Last year in June, Stew and I went on a cruise on the Rhine for a week with my cousin Catherine and her husband Jim. We had never been on any sort of cruise before, so thought it would be best to do one during which we were never out of sight of land. We all thoroughly enjoyed it, but were subjected to pretty unusual weather. It was well over 30 degrees centigrade for the first half of the week, and it reached 35 degrees on one particular day, when we were in Strasbourg. We walked round the city in the morning, and returned to the boat pretty exhausted at lunch time. Catherine and I had decided that nothing else would do, but to go for a swim in the afternoon to cool ourselves down. We found out where the nearest outdoor pool was – it was at the European Parliament buildings – and made our way there.
We were pretty downhearted when we got there and discovered an enormous crowd of other people also hoping for a swim, standing outside. We decided to wait for a while to see how quickly the queue moved. After a while, some “bouncers” at the front called people with small children forward, and they all moved through the gates into the pool. We were not too optimistic. Then suddenly, I looked up, and one of the bouncers seemed to be pointing over the heads of dozens of people, right at me! I pointed at myself and said “Moi?”, and he eagerly nodded. He waved his arms, indicating that the crowd should move to one side or the other, and immediately there was a path cleared between him and me. I grabbed Catherine, and gingerly, together, we headed forward through the crowd. We got right up to the front and were ushered through to the pay desk and thence to the pool. We were in, before dozens, if not hundreds of people who had been in the queue in front of us.
The only possible reason I can think of why I was picked out is because I have white hair. No-one else in that crowd did – after all, what self respecting elderly French woman would let her hair be its natural colour? I was really chuffed to find that stopping dyeing my hair had been a positive advantage. The bouncers must have thought I was really old to have let myself go to such an extent.
I don’t want to seek out favours when I am on Kili, but if push comes to shove, I might be quite pleased to play the white hair card! If I am struggling to carry my backpack on that last all important day, or need just that little extra bit of encouragement, maybe I won’t mind too much if I get that extra bit of help.