Going up Kilimanjaro will definitely be a contrast to my everyday life at home. I will no longer be cocooned in a comfortable warm bed at night with a bathroom and all its facilities to hand, but will instead be spending eight nights sleeping in a tent and making use of wet wipes and small bowls of water for keeping clean.
In my earliest years, I lived a life of contrasts, and seemed to move quite naturally between the two. My parents lived in a small two-up-two-down terraced house, which also had a small “box room” for my little brother to sleep in. Our life there was pretty simple and probably quite hard work for my mother in the years before we had a fridge, washing machine or television. I recollect that quite a common evening meal at home would be bread and dripping. I looked up dripping on Wiki and it said:
“Dripping, also known usually as beef dripping or, more rarely, as pork dripping, is an animal fat produced from the fatty or otherwise unusable parts of cow or pig carcasses. It is similar to lard, tallow and schmaltz.”
That sounds rather nasty, but we really liked it, especially when there was a thin layer of jelly underneath. After that, we might have “banana, milk and sugar” which was a banana sliced into a pudding plate, with a dash of milk and sprinkling of sugar added.
However, when we went to visit our paternal grandparents, who lived about twenty minutes walk away up the hill, it was a very different kind of life – into which, as children, we fitted equally well. They lived in an extremely large and luxurious house, complete with a live-in maid and a chauffeur/gardener. The usual scenario was that we would be invited for Saturday afternoon tea, which was a very splendid affair, served on a large table which easily seated twelve people and probably more with extra leaves let in. The first excitement would be the banging of the gong, which had to take place at four o’clock precisely. There was great competition to be the grandchild to have the privilege of doing the banging: the gong was like a miniature version of the one that used to be shown at the beginning of Rank films, and could be heard throughout the house. My grandmother would then open the dining room window and shout “Cooee!”
I googled that and was amazed to find it defined as:
Cooee! (IPA /ku:’i:/) is a shout used in Australia, usually in the Bush, to attract attention, find missing people, or indicate one’s own location. When done correctly – loudly and shrilly – a call of “cooee” can carry over a considerable distance [citation needed]. The distance one’s cooee call travels can be a matter of competitive pride.
Quite why an Australian bush shout would be made out of the window of a posh house in the south of Scotland in the 1950s escapes me, but that is what my grandmother would shout and it resulted in anyone who might be outside – usually my grandfather in one of his several canary houses – coming indoors for afternoon tea.
Everyone would take their place at the table: grandmother at the door end, grandfather at the other end, great Auntie Annie (Yanos) in pole position in the middle of one side in front of the fire and the rest wherever they could fit in. There would be delicate sandwiches, most memorably egg ones and meat paste ones. Scones were piled high, to be eaten with two sorts of jam, served in crystal dishes with high stems and butter made into curls. There would be cakes, though they were surprisingly plain – most usually a Madeira or cherry cake, and chocolate finger biscuits. Children would be served milk to drink – there was no choice – and adults would have tea, served by my grandmother from two enormous silver pots, one for tea and one for hot water. As children, we would wait for the tea or the water to run out for another exciting moment! When it did, my grandmother would simply press her foot on to a lump in the carpet under the table near where she sat, and a bell would ring in the kitchen. The maid – I remember Margaret and Jane – would appear at the hatch behind where my grandmother sat, and would be told to bring more hot water, or whatever was required. That bell was a terrible temptation for me: the desire to put my foot on it was almost overwhelming – but strictly forbidden. Surprisingly, I don’t think I ever committed what would have been regarded as a deadly sin. The highlight of the afternoon tea would be the tart, made by Yanos. She was famous for her tarts, made with apples, gooseberries or rhubarb – or whatever was in season in the large garden. I was told that the first words which I ever uttered were “a tart”. I can imagine myself sitting, as a chubby baby of perhaps fourteen months old, at a table full of people all talking at once, with one of Yanos’ wonderful tarts in front of me, wondering what I had to do to get a bit of it – and getting total attention from everyone around me by uttering my first all-important words.
As we got older, we were always told that we had to “talk up” because my grandmother had a deaf ear. That sounded a bit special! If we did not talk clearly enough, we would have to repeat ourselves, and if that was still unsatisfactory, we had to go and stand near her good left ear and repeat it again, so she could hear. It is as a result of that training, I think, that I have always talked slightly too loudly: Stewart has on occasions told me off for it.
By the time we were at primary school, we were expected to provide entertainment after the meal. We would be required to stand near my grandfather to sing a song, recite a poem or perhaps do a dance – whatever we chose. My grandfather was particularly keen on recitation, and actually wrote quite good poetry himself. We would get bonus points if we were able to perform something original, that we had written or thought up for ourselves rather than learned at school.
After tea, we would take our leave. Our mother had taught us carefully what we had to say on leaving: there were only two acceptable sentences. These were: “Thank you very much for a lovely tea” and “Thank you very much for having me”. My sister Leslie and I had to say our thanks one after the other, but because she was the elder, she got to make her thanks first. I had to listen carefully to what she said, as I had to make sure I said the other sentence. I would be in trouble when I got home if I said the same as her.
I hope my early training in chameleon-like behaviour comes in useful on Kili.