Serendipity

I had been lying in the lock-up ward of a large psychiatric hospital for some five months suffering from severe depression. One day I roused myself enough to think, "What are you doing lying there? Do you think angels are going to come and scoop you up in their wings and carry you over the high walls to freedom? If you want to get out of here you better do something about it yourself." I sat up. There on the ward floor was a discarded copy of the Sunday Express. I picked it up and flipped through it. My eye was caught by an article about a man sailing single-handed around the world. I read on. Asked if he ever got lonely he replied "No, but the ideal would be to find a girl with the same idea to come along too." I wrote to him. We met. Three months later we set out together to drive to Singapore, an adventure of a lifetime that turned into a lifetime of adventure. My husband, Edward Allcard, died last year aged 102, 49 years and a day since we left England in a Land Rover, he aged 53 and me aged 22.