[garinda]

Since I mentioned it, I'd better give a little background as to why that one act meant so much.

First of all, it wasn't about the money, or the amount. It was the act itself.

I knew for a while something was wrong with me. I'd known for years in fact, but like so many people do, I chose to ignore it, and had put off going to the doctors.

The day the person gave me the cheque was the afternoon I'd just come back from seeing a neurologist, who confirmed I had Parkinson's Disease.

I was thirty nine and felt that my life was over. I knew very little about the condition, other than the tremor, and from what I'd read in a booklet the doctor had given me, on the way back in the car.

It very much painted a worse case scenario. Eventual loss of speech, confined to a wheelchair, etc., etc., that sort of thing.

My only God given talent had been art, and I had used that to go to art school, get a degree, and then forge a very enjoyable, and successful career in fashion, in London. All that it seemed would be taken away from me, as well as my independence. No more living the high life, jetting off round the world, and being single the thought did cross my mind that who the hell would ever want to love me now?

So, sat in my mum's kitchen, probably at the lowest I've ever been in my life, in comes this person, who I don't know very well, to ask what the doctor had said. This person then went away, only to return a short while later.

That is when the cheque was given, with the proviso that I could do whatever I wanted with it, as long as it made me happy.

The cheque could have been a bunch of flowers, picked from the roadside. It was the act itself. Giving me something, anything. An act of love, from one person to another, when I most needed it, which touched me the most, and which I'll never forget.

I did actually use some of the money, besides the acupuncture, on seeing the doctor again privately, because I desperately need more information regarding the treatment, and for which my six monthly NHS appointment didn't answer.

The question as to how I spent the money was never an issue. The person told me to do with it what I would, and I doubt they'd even worried if I spent it all in the pub.

Happily, emotionally I'm in a much better place right now.

Who knows, some of that might be down to that moment of kindness by that one person.