It's been a long time, I know - I've been kept away from the blog by writing the CATE book, which is now more or less completely finished (more details to come)... and also by the enormously long tour which I've been undertaking - without any flights, needless to say - and which is now two thirds (or twenty-three shows) finished.

There's a lot to catch up on, but I wanted to draw CATE-wide attention to something which is happening soon and is great. You might remember that last autumn, we began a campaign of cycling/walking-rather-than-driving to places, known as the CATEwalk. The idea was to symbolically 'offset' the trip to Australia I took to do Al Gore's climate change course, but also, to promote the idea of not using cars.

Long-time CATE person Knox O and her sister have decided, as part of this little ongoing campaign, to cycle from Portsmouth to my show in Southampton next weekend. It's about 24 miles, which is a fair old ride. I reckon even I would struggle with it.

They're being sponsored, with the money going to Sustrans (as in Sustainable Transport), which is an organisation that works towards creating new cycle routes and promotes public transport and so on, with the aim of getting people off the roads. If you've been on a road recently you won't hesitate to agree this is a very good idea, both environmentally and not-wanting-to-kill-everyone-ly.

Please go to the link before and sponsor these spirited women to pedal their way to funny-land. They're trying to get to five hundred quid. They have a hundred. Do, as they say, the math.

www.justgiving.com/wasiandzainabcycletosouthampton