It is an odd thing, how accustomed we have become, to paying through the nose. Since when did it become acceptable to us to pay £3.00 for two pieces of bread and some chicken with mayonnaise in it? And when, pray, did a litre of water that has been falling freely from the sky, cost more than the diesel that I had just bemoaned? If diesel or petrol were to fall from the sky would water be cheaper?

It certainly put the price of fuel in a better perspective, when you think that it has to be drilled and piped and refined. Then transported and stored to be transported, again, and sold. Surely the water industry is not as complicated. It would appear we Brits are complaining about the wrong things, but perhaps that is us all over.

I did not pay for the sandwich and water but instead thought that it must surely be better value if I popped next door to the Little Chef. I ordered the Olympic breakfast and a mug of tea. I was unaware that it was called the Olympic breakfast, not because of its size, but because it would take 4 years to turn up and only if your table had been successful in its bid. Still at £7.00 I thought it was better value than a litre of God's water and the Golden Goose with mayo.

The nice lady brought me my tea and it has to be said, it was the best tea I have been served in a roadside cafe anywhere. Whether this is geographical location and local water or whether this is the norm for the Little Thief I have no idea, as sadly, I have not sampled the delights of these eateries in other parts of the road network.

I had finished my tea when the toast turned up, and although I was realising that my meal was to be served in relay, to keep with the Olympic theme; I was in no hurry. While I waited to see if I was to receive my bacon next before I had the beans, it gave me opportunity to survey my surroundings.

Being June and the 24th Glastonbury was finishing and the chef was filled with muddy scruffy people that had obviously been part of the big debacle. As an outsider that did not take part in the festival, I will not carry an opinion on those that did. It does however strike me that if it is free love that people went for, then £140.00 seems a little excessive, when £50 would probably get you cheaper love in, say, Bristol.

But then it is not about the old Woodstock culture any more. Woodstock was sunny for a start, and people know that Glastonbury is usually a wash out and at times bloody cold. And yet they go. The stages are miles away and they can't see the people they have come to see, the sound is hardly CD quality and yet they go... These are not the hippies that we have a tendency to think of when a music festival is mentioned, these are quite a bit harder than that, and from every walk of life, and no matter the reason for the revellers to make the trip and pay the money, they all have that strength in common. A common bond of party atmosphere, in a harsh environment, and they are all in it together. My only bitterness towards them is that they had the weekend off and a good time, and I am on the way back to work. Where do all of these people go? Why do they not share this commonality in the rest of their life, why are they not united in other aspects of things that they must see as important? They are not lazy as they have just made a considerable effort to travel and eat and sleep rough to listen to music and meet others in a muddy field? Surely they have other common ground. Surely they are not happy about the price of water, especially as they have been living in it for 48 hours. And yet only 6 hours before I had witnessed another gathering of people that were united in a common goal and I was left with a sense of quiet and hope for the future of man, and it was given to me by 5000 women and girls.

My wife, Caroline, lost her mother to lung cancer 3 years ago.

I'm not going to bang on about the lengths of the disease, or how dreadful it can be, because I know that nobody is really interested until it happens to them. Don't feel uncomfortable with this, it is just the way people are. I was no different. I digress.

Basingstoke 10 am. Another grassy field and at £1.00 per litre of rain, we were covered in a lot of money.

There were not many people there to start but you could tell that the organisers were expecting more, and we were early.

A quick cup of tea and a wander around and within the hour there were hundreds there. It was difficult to tell just how many because the ground was flat and you can only see who is next to you. A kiss on the cheek and off she went.

So many women and so many smiles, it was difficult to put cancer and all this pink and joviality together, and yet there was an undertone, a current of steely resolve that was in everyone over the age of 12.

There were men there of course to give encouragement, although strangely none was needed. I was merely a spectator, I have never felt so overlooked, by so many, but I was happy to observe.

At 11am 5000 women moved across the start line.

As I watched them go past I was struck by the amount of different women that were there. I'm not going to mince my words, there were ladies who were collecting their pensions, there were the tanned high maintenance girls that would give a man nothing but grief, there were girls who were so skinny they had ribs like a xylophone, and there were girls who were frankly, big. There were children led by grandmothers, there were fitness fanatics running like whippets, and there were friends chatting on the way round. In short every kind of woman I have seen in 37 years passed me by on that field, and none of it mattered. It has never mattered to me what a woman is like as long s they are friendly and unarmed, but what I realised was, that for once; none of it mattered to them either. Women judge women far more harshly than men. Women perceive other women as competition, but not on this field in Basingstoke, or on hundreds of other fields around the country. For these few hours they were truly of one mind - and I found that truly inspirational.

If so many women could so easily put down the differences they normally carry, for a cause so good, and that the common ground that they ran, walked and trudged and cried over had not an ounce of selfishness in it, then I thought that there was hope for the human race yet. This was not Glastonbury, they were not here for a good time, they had not come with an expectation to be entertained or get some kind of value for money, they had made on the whole weeks or months of sweat filled effort to get to this stage - and here they were in their thousands.

They were here, I feel, to climb to the top of a disease that had affected them all and stand on the summit and with a smile and a laugh, stamp their feet, together, and say that they will beat this.

What I can't wait for, and I hope that I see in my lifetime, is when it is beaten, where this steely eye will turn next, for if it is war or famine, then best you put down your gun now and pick up the plough, because it can surely only be a matter of time.