I signed up as a volunteer at the Salford Cathedral Homeless Centre. It was a drop-in centre rather than a residential one, but I went there twice a week. I served the homeless food, played cards and pool with them and simply listened to what they had to say. It was a real eye-opener. It’s all too easy to see a homeless person on the street almost as a non-person. It doesn’t really occur to you that they have a life and a family and have often been in so-called ‘normal’ jobs. But at some point, or points, along the way they have encountered adversity and have been unable to cope. A lot of them were ex-Forces. They had become institutionalised, and had left the system without any support.
Some of the things I saw were awful. Their shoes, for example, were almost welded to their feet so that you couldn’t get them off. The socks had become a part of their feet, too, the skin growing into the fabric.
But, generally, I was struck by the generosity, openness and good humour of the people I met there. Some were happier to talk about their issues and where they had come from than others, but whenever you went there in a bad mood, or in my case with the tribulations of an eating disorder, it was all put into perspective. Your own problems paled into insignificance. I got so much from the experience. It was so gratifying and fulfilling, and it reconfirmed that I had made the right move by pursuing my MA in development. Even if I was concerned more with the international angle, I could see that the same principles applied closer to home.
When my MA was finished, they offered me a paid position at the centre. I decided not to take it, because I wanted to head back south. But my lifelong passion for development (I had a name for it now!) was stronger than ever, and I had some qualifications and experience to back it up. Now I needed to embark on a career.
5
Summits and Volcanoes
On Christmas Day 2001 I went out for a run. Training on Christmas Day is a landmark for any athlete. Considering I wasn’t even an athlete to any serious degree at that point, I had to accept that running was now another addiction to add to my list.
I have trained every Christmas Day since then. But when I pounded the streets in 2001 on so holy a day, I did so with a particular goal in mind. I had entered the 2002 London Marathon.
It was my friend Amy who inspired me to do it. She had grown up with a heart defect and had never been a runner, and yet in 2001 she completed the race. I took the decision to enter while I was still in Manchester. I approached a charity, Hope for Children, who agreed to let me run under their banner if I raised £600. Then, when I moved to London that winter, I threw myself into the most unstructured yet obsessive training regime.
I simply ran. Once or twice a day, up and down the Thames path for an hour, the same route, rain or shine. I was living with Tim and Easy in Putney – or rather sleeping on some cushions on their floor – and was on an internship with Card Aid (i.e. selling Christmas cards). All of it was fun, like being back at uni. None of it really encouraged the sort of training values that a credible athlete might adopt. I was eating properly by now. Not necessarily a balanced diet, but it was a lot healthier, as was my perspective on it. That might have been because I justified it with all the running I was doing.
Running was now my primary addiction. I had handed in my thesis, and the London Marathon had replaced academia as the big goal in my life. I ran every day, and it was always for a certain amount of time, never a certain distance. One Sunday I ran for four hours, which I would never do now. It is quite likely that I actually ran more than a marathon without realising it.
I love maps. I’ve been known to lie in bed and just look at the A–Z. I enjoy seeing how places are connected. My dad had this tiny little measuring device that you could wheel across a map, and it would tell you – via the scale – the distance from A to B. I remember using that in the first few months of training, just to get a rough idea of how far I was running, but it wasn’t very accurate. I vaguely plotted my routes on the A–Z – across Clapham Common (I had moved to Clapham North by then), up St John’s Hill, through Wandsworth, around Richmond Park, down along the river . . . I just ran and ran. I had no clue about eating or drinking on my runs – so I didn’t. And my clothes were decidedly suboptimal – beaten-up trainers, second-hand shorts and a t-shirt I used to wear travelling.
You couldn’t beat me for enthusiasm, though. I was passionate about my new pastime/addiction. I ran the Reading Half-Marathon in March, and was astonished at my time. You get put in different starting pens at the London Marathon, based on your expected finish time, and after Reading I asked to be moved into a faster group.
By the time the day arrived, my excitement was soaring. My chief worry was having my photo taken. I’ve never liked the way I look with my hair pulled back. I have inherited an ear from my dad and an ear from my mum, such that one is significantly larger than the other. So whenever I’m in a photo I like to shake my hair out a bit and cover them up. My favoured hairstyle while running, however, is to have it starkly pulled back in a ponytail. It troubled me that there would likely be photos taken of me on Marathon day with my ears on show. I have never found a solution to this problem.
I spent the night before at my friend Emily’s house in Greenwich, where I ate a meal of tuna and pasta, a pre-race convention I observe to this day. I slept fitfully and woke early, but down at the start I was very relaxed, if excited. I don’t remember any nerves. My primary concern had morphed from photos to peeing. I have a relatively weak bladder, and the facilities were few and far between and very crowded. So I went behind the nearest bush, which is definitely a convention that I observe to this day.
I felt really good from the start. You always have people passing you at these things, but I was overtaking much more than I was being overtaken. Maybe I am remembering too fondly, but I don’t recall ever being in any particular pain. Obviously, you get tired, but I just ran. And ran. The Isle of Dogs is quite tough mentally, because there are fewer people around, but, even then, it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought it was going to be.
London looks different on Marathon day. It’s a sensational feeling, running by those historic landmarks, cheered on by tens of thousands of well-wishers. It was a beautiful day, and my family had grabbed a position on Tower Bridge, displaying a knack for securing the best spots on the course that has served them well in the intervening years. I had a lot of support, as well, from friends and work colleagues.
And random members of the public. ‘Go, girl!’ was shouted frequently, because I seemed to be surrounded by men. This was when it dawned on me that I was running pretty fast. I had a watch on, but maths has always been my weakest subject, so I rarely ever calculate my expected finish time even now, and certainly didn’t then. I knew from the Reading Half-Marathon that I was capable of running fast, but I was thinking along the lines of 3hr 45min, maybe 3hr 30min. As the end approached, though, I started to overtake a lot of the men who had overtaken me earlier in the day. As the cries of ‘Go, girl’ attested, I was a rarity as a woman this far advanced in the field. A couple of miles from the end, I thought, ‘Shit, I’m going to come in under 3hr 15min!’
I saw my parents and brother as I rounded the corner at Buckingham Palace and headed for the finish line. The euphoria was indescribable. And the sheer surprise. I could not believe my eyes. The clock seemed to be reading 3hr 08min! This couldn’t be right. I had annihilated all of my expectations!
At the finish line, I didn’t fall over or collapse in a heap. I was too energised, too overjoyed for any of that. They put some foil round me (still got it), but that was surely just to stop me bursting with pride. I had come 1,838th out of 32,889, and eighty-third out of 7,956 women. Paula Radcliffe had won the women’s race in 2hr 18min 56sec, so there may still have been a bit for me to work on, but I was blown away by the whole experience.
There must, though, have been more pain than I remember, because one memory I do have is of not being able to get up from the toilet in the Portaloo at the finish. I don’t normally sit on a toil
et seat – I sort of hover above it but here I had no choice, and fell onto it upon arrival. That was when my quads cramped up, leaving me stuck on the seat. I had to call out for my mum, who came in and pulled me off.
That ‘moment’ aside, it was wonderful to share the whole experience with my parents and brother. That day, I put to bed many demons as far as my eating was concerned. It corroborated the practice of channelling so much energy into running, and from then on, I turned from being a recreational athlete into one who took sport a lot more seriously. That might have meant even less downtime in a schedule that was becoming increasingly packed as my professional life grew busier and busier, but I’d always been a perpetual-motion kind of girl. And I just loved running.
A month before I ran the Marathon, I had joined the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), as a civil servant, executive-officer grade. This was my dream job, and it was my third, barely six months after I had moved to London from Manchester.
Initially, as I’ve mentioned, I had worked for Card Aid, selling charity Christmas cards at various shops around London. Trade had been quiet one day in their shop in Hampstead, so I looked up the details of other local charities in the Yellow Pages, with a view to finding a longer-term job. There weren’t many, but one of them called itself the Gaia Foundation. Why not drop in on them during my lunch hour?
I was far from convinced I had come to the right place – it was a terraced house with a bright yellow door almost concealed by a bushy creeper – but I knocked anyway. A girl answered, and I was swept in and enveloped by an amazing little team of people. I spent the next two months working with them. They were helping communities and groups across the world feed into the preparations for the UN’s World Summit on Sustainable Development, which was taking place later that year (2002) in Johannesburg. There was a special feel about the place. The vibe established at the front door by that overflowing creeper was carried on throughout the house. There were plants and bits of paper everywhere. It was all very organic and chaotic. And then, in a shed out the back, four of them spent what extra time they could find setting up their own youth-empowerment charity, called Envision. It is now a national organisation, and I am proud to be an ambassador for it.
The team were incredibly friendly, knowledgeable and passionate about grassroots development. We became close friends very quickly, and they did so much to inspire and enthuse me.
As much as I loved the personality of the Gaia Foundation, though, their slightly disorganised, fire-fighting style didn’t suit my organised nature, so it was never going to be a job for life. I kept applying for other things and was accepted by Defra, who were initiating a recruitment drive. You didn’t know which division of the department you would be based in, and they asked you for your preferences. I could think of nothing worse than working in pig-farming or swine flu or waste management. The only thing I wanted to do at Defra was to work in the international environmental division, or Environment Protection International (EPINT), to give it its official name. And that was what I got – a dream come true. I was to work on the team that was coordinating the whole of the UK Government’s input into the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
It was a baptism of fire; I was flying by the seat of my pants. I’d never been in an office job before; I’d never even really worn a suit. But I threw my heart and soul into it. When I didn’t know the answer to something, which was often, I made it up or found it out. I did a lot of extra work bringing myself up to speed. Before I knew it, I found myself in a position of some responsibility, because it was all hands on deck. Very soon I was attending meetings, then writing minutes of meetings, then representing the Government at meetings.
I loved it. It was a high-profile position with responsibility and credibility – and it was in a field I was passionate about. I learned a lot about government processes, and enjoyed a close working relation ship with Margaret Beckett, who was the Secretary of State for Defra. She’s into her caravanning and, what with my dad being obsessed with canals, we had many conversations in praise of the Great British Holiday. She is very sharp and knowledgeable, with a good command of her brief. You didn’t have to spoon-feed her the policy lines. We worked some very late nights, particularly as the Summit, which was to be held in September, approached. And it was during the preparations that I met a girl called Georgina Ayre, who is now one of my best friends. She was a representative for Stakeholder Forum, an NGO, and a fellow runner, whose appetite for whirlwind activity may have exceeded even my own.
In September, we set off for the Summit in Johannesburg. All the great and the good were there, with the notable exception of George Bush, whose representatives did their level best to throw a spanner in the works at every turn. I met Tony Blair, who was surprisingly tanned and very charismatic. This was pre-Iraq, so I let him have his picture taken with me.
The timing of it all was wonderful for my career prospects. I was gaining first-hand experience of a high-level UN conference that took place only once every ten years. At one point, I found myself leading for the Government in a meeting with some Nigerian ministers. My superior, Andrew Randall, couldn’t go, so I was sent instead. Everyone was so busy that opportunities like that would often come up. If anything needed to be done, my hand was the first in the air.
So there I was, with five Nigerian men of high standing, imparting the UK lines to take, finding common ground, trying to sway them towards our position wherever I could. There were quid pro quos, fall-back positions, bargaining chips. I was negotiating with international statesmen on behalf of my country. Nine months earlier I had been selling Christmas cards. Surreal isn’t the word. I felt much the same as I was going to feel five years later when I took the lead in Hawaii for the first time, a few months after turning pro: a bit of a fraud. As if I were looking down on someone else doing it. Surely somebody would overtake me . . .
But it wasn’t all negotiating with statesmen. I had an awful lot of photocopying to do as well, not to mention collating papers for ministers to take into negotiations. All of this gave me an intimate knowledge of the brief. There was no cutting and pasting; I knew it all off by heart, which meant I could walk into a room and fill in for someone higher up the pecking order.
Overall, the conference was deemed a success for the UK Government. All of the relevant departments were out there, but as the team leading the delegation it was also deemed a success for EPINT. From my own point of view the agreements established did not go nearly far enough, but there were 190-odd countries present, so a radical consensus was never going to be reached and probably never will be. The fact that one was reached at all was an achievement. The agreements were on too many aspects of development to go into here – they were on every issue you could possibly think of. But the key was always going to be the implementation. If the agreements are not integrated into government policies and action, it just becomes rhetoric. At EPINT, our job was to make sure they were.
On a personal level, the Summit was a great success for me. I was one of a few who were awarded bonuses by Margaret Beckett afterwards. All the ministers have an apartment in Whitehall, and she held a party for us at hers, above Horse Guards Parade, as a thank-you for our efforts.
Over the next couple of years I got to know her quite well. I wrote speeches for her and for the Environment Minister, Michael Meacher. I recall one particular instance at a UN conference in New York in 2004, when I was called to her hotel room to brief her in person. Unfortunately, my computer had just crashed, and I’d lost the document. I was absolutely terrified, and had to brief her from memory. But it all went really well, and we went out afterwards and got drunk on margaritas. My dad had told me never to mix work and alcohol, especially around your superiors. You had to pretend you were drinking, or at least drink some water as well. But these cocktails were just too good. So I ended up getting very drunk with Margaret Beckett. She drank more than me, mind you, but she can handle it. She loves a glass of wine. And a marga
rita.
After that whirlwind start in 2002, my career at Defra went from strength to strength. In 2003, my life was wonderful. Beyond work and running, I used to pore over Time Out and circle things to go to – museums, theatre, shows. My social life was buzzing. There was no man in my life, but there wouldn’t have been time, even if I’d been looking for one.
I took some holiday over the New Year, leading into 2003, and visited Nepal, as I had always wanted to. I befriended three amazing Aussie guys, and we trekked to Annapurna Base Camp. I was blown away by the country and resolved to return. Then, towards the end of the year, I visited Tammy, a friend from Card Aid, in Tanzania, where she was working as a teacher at a local school. That, too, was an eye-opener. I saw things in a very different light from the last time I’d been to the country, as a fresh-faced graduate embarking on her first travels.
When you’ve studied and worked in development, you bring more of a problem-solving attitude to new places. Previously, my heart would bleed at some of the things I saw on my journeys through Africa and Asia, but I wouldn’t think much about the causes or the possible solutions. Visiting, or revisiting, the actual places whose problems were held forth upon by dazzling delegates from around the world and ambitious civil servants in Westminster further fuelled doubts that were percolating in my mind. How much of an impact was our work having on the ground? Or, worse still, were our policies actually harming those we were purporting to help? My passion had always been for grassroots development work, and these trips reminded me of that. I loved my job, and the opportunity it brought to work with ministers and within the UN machinery, to meet statesmen such as Kofi Annan. But I was starting to question whether my ultimate intentions were being met.
Life Without Limits, A Page 6
