Month: April 2015

Sheila’s posts make fascinating reading and I have happily been reliving many of our shared experiences as rather naïve flat sharers fifty years ago.  No matter how oddball Sheila’s anecdotes are, somehow I am never that surprised – well, yes, I am really taken by her creative talents; apart from a few rather large sweaters she knitted for Stewart, I can’t remember her showing needlecraft skills.

She certainly showed her scrounging-cum-scrumping skills at an early stage of independent living.  We were consistently hard up as students and we had to be creative with food.  One of Sheila’s methods was never to visit anybody or any place without a large plastic bag in her handbag.  She had a list of motherly ladies that she would visit at weekends – especially the ones who were good bakers.  That was most of them, as most Scottish housewives of that era baked.  Sheila would return to our flat after a foray with a wondrous mixture of baked goods.  Mmmm – I can still taste the cherry cake.  We once returned to her family home, where her father and stepmother had laid on a splendid party, I think it was to celebrate Sheila’s sister Leslie’s twenty-first birthday.  Sheila and I did not revere stepmothers then but we both agreed that her stepmother knew how to lay on a feast that couldn’t be missed.   At that time, parties we went to were classed as well catered if there were cubes of cheese on cocktail sticks, and possibly some sausage rolls.  At this party a two tier array of roast chicken, baked ham, cheeses galore and salads of all sorts met our eyes – as well as innumerable French sticks, deemed quite exotic in 1960s Glasgow.

Sheila had a plan.  We had to wait until the dishes had been cleared to the kitchen and just before we were leaving  make a raid.  With bulging bags, we retreated to get our coats for the journey back to the flat.  And then, an after thought; we just had to have some of the French sticks – after all, they would be stale soon.  My coat had wide sleeves, as did Sheila’s and she had the brainwave of pushing a French stick up each arm so we could exit with our bounty unnoticed.  Unfortunately, the elders were waiting at the door to shake hands; it was rather difficult to do this with arms effectively in splints.  I suspect one end did pop out.  Nothing was said and with hindsight, I suspect we, and possibly some of the other flat dwelling guests, were expected to do a bit of salvage.

Sheila’s food gathering went as far as America where two of Sheila’s Scottish aunts had settled.  At least one was roped in to send food parcels, and they always contained at least a couple of Betty Crocker cake mixes.  Devil’s Food Cake was our favourite, especially if the appropriate frosting had been included.  Now, I think it must have been about the time of Stew’s twentieth birthday and Sheila had hoarded a Devil’s Food Cake Mix to make him a birthday cake.  Sod’s law said that something would go wrong – like the gas meter running out towards the end of cooking and Sheila having no shillings to feed it with.  The centre was soggy, the rest fine, so Sheila used an upturned glass to cut out a neat circle of soggy cake.  Sadly, Auntie hadn’t included the frosting mix so Sheila improvised.  She thought pink icing would be nice.  (This was before pink was associated with a sexual preference and I think it was more a reference to Stewart’s politics being a paler shade of red).  I don’t know what she used but she ended up with a huge lump the colour of pink bubble gum, and of a similar texture.  The ‘frosting’ was ‘spread’ in stringy pink swirls over the scrumptious dark brown cake; we all ate and enjoyed Sheila’s improvisation.  Sheila’s more recent improvisation in Brown and Pink (chocolate cake with pink blancmange – check out this post if you didn’t see it) reminded me of this incident.

Recently Sheila was wondering what she would eat on Kilimanjaro.  A few months ago I was in Southern Africa, doing the ‘Baby Boomers’ Bucket List Safari Holiday’.  There I came across a fascinating menu board; the raw materials would have set Sheila’s heart beating with anticipation at ‘Catching Lives’.  The ingredients may have been exotic, but the outcome was sadly mundane.  However, I imagine that the Wednesday cooks at ‘Catching Lives’ would have produced something that would have been much more enjoyable.

 

 

I went to Folkestone again this week for  a walk with Frances.  The last time I did so – see blog of 3^rd February – we walked in snow and sleet.  This time, it would have seemed like summer had arrived, were it not for the daffodils in the parks and gardens, and wonderful primroses and violets in the woods.

Frances walks faster than anyone else I know, which is why it is really good for me to walk with her.  If I can speed up walking on the flat, there might be a chance of me being able to walk slowly uphill at altitude on Kilimanjaro – at least that’s the theory.  She had planned an uphill route for me too and raced ahead of me!  Despite gradually discarding most of my outer garments en route, sweat was pouring off me by the time I got to the top, and she was as fresh as a daisy.

The return trip was somewhat easier: we went down to the coast somewhere near Hythe and walked along the sea front, which was absolutely lovely.  We were both quite intrigued to see a man stripping off to go in swimming, as we are both sea swimmers, but not in April!  What was interesting was that he was stuffing his clothes into a sort of orange float, which he then attached to himself.  He set off parallel to the coast in the same direction as us, and swam at about the same speed as we walked for about half a mile, before climbing out and getting dressed. That is certainly a good way of stopping anyone nicking your clothes off the beach.

I started to think about other good swimming gadgets, and remembered about Mungo, one of my sister-in-law Mary’s much loved dogs. He has to have hydrotherapy for a poorly leg and hates getting his ears wet, so has a special doggy ear thing to protect his ears.  The ingenuity of inventors never ceases to amaze me.

It would be wonderful if someone could invent something that would magic all the equipment necessary up Kilimanjaro. Perhaps an orange balloon that would float above us, carrying our equipment, and maybe helping us along too, like the orange float.

The reality is that there are likely to be about a dozen of us travelling up the mountain with Exodus and for each one of us, there will be at least three porters!  That makes me feel slightly guilty somehow, that these people have to carry my stuff, my sleeping bag, my food, my water etc – as well as their own things.  I hate the idea of having other people doing the hard work for me, but I know that as a sea level dweller, I couldn’t possibly climb up otherwise.  I am told that the local economy is much improved because of the work produced by groups such as ours, so I suppose I should look at it as a positive.  Exodus pays them well and they are glad to have the work.  I look forward to meeting them.

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Thanks lots, Sheila, Jae & Oscar

My paternal grandmother was a very proud woman, and I suppose in a way she had every right to be.  She, like my grandfather, had been born into a very large poor family living in a tenement building.  The streets where they were born were later demolished in slum clearances.  However my grandfather had worked hard and had the “gift of the gab”.  His was a true rags to riches story, rising from being the son of a stocking maker to being the managing director of a knitwear mill, when I was born.

By that time my grandparents lived in a very grand house, which was on top of a hill and had a garden, which would do credit to a stately home nowadays.

My grandmother always emphasised that her name was Elizabeth, and was not happy with any members of the family who referred to her as Liz or Lizzie, although many disrespectfully did.  She told us that before marriage, she had been Elizabeth Taylor, the same as the famous actress.  Actually mostly she was referred to as “the mother”, as in, “Tell the mother that the postman has been”.  I knew that that referred to my grandmother.  My grandparents had seven intelligent feisty daughters, as well as my rather weak and spoilt father.  All of them would refer to their mother behind her back as “Lizzie”, but she would be “the mother” when she was in earshot.

I remember Lizzie clearly when she was about the age I am now.  She was almost always decked out in a pale blue twinset (see the blog of February 28 for more info on this) and pearls.  She wore a tweed skirt – never trousers of any description – and patterned flesh coloured lisle stockings. She had quite a large bosom, which was not ever encased in a brassiere!

By her sixties Lizzie had pure white hair, something I am lucky enough to be well on the way to inheriting from her. She considered herself to be extremely fit.  She would demonstrate this quite frequently by telling us children to watch while she touched her toes – an incredible feat for someone of her advanced years, she gave us to believe.

She considered exercise important.  She would march us about two hundred yards along the drive from the house to stand at the top of the steps overlooking the town and tell us to “breathe deeply”.  She would watch to make sure we took in some deep breaths, while her unencumbered wobbly bosoms rose up and down too.  We would then walk gently back to the house, exercise done for the day.

I often think of her in Pilates classes.  As I turn myself upside down on a giant ball or do “the plank”, I imagine how absolutely appalled she would be at any female getting themselves into such a position.  Dignity was everything for Lizzie.

She would not have been overly impressed by the idea of Jae and me accompanying Oscar up Kilimanjaro. She would have thought it rather unladylike and unsavoury to be sleeping out on a mountain – a more suitable thing for men to do.

One of the things she used to say to the many females in the family was that “you must keep yourself right”.  I remember being told this from a young age and not understanding quite what was meant, but knew from the accompanying facial expression that I should not ask.  The few boys in the family did not get this puzzling advice.

I raised this recently with my one remaining aunt, asking her what it had been about.  She recollected being told frequently as a girl and young woman to keep herself right.  She says that she and her sisters regarded it as the entirety of their sex education, and that what was meant was that females must not have sex before marriage!  I had suspected it meant something of the sort, so it was nice to be sure at last.

During her marriage to my grandfather, we were told to address envelopes to my grandmother to “Mrs Robert Wilson”.  That was the proper mode of address.  However after his death, we were told that all correspondence was to be sent to “Mrs Elizabeth Wilson”.  She seemed to be quite pleased to have things in her own name – “Elizabeth” being a name she had always been inordinately proud of.

It was only about a decade ago – many years after her death – that I discovered that Elizabeth had not really been her name at all!  My friend, occasional guest blogger Jean, did some research into my family tree and uncovered the details of my grandmother’s birth certificate. She was registered in the name of Lizzie!  No doubt she felt this diminutive form of the name was quite unsuitable for her position in life and that was why she was so adamant that her name was Elizabeth.  I can’t recall anyone ever calling her that, however.

I am still enjoying getting lots of advice from all sorts of people about how best to prepare for the Kilimanjaro climb.  A good friend recently suggested that I should take advantage of the nearest “mountain” to my home, which is the Dane John mound in Canterbury. It is an old burial mound, built during the Roman occupation, certainly nothing volcanic.  My friend said a quick walk up and down ten times a day should prepare us well, and I am sure it would.  Jae, Oscar and I headed over there during the recent Easter hols, to give it a try out.  I think I might have to build up to ten times a bit gradually: it is quite steep!

Someone else I met on a recent walk, who had had a career as a very senior manager in mental health, told me that he had been to Machu Picchu, where coca tea made from coca leaves had helped everyone overcome the difficulties connected with high altitude. I am not sure whether these leaves grow in Tanzania or not.  It does seem logical that something available locally might do the job, in the same way in which dock leaves usually grow near stinging nettles, and work well to ease the sting.  But isn’t cocaine a derivative of coca leaves?  We are planning to get high, but hadn’t quite planned on it happening in that way!

I told my friend Anne about the day during our recent training exercise in Italy, when we walked downhill through gorges virtually all day, including down two thousand stone steps.  I was hard pushed to shuffle out of bed the next morning, but did eventually get myself moving.

She reminded me that we had done something not dissimilar but much more scary before, with the same crippling pain the next day, and she is right.

There were perhaps eight or nine of us together on a “Girls Holiday” in Tenerife, most of us in our fifties.  I am not sure why we had no youngsters along with us: our plans might have been better researched had we had some daughters present.  We decided it would be fun to explore one of the less populated parts of Tenerife and signed up for a hike organised by a local company.  It was advertised as a trek through amazing scenery, which could not be seen from the road.  It would take a few hours and would end up with a swim in crystal clear sea and a boat trip back along the coast.  It sounded like a lovely relaxing day: our whole group signed up for it.

We were pleased to be collected from our hotel in a minibus and taken to the starting point.  It was in a lovely old village called Masca, which we were told had been cut off from road access until relatively recently.  Some of us started to feel a bit uneasy when the guide said that our footwear was unsuitable, and we would have to pay to borrow walking boots.  Those with hand and shoulder bags were told they would have to transfer their possessions into proper back packs.

My sister Leslie immediately said that she had never done anything in her life involving walking boots and did not intend to start now: she was out of it. She was assured that the tour company would put her on an alternative more relaxing boat trip.

Alarm only started to set in when we met with the other proposed walkers: they were mostly super fit young Germans wearing mountaineering gear.  We were told to start walking downhill and that consideration would be given to whether we were fit to do the trek after we had gone down about a hundred meters.  After about ten minutes of climbing over rocks downwards into a ravine, my sister in law, Mary and one or two others decided it wasn’t for them.  They turned round and went back, leaving only four of our group still going downwards.

We thought that we were doing alright, but the guide in charge thought otherwise.  Much to their indignation, two more were told by him to go back: they had being enjoying themselves and were not well pleased – it seemed a rather arbitrary decision.  That left only Anne and me, along with the young Germans.

Anne and I continued downwards.  There is a drop of six hundred and fifty metres during the six kilometre climb down to sea level.  The walk is recommended only for those with experience of walking down gorges without proper paths and sheer drops in places. But the scenery was indeed spectacular. Mountain springs ran down most of the way, often making it slippery under foot, but adding to the beauty of this verdant route.  We were told that some of the plants were unique to the Masca Gorge and the birdsong, in the surrounding silence, was memorable.

Anne and I got down to the bottom absolutely thrilled to have made it.  I was straight into the sea for a swim and Anne for a paddle.  We got into the boat and were taken back to the port, where all the rest of the group were waiting to greet us.

My sister burst into tears as soon as she saw me!  It seems that they had been told how dangerous the gorge is, and that two women had fallen and been killed the year before.  She had spent the day envisaging Anne and me falling over an edge and crashing to the bottom.  Apart from that, they had been well looked after.  They had been taken on a cruise around the area and had seen lots of dolphins, which was an unexpected treat.

Well Leslie probably won’t need to worry about me falling over an edge on Kili.  Altitude sickness is what we need to worry about, though I know we are in Exodus’ expert hands.

 

 

 

Why is it that whenever I think of Sheila’s Kili adventure the picture that unfolds is of Sheila in a long cotton skirt dancing over a green pastoral hillside, singing at the top of her voice and throwing her arms in the air.  At first I thought I was just thinking about the old film ‘The Sound of Music’, which has been getting some publicity in the run up to its fiftieth anniversary.  However, the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that I was seeing Sheila as a latter day Maria von Trapp!  My case is as follows.

Sheila was always a bit harum scarum, seeming more so when judged against the perfect behaviour of her elder sister Leslie.  Sheila was in the year following Leslie at school, where she was friendly with my younger cousin Lucille.  A few years ago Lou and I were reminiscing about Sheila and she told me how all the teachers, including many older ladies of the strict and proper ‘old school of teacher’ type, regularly reprimanded Sheila for not matching up to the high standards of her sister.  Can you imagine a gathering in the Lady Teachers Common Room, with the odd chorus of ‘What are we going to do about Sheila’?

As Sheila matured she still had the ability to see things through rose tinted glasses and just get on with what was necessary.  And as we have read in her blogs, she has ‘Plenty of Favourite Things’.  And many times in her private and professional life she has fought for the rights and freedoms of friends or family – and her ability to transform objects would stand her in great stead when it came to making outfits for all comers from any spare pair of floral curtains.  My case rests.

What is of greater interest to me now is how Sheila’s trip to Kilimanjaro will pan out.  It is a certainty that she will adopt the porters and guides and any of their families who are round about.  She’ll spend time in between climbing by knitting them warm sweaters and bobble hats while explaining the Bill of Human Rights.  I wouldn’t be surprised if she decided to stay on, setting up a café and gift shop at base camp.  There her skills learned cooking at Catching Lives would be very useful and, to provide the stock for the gift shop, she would teach all the women and children to knit and crochet or to make pebble jewellery and candle light holders from jam jars.

And to entertain all the customers who are bound to flock to such an attraction, Sheila would teach her helpers Line Dancing.  And thus Sheila would rise to great fame as she and her troupe, the Miller Family Line Dancers, travelled the world, winning first prizes at international Line Dancing Competitions.   My goodness, they might even make a film about her.

I think I should go and lie down.

Note from Sheila:  In 1966, when I spent a summer working in Jersey in a children’s home, another worker and I did actually make an outfit for each of the twelve children in the home from a length of chintzy material we found in a cupboard. I hadn’t seen The Sound of Music at the time but, given that it came out in 1965, I guess Julie Andrews just beat me to it!

We had a lovely easy Wednesday cooking recently at Catching Lives, the charity where I am a volunteer, which supports homeless people in finding accommodation and getting their lives back on track.

Three out of four of the regular Wednesday cooks were there, but in addition three other lovely  new volunteers turned up to help.  What was special about these three was that they were what I call “self starters”.  They could see what needed to be done:  they tore into washing up the dishes and popping toast in the toaster for clients’ breakfasts.  It was an absolute joy having them there, as we regulars were freed up to put away donations of food that had come in and get cracking on the lunch.  Actually, even that was not too taxing, because pudding was already well on its way to being made.

Every so often a group of students from Jae’s old school – the Simon Langton Girls’ School – come in to cook for a couple of hours, and they had clearly been in the previous afternoon. They had made scones and biscuits, which were put out to supplement breakfast/elevenses.  They had also made some banoffee pie and cup cakes, some of which were iced.  I think they must have left abruptly, as they had also left behind some bananas and a tin of carmelised condensed milk.  So it was a very quick job to make enough puddings to go round out of that for lunch.  The un-iced cakes got a dressing of condensed milk and we quickly had about thirty plates, probably containing about a thousand calories each.

There have been times when we have not been so well endowed with helpers.  Some months ago a young graduate in computer science spent a few weeks with us.  On the first day we asked her to open a few tins of beans.  After ten minutes of struggling, she gave up in defeat.  One of us went to find out what the problem was and realised she had been trying to open the tins with the garlic press!  We thought that potato peeling might be an easier job, so set her up to do that:  she somehow managed to inflict several cuts to her hand with the potato peeler, which put an end to her activities in the kitchen that day.

When she returned, we thought that washing dishes might be more of a success.  Washing dishes is a constant activity at Catching Lives – there is an endless supply of dirty crockery all the time.  However our young volunteer could not grasp this.  If asked to wash up, she would wash one plate and then sit down: she seemed to be quite comfortable watching four old age pensioners cooking, cleaning and rushing around, while she sat watching.  We did wonder how she had managed to survive and feed herself as a student.

We were rather relieved when she disappeared and was not heard of again, until this week.  Terry, the manager of Catching Lives, came into the kitchen to tell us that he had been asked to provide a reference to another charity for our young friend. None of us wanted to do anything to cause her difficulties, and looked at each other wondering how it could be phrased.  Terry then said that one of the things he was being asked was whether she would be able to work on a one to one basis in a kitchen with vulnerable teenagers.  Paula, who is a nun, said quick as a flash – “oh God no!”  The rest of us fell about laughing.  Terry said that that seemed to be a definitive answer.  We all wish the young woman well and admire her desire to do voluntary work – but just not in a kitchen, please.

I am really looking forward to seeing how food is cooked on Kilimanjaro.  It must take real skill to feed a group of about forty people – for that is how many there will be – en route on a mountain, climbing higher every day.  There can be up to twelve walkers, but we will have about thirty guides, porters and cooks to support us.  We cook for that kind of number at Catching Lives and find it hard work.  How much more expert must these cooks on the mountain be?

About a year ago, I undertook training at Catching Lives to become a mentor for a client who has been accommodated after a period of homelessness.  It is part of a pilot project to try to help people make the transition into a more settled way of life.  The idea is to help to resolve any difficulties at an early stage.  People might need help with budgeting, making links in a new area, cooking a meal – or, unfortunately most commonly, dealing with the Jobcentre when they arbitrarily cut off benefits without any notice.

Mentors work together in pairs, and Paula, with whom I had already been working in the kitchen, and I were jointly nominated to mentor a guy together.  We decided to car share on our way to meet him, so I called round at her house and was invited in.  Paula lives in a community with a few other religious women, all of whom, I think, used to work as psychotherapists. She showed me round their lovely house.

I was absolutely gobsmacked when I saw the room they have turned into a chapel: an entire wall of the room is made up of the most beautiful stained glass panels, looking out on to the garden. Two of the women in the house designed the windows based on the idea of the sky, the sea and the sand and found craftsmen to work on making their idea a reality.  As I looked at it, I started to wonder if I could make anything like it in fabric.  I have gone to U3A patchwork classes for years – the teachers are amazing – and I had learned some stained glass techniques in patchwork.  What would be new would be trying to use these skills on fine fabric to make what would effectively be a net curtain.  I have great reservations about net curtains: they are mostly fairly hideous, but essential in, for example, my caravan, where I do most of my sewing.  I remember reading somewhere that more net curtains are sold in Edinburgh per head of population than elsewhere in the world!! What does that say about Edinburgh?

 

Anyway, once I had the idea, I started experimenting, and ended up last summer spending quite a bit of time on my stained glass curtains.  I made one a bit like the stained glass windows, then launched out into “Mockintosh” ones and even made a couple of commissions.  I thoroughly enjoyed myself sewing in the wonderful light that comes into the caravan.

I am not going to be doing so much sewing this year: I need to do a bit more cycling and walking instead.  However, I thought I would do just one small curtain this week for the window in Jae’s office, to celebrate opening up the caravan again after the winter.  I haven’t finished it yet, but this it is so far – showing the 3gkiliclimb.com logo designed for us by daughter/sister/aunt Gwen.  Here we come snow capped mountain!

We had a struggle this week at Catching Lives in putting a meal together.  Supplies at this time of year seem to get to an all time low.  I can see why.  We get masses of food given to us from harvest festivals and then again at Christmas.  By about March, supplies start to run out, but pick up again in early summer, when people start to bring in surpluses from allotments and gardens.  At the moment, the only thing in plentiful supply is pasta. Even the baked bean mountain is looking low.  An appeal is being put out, which will hopefully fill our shelves.

I was the pudding person this week as usual – and there was very little to make anything out of.  No fresh fruit at all – really only store cupboard items.  I decided to make chocolate sponge and custard, but when I started to make the custard, I realised that we were pretty much out of custard powder and I don’t rate my skills at making mega quantities of egg custard.  However, I found some packets of strawberry blamange and reckoned that would do the job – it’s just custard really, only pink.

When I was a child, pink pudding, as we called it, would be served up at least once a week with a dollop of jam on top.  Exciting stuff!

In the 60s, we got excited about the first burgers in Wimpy bars, and in the 70s about chicken in a basket.

Chicken took a stranger turn in the 1980s.  When my daughter Gwen had a birthday party.  The chicken was served on strange hanging gadgets with sparklers on top.  Super trendy!

Maureen, one of the Wednesday cooks at Catching Lives, has recently been in a visit to Scotland.  She was very struck by the availability of haggis, and the variety of ways in which it is served from haggis pie to haggis lasagne.

We have all heard about the Scottish health food, deep fried Mars bar, but I was intrigued by a fusion offering in an Indian restaurant in the Scottish Borders – Snickers Pakura.  It actually looks like a nasty accident, with its embellishment of whippy cream and red sauce.

I hope to avoid such fusion delicacies on Kilimanjaro.   I am not too sure what the promised mealie meal mix or dry wors are exactly, but I think it likely that they will be healthier options than the Scottish/Indian fusion pudding!

I’ve just come back from a week in the Swiss Alps.  I had started reading Sheila’s blog before I went away and was loving it, but in Switzerland it took on an extra dimension of pleasure.  I came to think of it as that tiny piece of chocolate the Swiss produce with whatever you are drinking (tea, coffee, even hot chocolate) – a value-added sweetness at the end of a hard day in the mountains.  A little gift from Sheila that made me smile… and even, dare I say it, LOL (particularly when Worried Pat got involved).

I wasn’t skiing – that was for the brave and expert.  I was walking with my sister-in-law, up and down along snowy Alpine ridges, or steadily downhill from a high up ski station to the village.   Some days the snow was slushy and slippy, others it was fresh and deep. I learnt two lessons: first, never approach physical exercise without getting properly fit first, and second, always take the right equipment!  The first couple of days were pretty agonising.  Not only was there the extra pressure of downhill walking on my poor old cranky knees (one of which was bust when I last stood at the top of a mountain and tried to slide down it on little wooden planks 25 years ago). There was also the issue of my boots.  They were comfortable enough but not built for walking on snow.  So for the first couple of days I was basically terrified of once more sliding down a mountain, totally out of control.  Bend Ze Knees! echoed in my distant memory of trying to learn to ski in my twenties, so that is what I did. Margaret and I trudged through lovely forests of pine trees covered in icing sugar snow and through huge glacial valleys with stunning picture postcard views.  But of course, come the evening and a bottle of wine by the open blazing fire, the knees retaliated…

And then bossy Caroline, Margaret’s friend from Norwich, sprang to the rescue.  Caroline had thought she might be too scared to ski so she had brought with her something called ‘Yaktrax’ – a pair of sort of tyre chains which you attach to your walking boots.  But fortunately Caroline, and William (my husband, who hadn’t skied for 25 years), formed themselves into a morale boosting skiing partnership, and were off early every morning to tackle the pistes and enjoy boozy lunches at ski stations with new pals. So Yaktrax was available for me.  Suddenly I discovered, whatever the snow conditions and whether we were going steeply up or down, my boots would hold. This pair of chains kept me upright. All day.  The knees stopped complaining, and instead of watching my feet and sticks all the time I could relax and enjoy the blue skies, the stunning views and the cold fresh air in my lungs.

As we walked I thought of Sheila and the Kili Climb.  At least Sheila will be as fit as she possibly can be (I wasn’t, even for these relatively miniscule Alpine ups and downs) and she really does seem to be researching what is needed, in terms of equipment, for this adventure.  That is a comfort!  And I also thought of my own encounter with Kilimanjaro – I think it was 1969 – but that, maybe, is a story for another day…

I spent a lovely afternoon with my friend Anne this week.  When people meet Anne and me, they assume that we are old friends, as we have similar Scottish accents – and to a certain extent, they are right.  However, we met in Canterbury, not Scotland.

Stew and I arrived in Canterbury when Jae was eighteen months old.  Stew had a job as a lecturer at the University of Kent.  I knew absolutely nobody within a fifty mile radius.  However, the University Wives Association sprang into action!  These very virtuous ladies were determined that no new wife would remain friendless.    I was telephoned and told that Jae and I would be collected – it would be another decade before we had a family car – and taken to a University Wives’ Coffee Morning.  I know that many newcomers, especially those from abroad, would welcome this – but I hated the idea of being an adjunct to my husband.  However, I was not so churlish as to say I would not come, so made up my mind that I would go once, sit beside whoever was next to me and try to make a friend of them, and then not go again.

Well I sat beside Anne.  She was a total fraud: she was not even a University Wife, but had met one of the virtuous ladies elsewhere and somehow got brought along too.

When we started to talk to each other – our children playing alongside – we realised that not only had we both attended the same school – Rutherglen Acadeny – but we had also at different times lived in the same road in Rutherglen, just outside Glasgow.  We knew several people in common.  I had my friend and I was out of there!

We have been good buddies now for over forty years.  So I arrived at her house this week for a catch up.  Anne and husband Ken (aka Ken the Kilt) had just spent a week on a Scottish Dancing holiday.  They do several such weeks every year, when kilts are donned and new dances practiced every day.  It was a lovely sunny day, and it was great to see Ken’s kilt socks dancing on their own on the line: Anne had been delivering some special treatment to them.

We then came indoors and before we went out for our planned walk in the woods Anne got the tissues out.  She wanted to show me a film featuring her granddaughter  Maisie, and said that tissues were compulsory.  Anne was right as usual.  Maisie is a student of theatre studies and had participated in a film made by the students entitled “A Tribute to a Generation”.  Anne said I only had to watch the first minute or so of the film, as Maisie is first up.  And there is this lovely twenty year old girl talking about her grandparents, Anne and Ken, in the most wonderful terms ever.  It could hardly fail to bring tears to anyone’s eyes.

How lucky are we have the opportunity to enjoy such great relationships with children and grandchildren, to have time and health sufficient to be part of their lives and to have it put into words while we are around to hear it too?

As I said to Anne, when our families are casting round for some kind words to say about us at our funerals, they will only need to show Maisie’s film or cull a few words from the 3GKiliClimb website, and the job will be done!

My friend Pat gave me a jar of the jam that she made with the giant lemon I gave her, brought back from Italy.  We have a similar giant lemon still sitting on our kitchen table: I had better do something with it soon.

Pat said that her marmalade had caramelised slightly in the bottom of the pan, which she thought had actually improved the colour and flavour.  That put me in mind of some marmalade I made in the early 70s.

At that time, Stewart was very involved in local government.  He stood as a Labour Party candidate for the local council in Glasgow in 1970 and in Manchester in 1971.  He didn’t get in – but it was quite a feat to stand for election in two cities in different countries in consecutive years.  He paved the way for others to succeed in future years – and they did.

In Manchester, the need to raise funds to support the local party was a priority.  I remember going to beetle drives, sales of work and coffee mornings to try to build up the coffers.

I decided that making marmalade to sell at coffee mornings might be a winner, though I had never made marmalade before!  I think the idea came from the easy availability of small jars.  Jae was a baby at the time and I had several friends with babies of the same age.  I asked my friends to give me all the jars and lids from any jars of baby food their offspring ate and they gave me bags full of jars.  Jae actually rarely got such baby food: I was fixated on making her food from scratch, usually based on tripe or liver – hence her lifelong embrace of vegetarianism!

Marmalade in small jars with pretty fabric circles tied on top proved to be extremely successful and added much needed funds to the party coffers. What no-one knew was that not one piece of citrus fruit entered into my kitchen.  I bought tins of Mamade: just add sugar and water to turn it into marmalade.  However, to give it a rich dark colour, I hit on the idea of stirring in some gravy browning too.  It looked quite special and sold like hot cakes.  The only problem was that people enjoyed it so much, that I was constantly being stopped in the street by people asking for my marmalade recipe. I just couldn’t admit the truth – that it came out of a tin and had artificial colouring added to it!  I just had to prevaricate.

I understand that the food on Kili is top notch, so I am sure there will be no such adulteration when we are on the climb. I have been told that bananas, porridge, chicken and eggs are the mainstays.  Bring it on!

I have been keeping up my exercise regime – trying to do something physical every day – and took a cycle ride through some country lanes around Canterbury.  I found myself riding through what used to be one of the former Kent County Asylums, St Augustine’s Hospital in Chartham.  It is now a modern housing estate, the old mental hospital having been closed, as so many were, in the early 1990s.

I got to thinking about the many poor souls who had been shut away there in the past, often for very little reason at all.  Young girls were often “put away” because they were considered promiscuous and spent many years there.  However, since the closure of the hospitals, I am not so sure that society has done much better.  Now vulnerable people are often left to cope on their own, the only support available coming from charitable organisations such as Catching Lives, to which up to fifty people turn for help every day.

I then got to thinking about when I used to go to the old hospital to represent clients who were detained against their will.  I was a lawyer specialising in family and mental health problems.  I actually started doing mental health work because my predecessor had been hit by a client at St Augustines Hospital and refused to return there!  It was quite a scary place with enormously long corridors: I always walked around with a key or a pen in my hand in case someone jumped out at me, but happily no-one ever did.

However probably my scariest moment as a lawyer – I had quite a few now I think about it – does have a connection with the hospital.  I was in my office in Canterbury one afternoon and was phoned by the solicitor for Mr X.  I represented Mrs X in a dispute about their children.  Mr X’s solicitor said that Mr X had just been into their office and had said he was going to kill Mrs X – and had shown their receptionist the gun he intended to do it with!  The solicitor had phoned the Law Society to ask what he should do, and had been told that he would not be breaching client confidentiality if he phoned to warn me that they thought Mrs X was at serious risk.  It seemed that they were not required to do anything more than warn me: it was my responsibility to alert Mrs X, contact the Police etc. This was before the days of mobile phones, so I had no way of contacting Mrs X, but luck was on our side that day. Mrs X happened to have an appointment with me that afternoon, and she walked into my office about an hour later.  The Police came to pick her up, so she could be kept safe until Mr X and the gun were off the street.

I was not sure what had happened to Mr X until about three weeks later, when I was walking along one of these long corridors at St Augustine’s Hospital and he and I came face to face!  I don’t know who was more frightened – him or me.  We took one look at each other and rushed off in opposite directions.

Mrs X gave me a tiny glass vase, which I still have in my caravan: it is perfect for a little bunch of whatever flowers I find.  I hope her life has been less exciting since that time.

The cycle ride around the lanes and through the old grounds of the hospital takes about an hour.  It is a very beautiful area and I plan to incorporate that ride into my training regime during the next few months, in the lead up to the 3G assault on Kilimanjaro.

—– Note from Jae —–

Well Ma, you never mentioned the pen / key thing to me when I went to volunteer at St Augustine’s in the 1980s! I guess I must have been in a low security-level area, but I do remember long faceless corridors which were often filled with moans and shouts. Quite scary for a teenage girl, although I remember having lovely conversations with some of the patients who seemed very glad to have someone to natter to.

Just a quick note in case any of you still haven’t realised. Yesterday’s eruption news was an April Fool. The 3GKiliClimb challenge is still very much on! If you look closely at the article’s author you’ll find out her name means “April Joke” in Swahili!

Hope we didn’t panic anyone too much! S, J & O xxx

Sheila and I have been friends for over forty years and throughout that time we have shared various interests. Running, cycling and walking have been three of them.  But rarely just walking, running and cycling. There usually has to be some ulterior purpose – usually foraging and scrumping (or thieving as Sheila prefers to call it) whatever is in season. We never venture into the Kent countryside without an empty rucksack or saddle bags. We have foraged for blackberries and damsons; scrumped apples, pears and even mulberries.  Sometimes we’ve come back so heavily laden that we could hardly peddle. Once we even nicked a couple of avocado pears when walking in Spain.  Visiting Sheila at her caravan in the summer, we’ve picked sea kale, sprouting broccoli and apples from the beach across the road. Sheila has even been on a foraging course with her friend, Mary, and found out how professional foragers go about it.

However, the best bit of scrumping was the most recent. On her return from the Amalfi coast last week, Sheila presented me with an enormous fruit which at first I mistook for a pommelo.  It was, in fact, a huge lemon – almost the size of a football. This afternoon, I cut into it and found that the pith was an inch thick.  I decided to turn it into marmalade and, from one lemon and two pounds of sugar, I now have five jars of delicious lemon marmalade – one jar of which will return to the scrumper who brought it all the way back from Italy.

This set me thinking about scrumping opportunities on Kilimanjaro – what booty will she bring me back from there, I wonder? Wikipedia tells me that the climbers will pass through five climate zones on their way up and that coffee, bananas and other crops are grown in the lowlands. Although it would be interesting to taste an African banana, (maybe they’re small like the Canarian ones?) I doubt that it would survive the journey back. Perhaps I’ll settle for a handful of coffee beans…