Preparations for my trip to Kenya haven't gone too smoothly this month, but I am nearly there. Since the Natwest Women's Series against India has finished, I have spent 4 weeks on a placement with Sky Sports Cricket. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there and gained some valuable experience in the world of television. However, this also gave me some contacts to add some prizes to my raffle such as signed memorabilia from Shaun Pollock, Allan Donald and all the Sky Test commentators.

During my placement, I applied for my Kenya visa by post. However, when after two weeks my application and more importantly passport hadn't been returned, I rang up to see what had happened. To my horror they had never received my application so off to the passport office it was. After an appointment at 7.30am, 3 days and not to mention a large some of money later, a shiny new passport arrived in the post. I was glad to see the post was still working.

But with little faith left in the post, I decided on Mon 20th Aug to take a trip to the Kenyan Embassy in person. Surely nothing could go wrong. As I walked up to the door, I found that this was the only day in which the Embassy was closed in order to honour Idd-Ul-Fitr. This, I now know, translates to the end of Ramadan. I was determined not to ruin a trip to London and so decided to go shopping in Oxford Street instead.

If you think my bad run of mishaps was over, think again. That evening I went out for dinner with a friend in Brighton still carrying a multitude of shopping bags from London. On the train home, as it was pulling out of the station, I sat down on my seat to put my phone back into my handbag. The handbag with my wallet, glasses, and yes the brand new passport in it and it wasn't there. I'd somehow picked up my shopping but left my handbag on the station platform. Panic. The police were phoned, the handbag was found (with all contents) and it was handed over to my friend, who had walked back to the station to look for it.

My luck was definitely changing and so I went to get my jabs done next and seeing as I'm off to Sri Lanka very soon this needed to be done pretty quickly. Diphtheria was injected into my right arm which was a good thing as I had a twenty20 match that afternoon and getting my arm above my head was proving rather a challenge. However, this practice did not give out yellow fever, how irritating.

I am now at the stage where my visa application has now been handed in, I have had my yellow fever jab and am off to get my malaria tablets. All is nearly sorted I just need to kick start my fundraising. As part of this I am doing a raffle at the England Women's Twenty20 against West Indies at Hove on 15th September. The raffle prizes can be seen in the poster and raffle tickets can be purchased by making a donation on my justgiving page: http://www.justgiving.com/cwb-hollycolvin

It's an exciting few months ahead for me with the West Indies Series, the ICC Twenty20 World Cup and of course my trip to Kenya. I can't wait.