Month: May 2015

One of the greatest treats we looked forward to, when visiting our grandparents as children, was going for a “run in the car”.  When I was very small, my parents did not have a car, although occasionally my father would be allowed to borrow the small Austin 7, which lurked in my grandfather’s large garage.

However, when we went out for a run with my grandparents, we didn’t go out in anything so basic!  We went out in the chauffeur driven Triumph!  The chauffeur-cum-gardener would put on his peaked hat and sit in the front, while everyone else piled into the back.   I think that we could sit four abreast quite comfortably and I recollect a couple of flap down seats too. It was quite an undertaking, and there would be some preparation before we set out.  Hot water bottles would be filled to put on to our knees and then warm rugs would be tucked in all around us, to ensure we were cosy.  I particularly remember one of these rugs, which seemed to be made of fur: I think this was before the days of fake fur, but it seems hard to believe that they might actually have had a soft cuddly rug made of real fur!  Maybe they did.  Flasks of warm drinks would be prepared: cocoa for children and coffee for the adults.

If it was winter, there would be chains over the tyres of the Triumph, so that it didn’t slip in the ice and snow.  I can remember the snow being piled up so high on either side of the road on occasions, that it was impossible to see anything else.  If it was at all chilly or windy – most of the time, really – we wouldn’t get out of the car at all.  The car would be parked up in a “beauty spot” overlooking some of the truly beautiful rolling Scottish Border country, while we enjoyed the view and sipped our warm drinks, before driving back to the house in stately fashion.

However, if the weather was clement, there would be a purpose to the outing.  I remember walking through burns (Scottish streams) to gather watercress, which would be a delicious addition to our afternoon tea that day.  On other occasions, we would be collecting field mushrooms.  We were warned to be very careful about what fungi we picked: my grandfather would examine each one carefully to make sure it wasn’t something poisonous. Often we would be searching for a particular delicacy for my grandfather’s prize winning canaries.  Dandelions, just before the clocks opened, were one delicacy, as were chickweed and “rats’ tails”.  We would follow my grandfather over fences and fields to gather whatever was required and place the chosen items carefully in baskets, but the adult women would rarely stray far from the comfort of the car.

Our journey up Kilimanjaro will be a far cry from such an outing: I love to think about the different ways in which I have travelled in my lifetime.  The one thing an outing in the Triumph had in common with our proposed trip up Kili was that it was a family undertaking, which generally spanned three generations – and that is something quite special!

 

I have mentioned Katie a few times in this blog.  We treat Katie as a daughter, and Jae and her sister Gwen treat her as a sister, but she was actually born in Australia.  How we first came to meet her is a bit special.

In early 1987 I was phoned by a colleague of Stewart’s at the university.  He said that an academic and her daughter had just arrived in Canterbury from Australia and had rented a house in the next street to us, but couldn’t work the central heating.  Could I go and trouble shoot?  I  popped up the road, quickly switched it on and invited them back to our house for a cuppa, while their house warmed up.  Jo and her daughter, Jerusha, walked into our house that day and we were all immediately friends. Gwen and Jerusha were much the same age: it was like we had known them all our lives.

The three girls were into sewing, and when I saw a cute sewing box in the form of a haberdashery shop, I bought one for each of them. Jo and Jerusha stayed for about six months – and have stayed in close contact ever since.  Jerusha took her sewing kit back to Oz with her when she returned home.

When twelve year old Jerusha returned to Oz, she started at a new school and made a new friend, Katie.  Roll on another twelve years and Jo got in touch to say that Jerusha’s friend, Katie, was arriving from Australia to work here in August 1997, and could she stay with us for a few days before starting work?  Her arrival was scheduled for four days before Jae’s wedding and our house was absolutely full of people already.  However, we decided that we would fit her in for one night, then try and get her into the local youth hostel, so that she could stay there until she started her live-in job.

When Katie arrived in our house, we were in the middle of trying to get Jae’s wedding dress to fit: it clearly needed alteration.  I was busy making a meal for all the people milling around.  Katie and Jae were left alone with the wedding dress.  Katie spotted something she recognised on the shelf in Jae’s room – it was the little haberdashery shop sewing box – the same as she had seen in Jerusha’s bedroom in Australia.  It seems that in the blink of an eye, Katie had got the box down, opened it, and started the necessary alterations.  We were all absolutely amazed that this girl, straight off the plane, could find the right equipment to do the job and actually make real progress in doing it so quickly.  Katie made herself so useful in the next few days that there was no way she was moving out to a youth hostel: she was one of us!  She has spent lots of holidays and nearly every Christmas in our house since then.

I think the lesson from this is that you can make real friends from all sorts of different places when you least expect it.  People say that doing a climb like the one Jae, Oscar and I will be doing up Kilimanjaro is a real bonding experience.  You spend more than a week living in very close proximity to a group of other people and together probably share “blood, toil, tears and sweat” as you climb to the roof of Africa.  I think it is a near certainty that we will make new friends with at least one or two people in the group.  Wouldn’t it be nice if Oscar made friends with one of the other young teens who will be in the group, just like Jae and Gwen did when they met Jerusha all these years ago?

Hilarity about the 3G Kili climb is spreading to all parts of the British Isles – yes, thankfully we are still united in many things.  Last Friday, we were chatting with some friends – admittedly over some rather pleasant red wine.  I was telling them about Sheila, Jae and Oscar’s venture and it was obvious that they couldn’t quite get their minds round the purpose, especially why Sheila, Jae or assorted family and friends were producing daily postings in various social media.  I explained about collecting sponsorship – for three different charities, especially for Catching Lives, which is very close to Sheila’s heart.  That impressed everybody – that a retired lawyer was giving so much of her time to cook for the homeless.  So we started talking about ways to raise more sponsorship without really coming up with any ideas.

So we moved on to other topics of the day.  My hubby Jim produced that day’s edition of The Scotsman, the rather douce and proper morning paper serving Edinburgh and mainly the east coast.  One particular article had had him laughing, which is probably quite unusual for the Scotsman, catering as it does for a sensible, quite conservative (note the lower case ‘c’) section of the population.  It is very easy to offend people from Edinburgh – and people from the west coast have a hoard of anti-Edinburgh jokes – where the ladies ‘wear fur coats and nae knickers’, while living behind prim and proper ‘lace curtains while eating kippers’ (kippers having once been the cheapest form of protein).

The article causing such hilarity among us was about China, so coming from a neutral area, it passed the Edinburgh ‘good taste’ censors.  In China, it is vitally important to have a large gathering of mourners at any funeral; the deceased gains kudos in the afterlife proportional to the attendance.  Sadly, in China, respect for the dead in the here and now is diminishing and funeral attendances falling.  So families have taken to hiring strippers to appear at the funeral, or they arrange a lewd show – no explanation given by the Scotsman of what constitutes a lewd show for fear of angering readers.  These funerals are a total sell-out.  However, the Chinese officials do not approve – just as they WOULD NOT APPROVE in Edinburgh.  Hubby kept insisting that there must be an idea for Sheila and Jae’s drive for sponsorship in the article and said that we would throw in some more money if they came up with anything.

Now Sheila is a dear friend and I would never suggest that a respectable wife, mother, grandmother – and retired lawyer – did anything as ‘lewd’ as a striptease – but how about a ‘Calendar Girls’ moment? I’ve had a go at starting a calendar off for you!

Note from Jae: Wow Jean – that is quite some guest-blogger commitment! You look amazing.  We have had nakedness on the mountain mentioned in a blog post before, and the Calendar Girls appeared in reference to “Fishy Buns”, but this is the first naked photo I think! I’m seriously hoping they’ll be no striptease challenges though – the challenge to get cornrows is leaving me feeling quite uncomfortable enough about my appearance.

As I walked back from our caravan at the coast to Canterbury the other day, to keep up with my training regime for Kili, I found a beautiful little egg sitting in the middle of the path on the grass.  There were no trees anywhere near and it was clear that the egg was going to be trodden on pretty soon, so I picked it up.  It was a creamy colour and probably slightly more than an inch long.  It was stone cold, but I fantasised that maybe if I held it in my hand as I walked, it would warm up and hatch.

It put me in mind of my grandfather, who after retirement, became a “canary fancier”. He gradually built up quite an empire of wooden buildings for his canaries in the spacious grounds of his house.  He took over what had been a summer house, a hen house and a shed, one after the other, ending up with hundreds of birds in cages in them.  As a child, I was fascinated by the little plastic eggs he used to encourage the canaries to breed.  He would carefully fashion a felt lined nest and put it into a cage with a blue egg in it, to give the birds the idea, I suppose.

That’s what I was thinking about, as I walked along with my egg – then it all went horribly wrong!  I came to a litter bin and saw what looked like a couple of skate boards in it.  At first I walked past, but then I thought, wouldn’t Oscar and his brothers enjoy them, when they next visit?  So I walked back and fished them out of the bin.  Unfortunately, the egg in my hand smashed during the manoeuvre, resulting in a yolky mess.  Well – I suppose there was no hope of it hatching out anyway!  The skate boards looked in pretty good nick, however.  They were too heavy for me to carry for several miles, so I hid them in some bushes and I hope that they will still be there next time I pass with the car.  I will resist the temptation to try one out: an accident could end my prospects of climbing Kilimanjaro – and explaining an injury from skate boarding at the age of sixty seven would be very embarrassing at the hospital!

So as I walked on, I contented myself with thinking about these long ago canaries.  All of them were called Jock – males and females alike.  My grandfather, at that age, had trouble remembering people’s names, let alone birds’ ones.  He had seven daughters and a multitude of grand daughters, and gave up completely on getting their names right.  He ended up calling us all Irène, which was actually the name of his seventh much loved daughter.

As a canary fancier, my grandfather would enter his birds for shows, which involved a lot of special treatment.  The chosen Jocks would be fed up on a special diet involving egg yolks.  That smacks a bit like cannibaism, now I think about it!  He would boil up hens eggs – give the whites to us children, who were very happy to eat them – and feed the yolks, mixed with special weeds we were sent to find in the hedgerows to the lucky birds.

Next came the really exciting bit – the beauty parlour!  He would carefully hold Jock in his hand and wash him/her all over with a special flannel and warm water.  The wet bird would then be placed on to a narrow piece of fabric and be rolled up like a sausage roll to dry.  The rolls of birds would be set on the tiles in front of the gas fire to dry off.  Sometimes more than a dozen birds would get this treatment at once and there would be neat rows of them all lying there together in the dining room fireplace.

When I got home, I looked up on the internet to see whether this had all been a flight of my imagination, and at first I could see nothing at all to suggest that this had ever been a proper way of caring for birds.  In fact quite the contrary: the advice nowadays seem to be to give canaries water for bathing and they will make use of it themselves on a daily basis.  However, at last I did track down the “Encyclopaedia of Caged Birds” 1928 revised edition, and there was a rather grainy picture of “Hand Washing a Canary”!  Exactly as I remember.

Once the birds had been completely prepared, they would be driven to the station in special show cages, to go by train to wherever the show was.  My grandfather lived in Hawick on the main line between Edinburgh and London, so they could have been going pretty much anywhere in the country.  The line was a victim to the Beeching cuts in 1971, but I am pleased to know that it is to be at least partially reopened later this year.  Quite how the birds made it at the other end to the show and then back on to a return train afterwards, I have no idea, but I do remember birds arriving back, the successful Jocks proudly bearing red or blue rosettes affixed to their cages.

I rather fancifully googled “Kilimanjaro birds”, when I was thinking of writing this, wondering what sort of egg might be dropped in my path there, and I am slightly horrified by what I found! I found a picture of a bird with the following description: “White necked ravens are big birds with large strong scary looking beaks.  They hang around the campsites and huts on Kilimanjaro scavenging and looking for scraps”.  So not only do we now have to deal with the prospect of leopards and rats – see blog of 10th of March – but now also big scary birds!  Bring back the canaries!

I was really touched recently by one of Stewart’s friends, Rob Veltman, going to the trouble of providing us with some helpful phrases in Swahili, for when we are on Kilimanjaro.  Isn’t it great that somebody would go to the trouble of doing that?

During the last few years, Stew has been out walking on Thursdays with a few fellow ex-academics.  They have had some adventures during these walks.  They have come back with their clothes ripped, spectacles missing, soaked through and, unfortunately, on one occasion with a broken leg.  But they have persevered!  I love the fact that these guys – all the others are older than Stewart – have continued to traverse the Kentish countryside and, no doubt, put the world to rights while doing so. It seems, quite often, they end up in a pub, but it is great that they do it at all.  Women seem to me to be eminently clubbable: we are always meeting up and arranging to do something together.  But for men, that is something a bit special.

And recently, Stewart returned from his Thursday walk with two tightly written pages from Rob, one of the walkers and a linguistician, providing us with useful phrases for the Kili trip.  Rob has clearly prepared phrases especially for us, and I am really grateful for his foresight.  I will be all set if someone asks me halfway up Kilimanjaro which branch of law I used to specialise in, and I am sure Oscar will be happy to explain that he is not married yet.

I am particularly pleased that he has included essential “toilet” phrases: so long as that is sorted, I am fairly sure we will manage all the rest.  Thank you very much indeed Rob!

Sheila and Stewart’s arrival in Canterbury in 1973 came at a very opportune time for me. I was fed up with working as a social worker and, at the ripe age of 27, was thinking it was time to start a family. Sheila already had a little girl of almost two, Janey, as she was then known, and was therefore in a position to offer advice and friendship. Some time afterwards, when we were visiting Sheila and Stewart and there were several other people present, Martin (my husband) announced: “Well, Pat’s up the spout!” This was a bit of a shock as I had only had the pregnancy confirmed that day and he had just heard the news himself.

Once I had given up my job – that’s what we did in those days and I had no intention of ever going back – Sheila and I began to see a lot of each other. Sheila by this time was also pregnant so we knew our babies would become friends too. Just before my daughter, Nicola, was born, Sheila and I went on an expedition to the nearest Mothercare store, which was in Margate, to get the basic kit. I think this really amounted to a baby bath, some terry nappies and toiletries. I tried to follow Sheila’s example with thrifty handicrafts and lined a Moses basket (romantic but wildly impractical) and made myself a couple of maternity smocks. When Gwen was born, four months after Nicola, I tried to make a patchwork cot bumper for her out of scraps of old dresses but, in truth, I have always been hopeless at handicrafts and my mother had to help me get it finished.  Thirty years later, this work of art featured as a backing for the quilt Sheila made for our first grandchild, Alfie.  It was good to see the remnants of my old 1960s mini dresses given yet another new life!

When our girls were older – I had gone back to the dreaded Social Services and Sheila was also busy with various part-time jobs – it was harder to make time to see friends.  However, the first Canterbury Fun Run was to take place in May 1981 and I persuaded Sheila to buy a pair of trainers and start training with me. I clearly remember the time we first managed to run for twenty minutes without stopping and we realised we had cracked it.  So we triumphantly completed the five-mile fun run, with our friend Mary, and thereafter regularly ran together and with other friends.  Somehow we also fitted in yoga classes and then aerobics. We both became pretty fit at that time and I think this changed our conception of ourselves.  Neither of us was at all sporty but at least we could run and it was an excellent way of keeping in touch with friends. I ran for the next 18 years, when my knees started to give me trouble, and Sheila carried on for a couple more years after that. Nowadays we meet up with other friends from our jogging period at the excellent Pilates classes run by Lindsay in a local church hall.

I think the feeling of being strong, healthy people remained with both of us long after we stopped jogging.  Even though she claims never to have walked up a hill, Sheila knew she had the determination to get herself fit enough to climb up Kilimanjaro. Unlike me, she has no fear of heights and she has strong legs and ankles to keep her stable.  So I am quite sure she can do it. I have even offered, for old times sake, to accompany Sheila on some of her training walks, though she has a head start on me this time.

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.

 

Clothes washing might be a bit of an issue on Kilimanjaro.  Every bit of water has to be carried up, so will be in short supply.  When I ask people who have done it before, they tend to say that they wore the same outer garments most of the time, but rang the changes with inner garments, and tried to keep something clean to sleep in.  I hope to get enough into my bag – 15kg max – to allow for some changes.

I did read on the internet of one guy, who recommended putting any damp garments into your sleeping bag, on the basis that they would be dry in the morning.  I find it hard to believe that that would be a comfortable way forward!

The washing of clothes has gone through a complete transformation during my lifetime: nowadays it is hardly a task even worth mentioning.  However, it used to take up an extraordinary amount of people’s time and energy.

I remember my mother having a wash board, when I was a child.  She had to stand at the kitchen sink and rub each garment on it, before rinsing them out, putting them through a wringer, and hanging them outside to dry.  Many people did not even have the facilities in their homes to do that, particularly people who lived in tenement buildings.  When I was a small child it was a common sight to see women pushing prams full of washing to and from the “steamie”.  The one near where I lived was next to the swimming baths, where it was not only possible to wash your clothes, but also to have a bath.

When I was a student and during the early years of marriage, I had no laundry facilities of any kind – certainly not for bedding – and used to take my dirty washing to the “bag wash” in the morning.  Later in the day it could be collected, either washed or washed and dried.  I think they tipped everything into a bucket of bleach, as everything would come back a few shades lighter in colour, but passably clean.

We were pretty chuffed when we were able to afford a “twin tub”.  This was a washing machine of sorts.  There were two bits to it: one for washing the clothes in, and another for spin drying them in.  It was not a tumble dryer – the stuff still came out wet at the end of the process, but at least they were not soaking wet.  I think it was the mid 1970s before we first had what we would recognise today as a washing machine.

It is salutary to think that there are many parts of the world today which don’t even have running water, let alone electricity.  The people in Tanzania around Kilimanjaro are extremely poor, and generally have neither in their homes.  I have heard that some of the porters who queue for jobs carrying stuff up the mountain are practically dressed in rags, which have been repeatedly washed, probably by the most basic of methods.  A quarter of the money we are raising by climbing will go to the Kili Porters School which is supported by Exodus Travels.  I hope that will result in making life easier for a few people in that respect.

I am full of admiration for our heroic 3 G Kili climbers. I’ve always known they’ve got physical and mental determination, demonstrated by Jae’s salsa dancing and netball playing while working full time with 3 young sons, Oscar’s fab footie skills, and Sheila’s sea swimming and cycling. My boys Ben and Alex have really fond memories of cycling with Sheila along the Crab and Winkle Way from Canterbury to Whitstable to stay in Sheila’s Seasalter caravan.

My own relationship with exercise has always been shakier. Memories of being the last to be picked for PE teams at school die hard. But inspired by a Guardian article about people getting hooked on running at the age of 40+, I bought my first proper running shoes at the age of 40 ¾ . Purchase achieved, they lived in their box under my bed until I was 41 ¾ ! Then my fabulous friend Sid talked me into entering the Royal Parks Half Marathon with her. Application form sent off, sponsorship money pledged for the charity Action Village India, there was no turning back. Over the summer of 2012, while following the fearless efforts of the Olympians and Paralympians, Sid’s unwavering encouragement helped me build up from a 10 minute jog to running 3, 5, 7 …. and finally 11 miles on our practice runs.

At the starting line of the Royal Parks Half Marathon in Hyde Park in October 2012, I had no idea where I was going to get the stamina to run the full 13 miles, 2 miles longer than I’d ever done before. Sid assured me it was simply “mind over matter” and that we’d do it. With jelly beans for energy stuffed in my bra (no pockets in my running bottoms!), buoyed up by the cheering crowds, blue sky and autumn leaves, the first five miles felt wonderful as we passed the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament. The next four miles felt unspeakably hard. The only things that kept me going were Sid’s amazing and constant support, the jelly beans and, weirdly, the soundtrack of ‘Chariots of Fire’ playing over and over in my head. That, and seeing the energy and determination of other runners of all ages, shapes and sizes, none of whom seemed to be giving up!! I reached a weird state of euphoria at the 9 mile mark which carried me through the next 4 miles and over the finishing line, shortly after the unexpected delight of seeing my sister Charlotte cheering us on at the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens.

I’m casting back to 2012 because it’s the only half marathon and the hardest exercise I’ve ever done. But Sid and I still run every Sunday and are planning to enter another race one of these days! I don’t think the wonderful Kili 3 need tips from me about keeping going when the going gets tough, but here goes anyway: Dig deep, think of all the money you’re raising for Catching Lives and Tanzanian charities, feel carried and galvanized by the collective effort of everyone else around you, keep some jelly beans handy and have an inner soundtrack of inspiring music to urge you on as you climb. I’m really enjoying your blogs and following your adventure and feel very proud of you all.

A friend recently asked me if I had read an Anita Shreve book about Kilimanjaro.  She said it was called “A Change in Altitude”.  I am quite a fan of Shreve and said I did remember reading a book about people climbing a mountain – and someone falling to their death – but had not remembered that it was Kilimanjaro.  It gave me quite a turn, as I remembered that in the story, the climbers had all been clipped together on to a rope, but a woman unclipped herself on a glacier and slipped off the edge of it.

I therefore went hot-footing off to the local Catching Lives charity bookshop to see if they had a copy, so I could check out whether I was remembering it correctly.  The bookshop is one one of the oldest building in Canterbury – 16th century, I think.  It was built as a private house, but served many different purposes over the years.  In 1925 it was a tea shop: I love this old picture which advertises its “wireless music”.  I guess that was as essential then as wi-fi would be in a cafe today!  Subsequently it was the shop for the prestigious Kings School – that’s where they bought their uniform – and now it is a great charity book shop, raising money to help get homeless Canterbury people back on track.

I was lucky enough to get a copy of the novel in question, so I have been able to see whether my memory was right or not.  Well, mine was, but my friend’s was a bit faulty: the woman does indeed fall off the mountain – but off Mount Kenya, not Kilimanjaro!  Mount Kenya is not as high as Kili, but much more precipitous.  I was thrilled to read the following in the book:

‘So Kilimanjaro is higher?’ Margaret asked.

‘Higher, but easier.  I think you simply walk to the top.  In large circles.  It takes a while, but most amateurs can handle it.  It’s supposed to be fairly boring.’

Boring will do me very nicely: getting tied together with ropes and slipping off a glacier isn’t what I had planned for August.  What did surprise me in the book was the quantity of “meds” the group thought necessary to take on the three day trek up Mount Kenya.  They list ‘Aspirin for fever and headache, ibuprofen for muscle aches, paracetamol for colds, Diamox as a prophytactic for AMS (acute mountain sickness) Immodium to stop you up if you get the runs, oil of cloves for dental use, and water purification tablets.’  They also add in ‘oral rehydration salts for replacement of fluids, and the Nytol for sleeping, of course.’  I dare say I may take some of those, but it is very nice to know that I am doing the trip with a solid organisation like Exodus, whose leaders no doubt carry most of that and more.

However, rereading the novel has raised another “nasty”!  I thought I had it covered mentally by preparing for the possibility of leopards, rats and big scary birds.  I didn’t know about fire ants!  There is a scene in which one of the women stands in a nest of fire ants and within seconds she has dozens of bites “as if she were being pricked hard by needles…… She felt as though she were being assaulted by Africa itself, the ground rising up to sting her to death…..There were dozens of trails of the red ants, some of which Margaret could see through the nylon of her underpants.  She tried to fetch them out, but then realized that would take too long.  She pulled the underwear down and ran away from it.  After that, her blouse, her bra”.  So the risk of being Naked on the Mountain rears its ugly head yet again: see the blog of 24th of February for another such possibility.  At least I know what to watch out for now, I suppose.

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Note from Jae: I was reading A Change in Altitude when I got offered the job at Exodus last year. I remember being chuffed to bits, and then thinking, “I won’t ever need to climb a high, scary mountain like Mt Kenya will I?  No – they do lots of other types of amazing adventure travel”! And here I am absolutely loving that I’m taking on a big challenge with my Ma and lovely Oscar – few people find themselves lucky enough to be able to attempt something so fantastic with both the generation above, and that below. I feel very privileged (and just a bit scared!). I won’t bother reading it again for a while.

I know my sister loves her collection of stones, lava and sea glass and I had the mad idea of bringing back for her from Africa a tiny piece of tanzanite. It is a beautiful stone which changes colour according to the light; sometimes it’s blue like a sapphire, sometimes purple like amethyst. Its name comes from the only place in the world it is mined, in Tanzania, in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro. Of course I knew she couldn’t take it with her – I’m not that daft – but I hoped a crystal would inspire her at home in Canterbury as her grueling preparations for the big climb continue.

What’s more, tanzanite is claimed to have good vibrations when you hold it in your hands and it has powerful properties for metaphysical healing. It helps you develop physic power, strengthens the immune system, and detoxifies the blood. Just Google it – it even increases fertility!

So when we went to a diamond wholesaler in Capetown whose entire front window was advertising the “Queen of Kilimanjaro” I felt hopeful. Wholesalers are cheap, right? Perhaps the champagne as we came in should have rung warning bells but no, I still hoped for a tiny crystal at a tiny price. No way. Every crystal came encrusted with diamonds and a BIG price tag. So, sorry, Sheila, next time you need a burst of psychic energy please gaze at this picture. Good luck guys.

I’ve been baking banana cake, one to eat at home and one to take on holiday when we go off to Charmouth, for a week walking with a group of old friends – old being the operative word!  Banana cake is one of my staples, because whenever I have any bananas which look past their best, I peel them and freeze them to make cake with in future.  It only takes a moment to fish them out and zap them in the microwave, ready to make into a cake.  It was banana and crystallised ginger today.

Bananas are a great food.  I recollect that my sister Leslie fed my niece Katharine almost exclusively on bananas – or so it seemed – as a baby.  Katharine wolfed them down and thrived on them.  Leslie decided to write to Fyffes, the main banana importers, to let them know that her daughter had eaten a banana every day for a year.  She hoped that they might at least send her a bunch or two, or if she was lucky, decide to finance Katharine’s banana habit in the future.  She was not so lucky!  They did respond, but by sending her a three foot long inflatable banana – not quite what she had been hoping for.

I remember my grandfather telling me a story involving a banana.  When he was young, he was a very keen harrier.  I am not even sure that term exists any more: I suppose nowadays he would be called a jogger.  He used to participate in competitive races over quite long distances before the First World War.  My grandfather was entered into a very big race, which he hoped to win – there was a money prize.  Somehow, my grandfather had come by a banana – not a common commodity at that time – and set out on the race with it in his pocket.   He was running at the front, along with another guy, an equally good runner, whom he couldn’t shake off.  Suddenly, my grandfather had a brainwave: he took out his banana, and made as if to peel it.  He could see the guy beside him looking at it hungrily.  In an apparent show of benevolence, he handed the fellow his banana.  His rival was so amazed at his luck that he slowed right down to peel and eat the banana – and my grandfather shot on to victory!

Chelsea, who featured in yesterday’s blog post, tells me that every meal and snack on Kilimanjaro seems to involve bananas and all food ends up tasting like them.  I guess they are provided on the basis that they are a good source of energy – not that they will cause one to “lose the race” as in my grandfather’s story.  Just as well we all like them!

I went to London again recently to visit Jae at Exodus, where she is the Marketing Director.  Everyone who works for Exodus, whether they are office-bound or not, has the chance to go on an *educational*.  How cool is that?  Jae was doing her educational when we went to the Amalfi coast in March (see Jae’s blog post about it here).   I hasten to add that taking along your Ma is not a freebie: I paid for myself, although I got a little bit of a discount.

The reason for me visiting her office was to see her presentation of our holiday.  That is the downside of an educational: you have to present a slide show of your holiday to your colleagues, so they can all learn and note anything that could be done better in future.  A pretty good way of doing things, now I think of it.  I used to feel sometimes as a children’s lawyer that some of the people involved in court proceedings had no idea what it must feel like for children to learn that they may be removed from their parents.  It wasn’t possible to give that a trial run or learn much about what it must feel like from colleagues – but anyone can have a shot at an adventure holiday!

Jae’s presentation was on a Thursday after work: they have one every week.  One friendly guy I was talking to, Imran, told me he had worked there for ten years, and must have heard about five hundred such presentations.  Despite that, he seemed to enjoy Jae’s – she managed to inject some humour and unusual photographs into her talk – and there was some entertaining heckling from the audience of about sixty people!

Needless to say, it all ended up afterwards in a trip to a pub – and that is where I feel I got the best run down yet on what climbing Kilimanjaro might be like for me!  I have talked to several superfit people who have done it and lots of other such climbs too, but talking to a young girl, Chelsea Dorey – who was also visiting Exodus, and had been good enough to bring her own photos of her trip to the pub – was for me, the most enlightening yet.  Chelsea seems just a normal person like me, who decided to do the climb for charity.  At the last minute her friend, who was to do it too, fell ill – so Chelsea’s sister, Natalie, stepped into the breach at two weeks’ notice without any training at all – and they both got to the top!  Chelsea was the first person to tell me that it would be cold all the time from the first night onwards.  I had imagined that starting on the equator, it would be really hot for the first few days and nights, and then gradually get colder as we near the top.  Not so!  We will need layers of clothes and our down sleeping bags from the first night onwards – really useful to know when planning our clothing.

Chelsea said that both she and her sister had taken a drug used for altitude sickness from the beginning of the climb, and that they were the only people in their group who did not have headaches and/or sickness.  I had decided not to use such medication – but that did give me pause for thought.  She said that others were actually vomiting and found it almost impossible to eat, which meant they had no strength.  NHS websites and my GP are against it – but many other fairly reliable sources, particularly American ones (or is that a contradiction of terms?), favour it.  The jury is still out, as far as I am concerned: any advice welcome.

Chelsea also said that most of the time, the walking is not arduous.  You just have to keep going slowly on – the incline is generally gentle.  The only really difficult bit, where you have to scramble, is the Barranco Wall.  She had some great photographs of it, and it is clear that we will have to climb up a steep rock face and over huge boulders.  A foot wrongly placed could result in disaster.  However, what no-one else had told me was that it would be all over in about an hour and a half.  I think I can do that!  I like a bit of variety, and so long as I keep my concentration and take it slowly, I will make it.

After that, what we will have to worry about is the last night.  We have a very early night and get woken before midnight for the assault on the peak.  We will be climbing in the dark for about seven hours, to be on top at dawn.  Exodus say they get 95% of people to the top on the route we are taking, but if I end up in the other 5%, so be it.  I will do my best, but none of us have any idea how we will feel at such a high altitude: that is truly in the lap of the Gods!

The best thing that Chelsea said was that it was the hardest thing she had ever done in her life – but she would agree to do it again in the blink of an eye, if she got the chance!

The title of this sounds a bit like one of these – usually awful – jokes starting ‘Have you heard the one about….?’.  However, this is not a joke, but a true story of Sheila in her early twenties, when she met a Professor and spent a summer in Jail.

Away back in the mid sixties, when only about five per cent of school leavers went to University in Scotland, I think it fair to say that bright girls who were channelled to university were often encouraged to take general degrees or degrees in school subjects in which they excelled.  Teaching was seen as their ultimate destination, which fitted in with getting married, having children and following one’s husband in his career moves.  Boys were possibly pushed to be a little more focussed on what their ultimate employment might be,  but Sheila arrived at Glasgow University, perhaps a little uncertain about what she would do.  Halfway through she discovered Social Sciences and immediately became a late convert.

During her last year at uni, Sheila did a short course in criminology.  At the end of the course, the Professor teaching it said that if the class was interested in a visit to see Barlinnie Prison, he would set it up.  At that time Barlinnie was a very notorious prison in Glasgow housing many infamous career criminals, including the gangland murderer,  James Boyle, who subsequently held a “dirty protest” there, became a renowned artist and wrote a book all about it (described on Wiki as: Jimmy Boyle (born 1944) is a Scottish sculptor, novelist and convicted murderer)!  Sheila organised for about a dozen students to visit the prison with the Professor.  During the trip the Professor mentioned that he was looking for someone to do some research work for him during the summer, if anyone was interested – and Sheila perked up her ears!  She and Stewart were getting married that summer, as soon as they had graduated. Stewart intended to further his career by doing post-graduate research at Glasgow University and the summer job would be within walking distance of the flat they had already lined up in which to start married life.

Even before she had graduated, Sheila had contacted the Professor, demonstrated her interest in having a summer job and started work as his research assistant.

This was one of the eras in which Glasgow gangs flourished.  The gangs were very territorial, with members usually in their teens, rather than the more mature men who had been in the renowned gangs of Glasgow in the nineteen twenties and thirties.  And it was before drugs became a big part of gang culture.  In some ways, for non-gang members, Glasgow was still a relatively safe area to move about in.  But if a gang member ventured into the territory of a rival gang, then they were lucky to escape with anything less than a ‘good kicking’ (can kicking somebody ever be good?) or a slash or two, usually fairly superficial and treated by gang members as a badge of honour.  They also decorated any bare wall with gang slogans, pretty crude and not anything like the art form of Banksy.  This was the professor’s area of interest.

The downside was that all the records of gangs, old and new, were held in the cells of the Central Police Station in the middle of Glasgow.  And this is how Sheila landed with a summer in Jail, actually locked in one of the cells with the records she had requested for that day.  She told me that she often had to shout for quite some time to be let out for loo and meal breaks.  However, it did have its upside: she so impressed the Professor, that he employed her for the next two years and acknowledged her hard work in the credits of the book she helped him with.

If you are still reading this, you might well wonder what this has to do with Sheila’s family trip to Kilimanjaro.  Well, I do remember my brief from Sheila – ‘write about anything as long as it has something to do with the trip’.  I think the ‘Jail Incident’ shows early manifestations of what made Sheila rise to the 3G Kili Climb challenge and what she will need in buckets to get to the top.  She had the imagination to defy convention and set her own target; having done that she showed great forbearance when the situation turned out to be less idyllic than she had bargained for.  With all of these characteristics, can Sheila fail to make the summit?

I have been attending a weekly U3A class in French during the last few months.  My spoken French is still absolutely abysmal, but I have loved the chat with the sparky teacher and other elderly students.

In the interests of getting fit for climbing Kilimanjaro, I have recently started to walk all or at least a part of the way there. The class is in Herne Bay – probably about nine or ten miles from home on footpaths.

My friend Pat walked to Herne Bay with me last week and we stopped off in a cafe on our way for a cup of tea.  It is a cafe which seems to be frequented largely by dogs!  There were four little dogs within six feet of us, one of which was occupying the seat right beside me.  I asked its owner what sort of dog it was and she replied, “Shit poo”!  I was about to say I knew they all did that, when she went on to explain that she meant it was a Schitzu Poodle cross.

Of course I had to tell the French class about this: it is an extremely doggy orientated class.  The teacher, whose house the class is held in, has a gorgeous dog called Beau, a Cocker Spaniel Poodle cross.  Beau bounds around amongst us during the class, ensuring that all of us keep wide awake!

The teacher is also an occasional dog sitter: she moves into people’s homes with Beau to care for their dogs, when they are on holiday.  The French class has, therefore, on occasions taken place in other dogs’ houses, so to speak.  We loved being in Bella’s house!  We couldn’t get over the fact that her owners seem to have matched her perfectly with a giant rug!

My first ever doggy experience was with my grandparents’ Cocker Spaniel, Glen.  He was considered to be a working dog and lived outside in a spacious kennel.  However he had the run of the gardens and was an extremely gentle and patient dog, and I loved him.  Although I have never owned – or been owned – by a dog, I have always felt happy with dogs around, thanks to Glen.

I spent some time in Scotland last year, helping my friend Susie, whose husband was dying.  Susie is owned by a wonderfully intelligent Spaniel, Archie. When Susie and I accompanied Archie on one of his long cross-country rambles, he would sometimes disappear for long periods to chase a pheasant or a squirrel, reappearing occasionally, just to check we were alright.  I was quite nervous when I set out alone with Archie for a walk in case he disappeared: I didn’t want him lost on my watch.  I needn’t have worried!  Archie was aware of his responsibilities.  He wandered off on his usual side excursions, but never once did he let me out of his sight. I was too much of an unknown quantity to be trusted out unsupervised.

When we visit my brother Robbie, dog loving is compulsory. He and Mary have three “boys”, Finlay, Rhuari and Mungo.  Mary takes great pleasure in training them as PAT (Pets as Therapy) dogs: they accompany her into various care and nursing homes.  It was there that an elderly lady first held out a piece of banana to one of the “boys”.  The dog obligingly wolfed it down, and then decided it was the most exciting flavour ever.  Since then, bananas have been considered the best treat ever by all three dogs and have to be carefully hidden out of sight and smell, if an easy life is to be had at home.

On our recent training exercise in Italy, Jae and I, in the Exodus group, were accompanied up and round the crater of Vesuvius by a dog.  We were told that he lived on the mountain and was fed and received medical care there.  I don’t know whether there are dogs on Kilimanjaro or not and if so, whether they enjoy bananas, which are in plentiful supply there. I may have to wait till I get there in August to find out.

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