-which we need if we are to make asustainableble impact in Africa. Disabled children are a very long way down the pecking order of recipients of official and private largesse. African governments concentrate on those who are likely to be 'economically active 'amongst their citizens and Donor governments will follow suit. AIDS orphans are politically sexy and anything to do with AIDS is a major magnet for cash. But children with CP,seem to be looked on as a hopeless cause and are treated accordingly except by the odd highly motivated individual who is likely to have a CP child within their family and can organise a support system to meet their child's needs and include other CP children as well. Lucky it is when we can find and work with such people. Its the mothers in Africa that bear the brunt of doing something for their children like these pictured in the Mutendere Clinic in Lusaka where at least there are some services, some trained phyiotherapistssts who ' can make a difference' But too few. However, at least, it is something that CPA can build on and Zambia (see the website) is a priority country.

The website will soon have a facility for channeling contributions to CPA. We will not fail to bring it to bloggees attention when it is functioning. In the meanwhile thankyou and

'Have a Good Day'. (As the mendicant remarked to me as I had passed her by on the Flesh Market steps back of Waverley Street Station, her tin untinkled-I returned and did my bit. And felt, foolishly, better for it)  ¶ 9:56 AM