THE husband has gone and signed himself up to run the London Marathon this year.

It’s been a long-held dream of his, and he always yearned to repay the good fortune which saw the sight in one of his eyes saved, after a few years on the transplant waiting list, by a donor cornea when he was 11 years-old.

He has always felt very grateful to the parents who saved his sight by agreeing to the donation of their child’s organs and corneas after this young person, about whom he knows practically nothing, tragically died.

And so, he is running for the small charity VICTA, who support children who are blind or partially sighted.

As we have an almost non-existent family circle who’d be able to help him raise his sponsorship, we turned to Facebook, a site with which I have, as regular readers will know, a love-hate relationship.      

But in this case, it was invaluable. My old schoolfriends and other good chums of ours donated to his cause in response to my plea, getting his fundraising off to a start, finally, and lifting his depression that he wasn’t going to be able to achieve his target.

I am also planning to bake countless goodies (possibly not this month, due to many people’s current calorie avoidance) that he can take in to work to proffer as bribes in exchange for a few pounds.

Aside from that, my contribution is quite basic. I have to wash the kit that is being dumped in the new washing machine on a daily basis – all part of the daily training – and I must tolerate the horrendous odour from his training shoes.

I say tolerate, but I mean move them to an outdoor space, and clean them as much as possible, whenever I am given the opportunity.

I must also entertain the three year-old for even longer periods, given that he already disappears every Saturday to play football.  

And of course, it inevitably means that we are eating healthily, joining what seems to be everyone else on a regime in January – something I am usually loathe to partake in and avoid like the plague, given the general grimness of life in this long, grey, 31 days of post-Christmas detoxification. 

So, my stress over what to cook for the family evening meal each day is more heightened than usual, plus the anxiety of the additional expense that comes with eating fresh produce on the majority of days.

As least, unlike my father, he doesn’t kick up a stink when I present him with a vegetarian meal.

Dad’s response to my butternut squash risotto was only this: “Aye it was nice – but I’ll be starving again in an hour.”