June 19
Dear Diarrhoea,
I know you must be fed up of me going on about how death is catching up with me but I’m pretty sure I don’t have long left now. Well I know I don’t. I’m just trying to squeeze the last bit of life from this withered old body before it conks out on me. Since I arrived here in China on my “kick the bucket list” tour, I’ve learned a thing or two about yingy yang. I’ve realised that when one door (life) closes another one (death) opens; that there has to be life and death in this life; that I will be leaving a lego set when I go through death’s door- I mean legacy; that my memory will help others to become better people; that when my ashes are scattered on the summit of Snowdon-which I climbed to the top of for the charity- they will be absorbed into the land and new life will sprout from that. It’s like that song in the Titanic film. Great film that. I’m sure my heart will go on. Don’t you think he’s so fit that Leonardo di Crapio? That steamy car scene. Naughty.
When I was told that my illness was coming in to terminal 4 last year it was a big shock for me. I don’t want to snuff it any more than you do. I was just skipping along happily through life. It was like swimming in this really calm sea on a warm summer day and the earth’s plates and saucers suddenly started to shake, rattle and roll beneath me. I remember a long time ago when my mum told my dad that the earth had moved. He seemed happy about it and started kissing her. I saw tongues- gross! Well when I was told about my sickness the earth moved all right but I was anything but pleased. This tsunami of fear and emotional turmoil rushed in and brought all kinds of debris crash, bang, smashing into my life. The thing is, though, that even after a tidal wave the water settles again to its normal rhythm. That’s yingy yangy again isn’t it? Turmoil then peace. My friend says it’s like supporting the Arsenal. They win, they lose. You hope, you despair. You get used to those ups and downs. Well I have come to terms with things now. I’m settled in my destiny. It is a daily battle but I am just enjoying myself seeing the world with friends and family. Today I visited the Great Wall of China at Baddling. I think that part is called the Minge Wall. I really want to tell you about it. It was better than the Leaning Tower of Pizza. Imagine naming a building after a pizza. Can I tell you about it tomorrow? I’m so tired and my arthritis is killing me. Creaky bones. Good night, dear Diarrhoea. We’ve both got to run…Get it?
June 23
Dear Diarrhoea,
It’s been a terrible few days but I’ve tried to be brave. All I’ve done is drink. I’ve been so dehydrated and tired and not my usual cheery, chirpy, tweety self. I can see everyone getting more worried about me now. Anyway, I said I was going to tell you about my visit to the Great Wall. Do you know you can see it from space? It’s the only man-made structure you can see from up there. I feel like I’m orbiting sometimes with all these drugs they keep giving me. When I am floating in space soon, I will look down on it and tell all the other dead people that I went there, to one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Actually I’ve been to three. The Colossemen was fun with all those gladiators but the Taj Mahal was so smelly. The Giant Wall was a bit scary at times with those narky guards with machine guns in their green uniform but they helped us get the wheelchair up the ramps and into the lift up to the third watchtower. This really interesting man talked to us about the history of it all. Three hundred thousand people died while making the wall and lots of them are buried there. I started thinking I could see ghosts but you know what I’m like for being easily spooked out. I tell you what, I was more scared by how many people were there. Zillions and zilleroonies of them. It was worth it, though, to get out at the watchtower and take a few steps in my special shoes while looking miles into the distance. I got a sense of how infinite the universe is and how tiny we are in comparison to it. We see miles out into the distance but it goes on so much further than any of us can begin to imagine. I am like one tiny grain of sand on miles of sandy beach. When we went to Australia I got out on Fraser Island where the wild dingoes are and nearly got blown away in the wind. I picked up a grain of sand that day and I’ve got it here now. What came to me was that the beach was made up of all these tiny grains but that they were all important. If you took away all the billions of individual grains there was no beach any more. They all worked together like all the human beings who have ever lived, no matter how small they felt. Like all those people who built the wall. Do you know what I bought up there?

June 26
Dear Diarrhoea,
Wow…I fell asleep the other day and slumped over. I think everyone thought they had finally got rid of me. Well I’ve come back from the dead…like Lazy Russ or whoever he was. I’m not lazy but I’ve got no energy. If I did, and if my legs still worked, I would be running up and down Tiananmen Square. I think I’d run even quicker if I saw a tank though. I saw some videos of this mad man standing in front of a row of tanks, thinking he could stop it. I mean, I get some weird ideas sometimes but how could a man stop tanks. I laughed because it looked like a formation tank dance as he stepped from side to side in time with it. Then the crazy loon got on top of the tank and you could hear shooting in the background. I think he did get killed along with hundreds of others. Apparently we call it the Tiananmen Square mascara. Here they call it the June 4th incident. Well I guess I will be meeting him in space and we will look down on the Great Wall together. So anyway, I was supposed to tell you what I bought at the wall, wasn’t I?

July 14
The tall man, slightly hunched over, stood in silence holding the ornate, wooden lectern, composing himself. The mourners waited for him to speak, as did the hundreds of others who were outside the church watching the specially erected screen. He was strangely dressed for a funeral but nobody questioned his dress sense or whether his sense of occasion was inappropriate. They all knew instinctively that he would have his reasons, in the same way that she had had hers too.
“So that was her diary, or at least the last few entries before she passed. It shows you what a philosopher she was. She was the light of my life. There was never anybody like her. The things that she used to come out with would have me in stitches. She always got words wrong and I could never tell whether she meant to do it or not. She was so small that when I gave her a hug you could feel her bones but you could also feel the love radiating back from her. I was her hero but she was my heroine. She was a heroine to all of us. She would have cracked a joke about needles if she’d still been around, wouldn’t she. But she is still here isn’t she? I can feel her everywhere. She’s in space looking down on us and pulling those ridiculous faces and tongues but she’s in our hearts too. And that’s for ever. I suppose you are all wondering what she bought while we were in China? She told me one day she didn’t want to buy anything except time, but she didn’t have that did she. Time went by so quickly but so beautifully.”
He took off the cap he was wearing and held it up for everyone to see. The camera zoomed in on it. It was a khaki green cap with a red star emblazoned on the front. Inside she had sewn a black and white, cloth, yin and yang symbol. It was her whole philosophy.
“She wore this from the moment she bought it until the moment she died. I wondered why it was so important and she said that she wanted her life to stand out like that star on that boring green background. She wanted to be remembered, but most of all she wanted people to be better because she lived. She wanted people to learn from her and to grow through reading her words. She never stopped talking about yin and yang, how the universe would be imbalanced without good and bad, pain and respite, suffering and charity. She said that you needed evil to show what was good. She turned tragedy to comedy and the disaster of her illness into an abundance of blessings. She was good. So good. The best. This video….”
He couldn’t get the words out but he was comforted by other mourners who rushed to hold him as the video started to play on the large screens, inside and outside the church.
“Hi all! Greetings earthlings! When you see this I will have plopped my cogs. That’s right isn’t it? Pogged my clops? Chopped my pogs? Oh who cares? I will have floated off into beautiful space like… Like what? I will have floated off into space like…like me. I’m always spaced out crazy, aren’t I? I won’t be hobbling around here in this knackered up body. You can do what you want with it. Bury it, burn it, give it for medical research, feed it to the dingoes. I don’t care. I’m a life force and this life force is going to have a bloody good time meeting up with all those people who have gone before me. Like Sam and Hayley. They inspired me to carry on enjoying life and I want to do the same. I might have no hair, I might have arthritis and heart problems and be constantly out of breath. I might have the body of a hundred year old woman but I’m still a mad thirteen year old girl who wants to sing and dance and take on the world. I don’t have progeria any more. I’m free. Thank you for the music. Thanks, mum and dad. You’re the best, except when I have to get up or go to bed. Bye earthlings.”