December 13 – Chiddingfold, Surrey, England

We rent a car at Heathrow for our drive out to Surrey, which Nance handles with ease now that she had a taste of the “right” side of the road in South Africa. She's fine, that is, until the roundabouts, which cause us to veer off several times in quite the wrong direction.

We arrive at Chiddingfold in late morning, a typical if somewhat high-end English village with all the bells and whistles: a village green, ancient church, pond and an inn reputed to have receives its license in the 1300s. It's a proud and pretty sight, home to well-heeled executives who are happy to drive the hour or so it takes to get to London, and to retired musicians and producers. Members of the rock group, Queen, we're told, live in the neighbourhood and will perform the following night, as they do each year before Christmas.

Georgina Ashworth also lives here, in a house that once held the forge for the blacksmith and is said to have originated in 1321. She arrives to welcome us and we arrange to meet at her home in a couple of hours. “Just go round to the lane and you'll see my doorway just beyond the butcher's,” she tells us. We find it, tucked away off the main road, and Georgina welcomes us into the warren of lovely rooms that open into her garden space, a quadrangle of green and stone that glistens in the wet English winter.

Georgina originated CHANGE in 1979, one of the first women's human's rights NGOs. Since then, she has travelled the world and attended all the major women's conferences, all the while seeking to inform and enlighten women throughout the world on the issues that impact us. We talk at length, but not before she serves us cake and tea in her cozy kitchen, warmed by that most English invention, the Aga stove, a heater that you can cook on.

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