Month: June 2015

Recently, someone who had read Paula’s Guest Blog of 22nd June wrote how colourful and interesting the food looked in the picture of Paula in the kitchen at Catching Lives – quite unlike the beige food often served up in NHS and other such establishments – so I thought I would let you know a bit more about the food and where it comes from.

First of all, though, I have to emphasise that Catching Lives is not a soup kitchen – in fact far from it.  The main purpose of the charity is to try to help homeless people into accommodation and work, and if necessary to get essential medical attention or counselling, with the aim of getting them back into mainstream society.  There is a bank of computers with people on hand to assist clients make applications for housing, benefits or work; qualified medical personnel to carry out assessments and treatment if appropriate; laundry and showering facilities to help people spruce up as well as the opportunity to meet others by participating in a yoga class, a game of scrabble, or an art class or follow another such interest.  No-one sleeps in the building and there is no television!  Providing good nourishing meals, therefore, is only part of the picture – but an essential step in the process of enabling clients to step back into having a meaningful life, when they have been living on the streets.

I have been cooking in the kitchen at Catching Lives on Wednesdays for over a year and a half now.  Paula has been there for more than six years and there are two or three other regular Wednesday people, whom I look upon as friends, as well as the occasional student or helper who just turns up to work with us for a few weeks before moving on.

One of the great joys of cooking there is that until we arrive, we have no idea what we will be cooking or what ingredients will be available.  Often when we arrive shortly after 8am, the central working surface is heaped high with produce and donations that have arrived late the day before.  The first job is to sort it all out and think about what we can use immediately and then to store the surplus appropriately in fridge, freezer or larder.  All of us chip in with suggestions of what to make, and once we have decided, we get on with it.  The first clients arrive at 9am – well actually they are often outside long before that, but that’s when they get in  – and make straight for the counter for breakfast.  Tea and beans on toast are much in demand and there is cereal, supplemented with fruit, juice, cheese or cold meat, when available.  One of us normally looks after making the toast etc, while the others get on with preparing lunch, which is served fairly early – between 11.45 and 12.30. One of the gadgets I yearn for in the kitchen at that moment is a “conveyor toaster” like you often see in hotels – it would get hot toast out to those who really appreciate it much faster than our pop-up.

We never know how many people we’ll be catering for.  Since I have been there, we have served lunch to anything from 15 to 48 clients.  There are generally more clients in the winter and fewer in the summer, when casual jobs on local farms are more likely to be available.  However, nothing much is ever wasted: if there are surplus meals, the volunteers and staff can tuck in too and anything which can be used the next day is carefully covered, labelled and refrigerated.

Catching Lives uses part of its budget to buy essential food such as bread, margarine, milk and sugar from a local supermarket.  However, most food comes from rather unconventional sources.  Until I started cooking in the kitchen, I had never heard of FareShare. Basically, what they do is collect surplus food from supermarket chains, which donate it, and distribute it to charities such as ours.  We pay a small donation towards FareShare’s transport costs – perhaps £1 for a tray of a dozen chops or chicken pieces.  On their website FareShare say:

“We save good food destined for waste and send it to charities and community groups who transform it into nutritious meals for vulnerable people. The food we redistribute is fresh, quality and in date surplus from the food industry and the charities we work with can be found across the UK.  Last year we redistributed enough food for 15.3 million meals. But it’s about more than meals. The organisations we supply food to – from breakfast clubs for disadvantaged children, to homeless hostels, community cafes and domestic violence refuges – are places that provide life changing support, as well as lunch and dinner.  By making sure good food is not wasted, we turn an environmental problem into a social solution.”

So most of our meat comes from them at a token price.  We made a delicious chicken and sausage bake with their meat recently, which definitely hit the spot.

Another great source of food for Catching Lives – mainly fruit and veg, but often cheese too – is the Macknade Farm Shop in Faversham.  Stew and I have been shopping there for years: it is such a treat to go into their fab shop and look at all the exotic produce that they sell there. They are extremely generous to our kitchen and donate excess food, or anything that isn’t saleable.  I have cooked things that they have donated that I have never even tried before, such as oriental mushrooms, black cheese and some amazingly unusual vegetables.  Boxes of their stuff seem to arrive regularly on Tuesday evenings: it is a great joy to look in the boxes on a Wednesday morning.

Another supplier of useful and delicious ingredients is our local Nando’s. I’d never been into a Nando’s before I started cooking at Catching Lives, but I’ve been in a few times since – it’s good to eat somewhere that I know supports its local community.

Recently there was a lovely box of fruit and veg in the kitchen, and I was told it had come from Webbs Garden, which was created with the aim of providing therapy for St Martin’s Hospital’s mental health patients, as well as offering a base for the site’s Estates Department. It is based in the grounds of the hospital in Canterbury and benefits from local volunteers, who go in to help with growing food in greenhouses and poly tunnels.  Much of the food grown is sold to hospital staff – but we were the lucky beneficiaries of fresh lettuces, cabbage and tiny little new potatoes, which must have been surplus to requirements.

Often, however, people just come in off the street with donations.  Sometimes it is when there is a glut of one particular thing on their allotment – or perhaps they have turned that glut into jam or chutney for us.  A fairly elderly couple come in about once a month with sausage rolls and cakes they have baked specially for us: I think at some point in the distant past they were homeless themselves and their gift to Catching Lives is in recognition of the support they themselves received when they most needed it.  We got a bagful of jars of herbs and spices delivered to us recently: a local landlord was clearing out a student house at the end of term and handed in what they had left in the cupboard.

All of this food means that we can cook delicious lunches at a very low cost – and we have lots of laughs in the process.  Our food gets many compliments from clients, staff and volunteers alike: we love their feedback.  We make everything as fresh and colourful as possible in the hope that it will nourish and put a smile on faces.  We know that having a full stomach helps contribute to the overall aim of Catching Lives – getting people back on their feet again.  It is pretty difficult to do anything much in life if you are hungry and don’t know where your next meal is coming from.

If you want more information about Catching Lives, look at their excellent web site.  I hope you agree that they are a worthwhile charity, and if you haven’t already donated to 3GKiliClimb.com maybe you will think about doing so, if you are able to.  They will be getting half of everything we raise – and your donation will be matched by a very kind friend who has offered to double all donations we receive before August, up to a total of £5,895.  What’s not to like about that?

It is strange how the thought processes of old friends – even ones who don’t meet often – sometimes converge.  After reading another of Sheila’s blogs, I was thinking how lucky Sheila’s grandchildren would be to have all the postings about her life and family Sheila has been doing recently.  I am sure that one of Sheila’s brilliant, tech savvy daughters will capture all the postings in a less ephemeral media than Facebook.  And of course Oscar at thirteen will be sharing one of Sheila’s bigger adventures to date.

The vision of Oscar as an elderly gentleman in 2083 arose before my eyes, still with his cool quiff (they’ll have invented something to prevent male baldness by then) and maybe a bit greyer. In it, he was surrounded by a group of his grandchildren, and perhaps those of his Australian cousins, and they are all clamouring to hear about the time he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with their delightfully dotty great-great-grandma Sheila.  In fact the same Sheila had become one of their favourite subjects for ‘granddad’s stories’.  Oscar’s work will be easy – he will read them pages from Sheila’s blog.  Maybe he will need to do a bit more of an explanation about how life was in those days.  These children will indeed be lucky to have this thread of family stories now that families are becoming increasingly fragmented and family albums of photographic memories reside on technology that becomes dated.

The more I thought about it, the more enthusiastic I became for Sheila to expand her memories backwards and sideways.  And that was where I was when I read Sheila’s blog (17 June) about needing to find a new project when the Kilimanjaro Climb is over.  Sheila mentioned in an early posting that I had put together a family tree for her father’s side; it is relatively easy to do that in Scotland because it is a small country and the records were centralised at an early stage. (Elsewhere, more and more data is becoming available on-line.) Sadly I wasn’t able to do anything about her German mother’s side, but I know that Sheila and Leslie are in touch with distant cousins from that side, so there is scope for that.  Also, I only went backwards in time, with a little bit about siblings of the older generation, some of whom Sheila knew about.  The tree has nothing about the family members younger than Sheila or her father, or about Stewart’s family. So there is plenty of scope for expansion of that skeleton, after which Sheila could flesh it out adding any anecdotes she can dig up.  I am certain it would all make interesting reading now – and when Oscar is entertaining his grandchildren!

And maybe, as a keen family historian I can make a plea to anyone else who reads this.  What memories have you stored away for the generations that follow you?  Will your grandchildren and beyond find anything to tell them what you were like, what you did, what you cared about?  We all lead such busy lives, with so much on Facebook and other media that might not survive – unlike all the old family albums.  So maybe you should start writing about your memories and encourage the older generations to write down anything that they would want their descendants to know about them.  Megan Russell (14 June, the Butterfly effect) wrote a lovely post about the little acts of good or change that people might make because of Sheila, Jae and Oscar’s adventure.  Wouldn’t it be a splendid legacy if we all left that little bit more of us for future generations?

Last weekend I saw Tanzania! I won’t set foot in the country until our 3GKiliClimb trip, but I had a good look across the Sand River at it last weekend. I was in the Maasai Mara in Kenya watching the wildebeest and zebras collecting on the Tanzanian side of the river in the Serengeti. A few hundred made the crossing but most of them turned around and headed back within a few minutes.

Believe it or not, this trip was work (how incredibly lucky am I to get to visit East Africa twice in a summer?!). I had taken four journalists out to experience an Exodus photographic safari in Kenya. We were being instructed in by Paul Goldstein – arguably the best wildlife photographer in the world – and staying at the incredibly well appointed Kicheche Camps. Not at all like the type of tents we’ll be sleeping in on the way up Kili!

I was surprised by how chilly it was during the day – I didn’t take my fleece off until almost noon most days. We were quite high and I think that makes more difference than I’d ever realised before. I think Ma was quite right in her “Cold, cold, cold” post – by the time we get near the top of Kili we will be wearing every item of clothing we have with us.

In many ways it was a very different experience of East Africa than I’ll be be having in August, but the generosity and sense of fun of the people, is likely to be very similar, and I can hardly wait to get back. Both Tanzania and Kenya have had their tourist trade negatively affected by Ebola (despite the fact that they are both slightly further from the outbreak than London is!), and by terrorism. It’s such a shame – many of the people in these countries depend on tourism for their livelihood, and the current downturn is making it very hard. Many of the locals I came across in the Maasai Mara told me to make sure I told people back in Britain that “Kenya is safe”. I must say, I felt nothing but safe the entire time I was away.

Ma has mentioned lots of animals in various blog posts – mainly pointing out how little she’d like to come across them on Kili, but obviously being on safari, we were very keen to come across wildlife – so I thought I’d share a little gallery of the beautiful animals I came across on my visit. All photos taken by me; the good ones are thanks to Paul’s expert tuition. Enjoy!

 

When Jae first suggested the Kili Climb, I was very ready to agree to joining in – what a treat to be invited to  spend twelve days with my lovely daughter and number one grandson Oscar, even if it did mean taking my life in my hands  – but I also felt that it was an opportunity to do something more.  As I have been a volunteer with Catching Lives for the last year and a half, assisting as a cook, mentor and unofficial legal advisor, it seemed right that we should do something for them.  We decided that they should receive half of everything we raise, a quarter should go to the Tanzania Porter School Project Jae wrote about here, and that small charities with which Exodus regularly work in the third world should receive the rest.

Catching Lives works with homeless people.  They work with folk to help them get back into accommodation and work: they are not just a soup kitchen.  They carry out mental health assessments, help people to register with doctors and dentists, provide showers, laundry facilities, and computers to enable people to apply for jobs and benefits – and much more.

A few people have looked at me askance when I have said that I volunteer there.  They say something along the lines “No-one I know has ever been homeless – in my family we all work and look after ourselves”.  So I thought it might help people to understand how homelessness can come about, if I told a bit of the stories of a couple of people I have been involved with there:

Alin is Romanian.  He is a young man who lived with his mother in a rural area, where there is very little work.  He saw an advertisement in his local paper from an agency in the UK for fruit pickers and packers to work in a farm in Kent for the UK minimum wage – currently £6.50 an hour – more than twice as much as he was able to earn in his local area.  He applied for work, was accepted and came to the UK to work at a farm just outside Canterbury.   He had read that Kent is the Garden of England and had an idealised image of working in the sunshine, living well and earning money to send home to his mother.  The reality was somewhat different.  He quickly discovered that he was actually much worse off.  The agency which recruited him sends about two thousand people each year to the farm in Chartham outside Canterbury. The farm does have fruit trees which need to be picked, but their main business is fruit packing.  Enormous lorries arrive there from all over Europe with melons, peaches, grapes and other fruit which have to be unloaded and packed immediately, ready for distribution to supermarkets in the UK.  This work involves standing in cold sheds for long periods of time – not quite what Alin had envisaged.  What was worse, as far as he was concerned, was that the work was unpredictable.  Some weeks he would only be called on to work for one or two days – he rarely got a full week of work.  The agency want to have a captive labour force on the farm so that they can spring into action when the lorries arrive – but in between, there is no work to be had.

Alin was accommodated in a caravan in the grounds of the farm.  He shared it with five other people and paid £37 a week for the privilege.  It was a very old static – possibly one like my family have in Seasalter, which had been retired to the farm in its old age.  He was not provided with any bedding: he had to go out and buy himself a sleeping bag.  The caravan was cold and the walls ran with condensation.  The only heating was metered electricity, and the meter was very hungry indeed.  The cooking facilities were in a filthy communal kitchen, which was used by several hundred people and he hated going into it.  Alin and many others working with him would walk the four miles into Canterbury regularly to shop for food at Morrisons on the outskirts of the city.  It is a very common sight to see foreign workers walking through the country lanes with their carrier bags.

It was over a year before Alin realised that he was in a hopeless position.  He was living hand to mouth in miserable conditions.  He barely earned enough to eat, after paying for rent and heating.  As winter approached, he was getting hardly any work at all, and felt there was no alternative but to walk away from the farm.  He had no money at all and lived rough for some time, until someone pointed him in the direction of Catching Lives.  He spent some of the winter nights in the rolling night shelter organised by Catching Lives in local church halls, during the worst of the weather, and by the spring he had signed up for Jobseekers Allowance and had been found accommodation in a house which accommodates about twenty men, each in their own small room.  He desperately wants to get back to work, but has not found any, despite using his best endeavours.  He does not have enough money to return to Romania.  He is an optimist and is convinced that he will find work here, but in the meantime, he  enjoys volunteering in a local charity shop repairing furniture for resale.

Unlike Alin, Ray is a Canterbury local.  He is in his late forties, and has worked as a painter and decorator for more than twenty years.  He is married with four children.  Last year, his wife began an affair with another man, and threw Ray out.  He was absolutely devastated and was too embarrassed to tell anyone what had happened or to ask for help.  He decided to live in his car, but became increasingly depressed and failed to turn up on time for work.  He became unkempt, didn’t eat regularly and eventually got the sack from his job.  It is very fortunate that he was directed to Catching Lives.  By that time he was in a miserable state and mentally quite unstable.  With help from Catching Lives and proper medication, Ray has been brought back to life.  He now has a room in a shared house with three other men.  Recently, he was thrilled to be offered what he thought was a painting job on a building site where new student accommodation is being built.  He gleefully went into the Jobcentre to tell them that he was soon going to have a job.  He worked at the site for two days, but at the end of the second day, was told not to return until he heard from them.  He heard nothing and did not get paid for the two days work he had done.  He was very shocked a few weeks later when he got letters saying that both his Jobseekers Allowance and Housing Benefit had been stopped.  It was the day he expected to collect his money.  He called round to the Jobcentre twice that morning, but was told there was nothing they could do.  They gave him a phone number to phone, but he had no money and no credit on his phone.   Luckily for him, someone from Catching Lives was able to help him that day.  A volunteer went back to the Jobcentre with him and insisted on them investigating why his money had been stopped.  They said it was because he had a job.  The volunteer helped Ray write a statement about what had happened, explaining that he had never been paid, and managed to get his benefits reinstated.  On enquiry at the building site, the volunteer was told that Ray had had a “trial” – not a “job”!   I wonder how many people do two days work for nothing there for them?  Without Catching Lives’ support, Ray would have been back out on the streets again, as a result of his eagerness to work.

Bad employment practices don’t just happen here: they happen on Kilimanjaro too.  There are some unscrupulous travel companies, who will take on porters to work for a week for what to us is the price of a cup of posh coffee.  People are desperate enough for work to take anything that is offered to them and often they don’t even have walking boots or the necessary warm and waterproof clothing.  Their lives can be put at risk: some porters die on the mountain every year.

I hope this goes some way to explain why we have chosen the charities we have, to benefit from the climb.  They all do enormously valuable work with vulnerable people, who have frequently been badly exploited through no fault of their own.  We are absolutely thrilled to have already raised more than £3250 for the charities and are optimistic that we will have reached our target of £5895 by August – which a wonderful donor has agreed to double.  Just imagine: we might raise more than £11,000 to help these small charities.  That would really make a difference.

 

I mentioned North Berwick, a beautiful town on the coast near Edinburgh in the blog post of 30th May.  I referred to four of my aunts regularly meeting up there every summer in their old age.  Actually, my family has had connections with the town for five generations, and some of them still live there.

I remember hearing stories about family trips to North Berwick in the 1920s and 1930s.  Sometimes it would be just a day trip, but in addition, my grandparents would rent a big house there for the month of July – that is when the school holidays are in Scotland – and the whole family would decamp there.  All of the necessary household equipment would be packed up, such as bedding, cutlery and dishes.  A van would be requisitioned from the woollen mill where my grandfather was director and it would be sent on ahead with some of the household staff to get all the beds ready and prepare food ready for the mass arrival.  The family would then be driven to the coast by the chauffeur to take up residence there.  I guess there must have been more than one carful of them, given that I had three grandparents (see the blog post of 27th April) and they had eight children, plus of course a cook and numerous maids would have gone too.

I have some photographs of the family on the beach from that time, and also a snip of a film made there.  What I love is that not only are the family children on the beach, but so are the children of the chauffeur!  The film shows the driver – still wearing his official hat – with his trousers rolled up, splashing about in the waves with my aunts and also his own two daughters.  My grandfather ended up successful and wealthy, but he always maintained that he was a socialist; clearly he did not forget his own humble roots.

I love to think of them all on the beach: it is often pretty chilly and windy there, but that has not prevented family visits there by me and many of my family during the last ninety years.

One of the features of North Berwick is The Law.  As a child, I thought North Berwick Law was a big mountain, and climbing it was always one of the highlights of any visit there.  At the top are the jawbones of a whale, which seemed pretty exciting.  Well, they are replicas now, but real ones were there when I was little.  I thought it might be worth comparing climbing, what to me once seemed an enormous mountain, with the challenge of climbing Kilimanjaro.  So in the spirit of Baby v Mountain (1st March) and Marathon v Mountain (29th April), here is North Berwick Law v Kilimanjaro!

The similarities:

1. Both are volcanos formed millions of years ago.
2. Kilimanjaro is the highest free standing mountain in the world and the Law is the highest free standing hill in North Berwick.
3. Both look very beautiful from a distance and have truly amazing views from the top.
4. Both are conical in shape
5. You get a great “high” from climbing both.

The differences:

1. You can climb the Law (187 metres) before breakfast: it will take us seven days to climb Kili (5895 metres).
2. You can climb the Law as a toddler in nappies – Oscar’s brother Milo did – but (unless you lie) you are not allowed to attempt to climb Kili under the age of 10.
3. You need a guide and porters to mount an expedition up Kili: the Law can be attempted unassisted, although a piggy back is sometimes nice, if you are little.
4. If you feel the call of nature on Kili, there are some bushes and rocks to protect your modesty: on the Law, you are in full view of the whole town.
5. You might raise a few thousand pounds for charity by climbing Kili, but unless you are very tiny, you are unlikely to raise much by climbing the Law.

No doubt those of my family who still live in North Berwick will be able to add to the list!

It is good to know that the 3G Kili Climb is a family trip. Only families with a teenager are allowed to go, so there will be other teenagers to share all the excitement with the youngest member of 3G.  Not that he lacks experience of travel. Compared with his Grandma Sheila and me at his age he has already crammed a lot of travel into his lifetime. At his age the only foreign country we had visited was Holland.

We went there in 1950 when I was 4 and Sheila just 3. Sheila remembers our car, a little green Austin 7, borrowed she thinks from our grandfather, being lifted in a big net on to the deck of the boat that took us from Harwich to the Hook of Holland.  We stayed at a hotel near the beach at Scheveningen, making day trips to Amsterdam, the town centre of the Hague and Marken which today is linked to the mainland by a causeway but was then an island in the Zuiderzee (Southern Sea). There we went into an old fashioned fisherman’s cottage and dressed up in national costume.

Our parents bought us two pairs of clogs there which for the rest of our childhood hung on our bedroom wall, a reminder of our only foreign experience. The souvenirs our parents brought back were paintings.  Whereas I have absolutely no memory of the green car I do remember going into dark shops with cavernous anterooms and seeing mysterious dark paintings hanging on the walls or propped up on the floor. This one was my favourite.

Of course we have foodie memories, the smell and taste of raw herring eaten at the harbour and the first rusks since we were babies at hotel breakfast. Our first taste of chewing gum and the stern warning: “Don’t swallow it or you will DIE”.  We didn’t swallow it but seem to have misbehaved in other ways. Sheila remembers being put out of the car for bad behaviour. “I remember seeing the car with you all in it disappearing up the road without me – a long flat road.  I was surprised when it turned up again to pick me up a bit later”. I remember us playing on a deserted beach with wet sand and no adults around (Sheila says they were on the veranda outside the hotel watching us which I suppose is a good thing). We were having a great time climbing in and out and over the huge basket chairs placed on the sand and then a Dutch woman scolded us.

Whatever Oscar sees or hears when he climbs Mount Kilimanjaro, I can guarantee, he will remember for the rest of his life.

During the last few months, since I have known about the proposed trip up Kilimanjaro, I have bought the odd item which we will need, whenever I have seen anything at reduced prices.  I have accumulated quite a lot of stuff, including a head lamp styled like a cat.  I am not a great cat lover, but it was only £1.99!  I bought warm ski clothes in sales at the beginning of the year, and have also picked up a surprisingly large number of items at good prices in Aldi at various times.  I am particularly pleased with my £29 Aldi waterproof breathable jacket: I wore it in heavy rain on two consecutive days recently, walking for a total of about eighteen miles and stayed absolutely bone dry.  Similar jackets in specialist shops cost three times more plus.

I decided this week that I should go through all these odd items and list them.  Given my increasingly dodgy memory, it occurred to me that I might be unnecessarily duplicating items.  When I went through everything, I was pleased to note that the only item I have inadvertently duplicated is mosquito repellent: it won’t hurt to have too much of that along.  When I saw how much stuff there was, I realised I had to categorise stuff and pack them carefully in separate waterproof bags, if I was ever going to locate a particular item in the kit bag, which Exodus will provide me with.  I can’t imagine anything worse than being absolutely exhausted and frantically searching through a tightly packed bag of motley items, looking for something in particular.  I had to do that once before in my life, and know I don’t ever want to be having to do that again.

The occasion on which I did that was, funnily enough, another 3G experience, involving Jae, Oscar and me!  I was absolutely delighted when Jae and David were expecting their first child and David asked me if I would be present at the birth.  He said he felt nervous about it, and would feel happier if I was there too.  I certainly felt happy to be there – and very privileged.  Jae phoned me one Wednesday in April and said she was in early labour, so I set off to Bournemouth, where they lived then.  I remember we had quite a nice time – at least that’s how I remember it, although she may not. We walked along the sea front, where she leaned against bins or piles of chairs during contractions, ate at a beach cafe and practiced yoga, lying on a double bed together, during the next couple of days.  She was in labour, and having regular contractions, but not in terrible pain.

Late on the Friday night, Jae’s midwife said he was becoming anxious about her, and would be happier if she was in hospital, so Jae, David and I transferred there.  Either David or I was with Jae at all times, until Oscar finally made his appearance in the early hours of the Sunday morning – the 21st of April 2002.  We were absolutely thrilled to greet a gorgeous perfect baby boy after a labour lasting more than four days.  None of us had had much sleep for quite some time by then.

After the birth mother and baby were sorted out, and the staff wanted to transfer Jae and Oscar back to the ward for the remainder of the night.  I was asked to locate a clean night dress and other items for Jae and clothes for Oscar.  The bag Jae had packed for hospital was there on the floor, and I started to go through it.  Everything in it had been tightly jammed in, and seemed to be in a total jumble!  I remember wanting to shout at her for not having packed in a more organised manner, but holding my tongue, because she had just given birth and had to be much more exhausted than I was.  I remember tears welling up as I started trying to sort it all out and find the required items.  I held it together – but only just!

I imagine that I might be just as exhausted on Kili: it can be extremely difficult to sleep at high altitude, and I am not a great sleeper at the best of times.  I am going to make absolutely certain that my pack is carefully organised, everything is labelled and appropriately bagged.  I will not be reduced to grovelling around through a jumble of stuff again, while totally exhausted.

Note from Jae: Sorry Ma – I never knew that had driven you mental! Surprisingly, I remember those four days of labour very fondly; we had such a nice time walking locally when we still thought I might be able to have him at home. And even when we had to go into hospital we had loads of laughs and good chats (despite getting almost every type of intervention possible barring a c-section, and an epidural which helpfully worked only from my thighs down!). I was very glad you were by my side.

In the blog of 27th April, I wrote about my BOGOF grandparents. What I wrote rang a bell with my sister Leslie, and she searched through her archives.  What she came up with is an article written by our Auntie Irené, for the in-house magazine of the Quaker community in Maryland USA, where she has lived for many years.  Auntie Irené, now in her late 80s, is a real crazy lady, a fantastically good writer and a golf fanatic, still playing golf on a few days every week.  She wrote this article about my three grandparents – her three parents – perhaps about six years ago:

THE TRIPLE WAY – by Auntie Irené

Did any of you have three parents?  I did.  In 1922 my mother’s sister descended upon us for a weekend; in fact she dug in for fifty-two years.  It wasn’t strange, for the first World War created a plethora of women deprived of the joys of marriage and motherhood.  What could genteel, maiden ladies do?  A respectable “out” and recognized substitute to palliate their maternal instincts was to become an ‘aunt-in-chief’ to a sibling’s family.

Everyone benefited.  The host family acquired a free housekeeper, nurse and counselor. The maiden aunt was rewarded with status not otherwise accorded a spinster.  She rose with the family fortunes and made herself indispensable as a surrogate mother.  Since she didn’t have final say on any matter, and being twice removed from the throne of power, she served as a valuable sounding post, guardian of small secrets, go-between and one to whom souls were bared when face might have been lost to a more scrutinizing family member.

The sisters were co-survivors in a despotic Edwardian household.  Aunt’s presence cushioned my mother’s servitude and since she was in residence prior to my birth, I was the child of three parents.  Confusing?  No.  Triply re-enforcing?  Yes.

The Trinity shared an idiosyncrasy. They were health freaks.  It was an eccentric system they’d stumbled upon called: “not taking too much out of yourself,” which plainly translates into; “be lazy; don’t try; don’t compete.”  We were invited to become a tribe of malingerers.

In order not to take too much out of themselves, the Trinity indulged in a siesta from after lunch to four o’clock tea-time every afternoon.  Imagine a siesta in Scotland where the crippling moist air made you cringe even in summer.  Facing a night in bed was bleak enough without subjecting oneself to an afternoon battle with unbending, unwelcoming stiff sheets.  Of course, we had stone hot-water bottles which seared your flesh with one glancing brush and made little impression on damp linen.  It was a cardinal sin to make noise during siesta time.  No phone calls were taken, everything in the outer world was on hold.  Rude invasions into this dozing life could be dealt with perfectly well at tea-time.

The Trinity’s warnings were numerous: “a cat’s breath is unwholesome; ice-cream will set you off in a rigor; never sit on a cold stone; bananas have worms; avoid vaccinations and inoculations; matches explode of their own free will; teeth grinding is a sign of madness; and general practitioners have scant knowledge, call in a specialist.” A few positives were allowed: “deep breathe; be happy; sing and dance (neither too strenuously); wool next to the skin, no matter the season.”

Did the Trinity’s life-style pay off?  Well, their quality of life during waking hours was certainly above average.  True, nothing much was achieved; days floated by in a leisurely fashion as they basked contentedly in their routine.  All three lived into their late 80’s.

Moral: Myraid are the paths to longevity.

Back to Sheila
So I think that definitely settles it: the trip up Kili would not have met with approval by the Trinity!  There will be no chance of an afternoon siesta and we will be eating bananas all week, worms or no!  But I wonder if Auntie Irené might be up for joining with us?  She would be very close to the top of my list of entertaining companions to have along, if she can spare a couple of weeks off the golf!

Today’s blog post comes from Paula – the lovely nun that Sheila has mentioned before, and talks about in this post. Paula already guest posted for us once, and we’re thrilled to have her do so again – thanks again Paula!

I am not sure how Sheila manages to think of something to write about every day.  I said this to her on Wednesday in the kitchen at Catching Lives and so ended up promising to write another few words for her.

Almost twenty years ago I spent some time in Africa and several memories, since Sheila’s proposed climb, have come back to me quite forcibly.

One was the happiness of the people who had so little. The man in this picture lived in a township and ran a small garage from one of the tin huts. He was so pleased we visited and he invited us into his home – another tin shack. It was neat with very little in it – notably a chair on which rested his youngest child – a little mite only days old. He and his wife were so proud. I came away humbled and promised myself I would never complain again – which of course I did!

My second memory was going with a nurse to this little blue hut village. We went by van – over tracks and arrived at the bottom of the hill. We walked the rest of the way to the small painted hut. Inside were wailing women surrounding a woman lying on a wooden platform. Her six children were there too. My nurse friend said we would have to take her to hospital, so we brought the woman down the hill and placed her on a mattress, which we had put in the back of the van.  We set off – three hours to the nearest hospital – then a four hour wait for her to be seen by a doctor. The prognosis was bad – she had AIDS and would probably die. We left her in hospital.

Later that week I visited a small home run by sisters. It was a place for abandoned children – all of whom had AIDS. I spend a morning trying to feed some of them whilst others clung to me wanting only a bit of human contact. These sisters worked so hard just to provide a shelter and food for all the children. Again they told me that many would die.

A very forceful  and committed religious sister ran a project just outside the township – again made up of little thatched huts – and bigger ones too. Here she taught skills – bread making, candle making and coffin making – the latter mostly for children. The people in their grief were often exploited by funeral directors, so  this sister decided on making affordable coffins so people could bury their dead with respect.

I could go on telling stories of that memorable time in my life but will end  on a happier note.

My last picture – or two –  were taken at an initiation ceremony after the boys had come home following their initiation ritual. One of the religious sisters I stayed with belonged to this tribe – hence our invitation. It was joyful and the lads so proud to now be men! We ate a cow which was ritually killed and pieces boiled in a huge cauldron.

I give thanks for women like Sheila who is so generous and loving. The people climbing with her and her family are in for a treat. May her efforts bring much funding for the charities which are close to her heart and for the ones bringing relief to the needy of Africa.

I was a very defiant child.  If someone told me “No!”, it made me absolutely determined to do whatever it was – and to some extent, that’s never changed.  I like to think that I am reasonably law abiding nowadays and have respect for other people, but within these parameters, I don’t like being told I can’t do something, without good reason.

I got into real trouble with this, when I was eight years old.  It was the playground season for handstands.  In those days, school playgrounds were not staffed during breaks and lunch times.  The children were left to themselves, unless a fight broke out, when help would be sought indoors from a teacher.  There would be a few weeks when everyone was playing skipping games, then perhaps it would be ball games, hopscotch or one of many other games.  Almost all the children would be involved in whatever the game of the moment was.  It had been handstands for several weeks, when we were told by our teacher that handstands had been banned.  No reason was given and we were all very surprised that the staff were even aware of what the current craze was.

Immediately after being given the handstand veto, we were sent out for playtime.  I remember going straight outside, finding myself a nice wall and doing a handstand against it.  As we filed back indoors, our teacher was standing at the top of the stairs, and I heard almost every child in front of me saying something along the lines of “Please, Mrs Mitchell, Sheila Wilson did a handstand” as they passed her.  There were four Sheilas in the class, so they had to make it clear which one was the sinner!  When we got into the classroom, my punishment was the usual Scottish one: the tawse.  I had to put my hands out, one on top of the other and hold them steady while I “got the strap”.  How unthinkable is that nowadays?

I didn’t learn, however!  Aged twelve, I set off on a much worse escapade.  I knew I was not supposed to climb out of windows, but one day the sloping roof below our bedroom window became too much of a temptation.  There was a skylight to the kitchen in the middle of the sloping roof, and I thought it would be fun to scramble across the roof and stick my head down through the skylight to frighten whoever was in the kitchen.  I never made it to the window.  A loose tile skidded under my foot and I went shooting off the roof down to the ground.  My sister Leslie, and step sister-to-be Jan rushed downstairs, and quickly carried me upstairs.  They kept me hidden for a couple of days until I was strong enough to walk again.  No adults found out about this for a full two years, when the pain in my back got so bad that I had to own up to what had happened.  This resulted in me being encased in plaster (and subsequently in a horrible boned corset) for many months, as described by Jean in her blog of 28th May.  When signing me off after this, the specialist said that I should not have children nor ever stand for more than ten minutes.  Of course I didn’t do what he told me: that’s clear to see!!!!!!!!  There would be no 3GKiliClimb if I had.

Roll on a few more years and I was told to take daughter Gwen to the orthodontist.  I had completely forgotten about this, until my daughters reminded me of this not so long ago.  I took Gwen for her appointment, and was told that she needed a brace.  Her teeth should all be wired together for a six month period, or otherwise there would be a gap between her two front teeth when she was older.  The girls tell me that I grabbed Gwen, telling the orthodontist that a gap between her front teeth would look just great, and marched her out of the door.  I got lucky that time – Gwen has the most beautiful teeth, without ever having had any intervention.

One of my grandparents’ obsessions was that it was very dangerous to sit on stone.   It was certain to result in piles – haemorrhoids to the uninitiated.  Any time we tried to sit down outside, a cushion would be pushed under us, as in the photo of Leslie and me as children.  Half a century later, on a trip back to Hawick, Leslie joined me in a bit of rebellion: we sat on the same steps in the garden which had been our grandparents’ WITHOUT ANY CUSHIONS!  They were wrong: we have been sitting on stone and lots of other cold surfaces all our lives and don’t have a pile between us to show for it!

When I see notices telling me not to do things, I still want to do them.  Stew and I travelled in a taxi in Bangkok last year with this great strip of DONTS.  It immediately started me off fantasising about how many of them it might be possible to do during a short taxi journey.  By the way, in case you are puzzled, the second DONT from the right is about durian, that wonderfully smelly fruit.

On one of my regular walks between Whitstable and Herne Bay, I pass this NO SWIMMING sign.  The beach there looks no different from lots of other beaches along the coast where people regularly swim.  I am very puzzled as to why that particular stretch is prohibited, and am very tempted by it.  I have resisted taking matters any further so far……….

However, I had better behave myself on Kilimanjaro, hadn’t I?  I do know that there is a reason for the rules they have on the mountain and I will not do anything that could put any one of the three of us at any risk at all.  OK – so you have that in black and white!

There has been an alarming amount of stripping off (and talking of stripping off) in recent blogs and this reminded me of an earlier incident in Sheila’s life.

In 1982, Sheila organised a cycling trip to Holland for five women.  Leaving our poor young children in the care of their fathers, we set off by train to Sheerness to catch the overnight ferry to Vlissingen. Sheila arranged the whole thing – train tickets, sea crossing, maps and youth hostels – we were all in our mid to late thirties but fairly hard up!  As you might expect, the organisation was superb. The only slight blip was when we found ourselves cycling along a very busy stretch of dual carriageway and a kind Dutchman rolled down his window and yelled at us that this was forbidden.

In those days, there was a rather luxurious service across the North Sea run by the Olau Line, a Danish company.  The highlight was the smorgasbord, which was a very exciting concept for those of us who had never travelled to Scandinavia. There was the most delicious selection of smoked and fresh fish, open sandwiches and salads.  And you could go back as often as you liked.

But, before the smorgasbord, we just had to take advantage of the sauna and the tiny swimming pool in the bowels of the ship. Four out of the five of us had brought our swimming costumes but Marta, who is a Czech doctor and the only one who had used a sauna before, was having none of it.  She explained that when her mother used to take her to the sauna in Prague, nobody wore swimsuits.  In fact, we just wouldn’t benefit from the experience at all if we didn’t go naked. So, as Marta is rather a forceful personality and there was no-one else around, we all did as we were told and stepped into the sauna.

Everyone (except Marta) was a little embarrassed when a male crew member suddenly entered the cabin to stoke up the charcoal.  He didn’t even blink! It was then that I realised for the first time that naked people are really quite anonymous. The following day, however, we did draw the line at using the mixed showers in the Dutch youth hostel, suddenly feeling very middle aged and British.

You may wonder what all this has to do with Kilimanjaro.  It is simply meant to reassure Sheila that, should she have to take off all her clothes and go to the aid of a fellow traveller suffering from hypothermia, as discussed in the blog of 24^th February, she should not be bashful. That person will be very grateful for the skin-to-skin heat and will have no idea afterwards whose body it came from.

As a child, had I been asked, I probably would have said that my main hobby was stamp collecting.  Both my sister Leslie and I were started off on this at quite an early age by our mother, who had quite an impressive album of her own, which she had brought to this country in her bag, when she arrived here as a refugee from Germany immediately before the start of the second World War.  Her album clearly was very important to her, as she had only been able to bring what she could carry herself.

The stamps in her album that left the biggest impression on me where a set she had of a beautiful young Queen, surrounded by black.  Our mother told us about Queen Astrid of Belgium, who went on holiday to Austria in 1935. In a tragic accident in Kussnacht (Switzerland) the royal vehicle, driven by the king himself, crashed, and the Queen was killed instantaneously. She was only thirty years old. Although severely injured, the king survived the accident, and returned to Belgium to resume his duties as both sovereign and single father of three young children, the youngest still a baby.  It was a very sad story, and the stamps issued by Belgium in her memory were very beautiful and we loved looking at them.

Almost all my friends collected stamps, when I was a child.  We would swap any duplicates and often spent our pocket money on going to stamp shops to buy more for our collections.  Even Hawick, the very small town where I lived, had a shop devoted to the hobby.  I think I probably learned all the geography and some of the history I know from stamp collecting.  I would carefully look at every stamp to learn about each country and what was portrayed on it.  When I was about eleven, the present I wanted and got for Christmas was a Stanley Gibbons stamp catalogue.  In it was detailed every stamp that had been issued in the world: it was a treasure trove of information.  That was in the late 1950s and after that, stamp production and design spiralled to such an extent that it was never again possible to produce one such volume.

Pocket money was also spent on what were called “approvals”.  All of the comics that we read at the time carried advertisements, encouraging us to send away for books of stamps “on approval”.  Enticements of free stamps would be offered: there was no obligation to buy any of the stamps from the books sent to us, but we were able to look at them and show them off for a while, before sending them back.  It was such an excitement to receive a bulky envelope through the post, even if we knew it had to be sent back again.

I was unhappy that all British stamps at that time portrayed our Queen and nothing else.  Other countries were producing beautiful images of geographical features, nature, interesting people etc – but all we got was a mug shot of the monarch!

A terrible thing happened in 1959, philatelically speaking.  I was a proud Scot and very aware that it was the bicentenary of the birth of the Scottish national poet, Robert Burns.  I hoped that our country would make a break with tradition and produce a stamp to celebrate, but no such luck.  I felt so embarrassed that year when the Russians chose to produce a stamp bearing his portrait.  It should have been us!!!!  I felt shamed.  I am pleased to note that since then the tradition of only having the monarch on stamps has been broken, but it was not in time to save my Scottish pride.

Although I have not collected stamps in any proper way as an adult, I have been unable to throw or give away interesting used stamps.  For years I have torn all such stamps off envelopes and popped them in a drawer, in hope I suppose, of a child or grandchild taking an interest.  None have.  I acquired my knowledge of the world and the countries in it from philately.  I suppose Jae’s boys, my grandsons, have got just as much knowledge – possibly more – from following world football.  They know all the flags of the world and where all the countries are and what their capitals are as a result of their interest in the game.  That was not an option for children raised in the years before television was generally available, so I guess stamp collecting filled the space.

I dug out my old stamp album recently, to see what stamps I have relevant to our Kilimanjaro climb.  I have a page of stamps from Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika – Tanganyika being what Tanzania, where Kili is situated, used to be called.  Not one of the stamps had Kili on it.  So that is why I did not know in which continent – let alone country – Kili was in, when this climb was first mooted, as admitted in a very early blog post.  If I had had this 2/- stamp issued in 1954 in my collection, I would have known for the last sixty years exactly where Kili was!

Today – 18 June 2015 – marks the 200^th anniversary of a great victory, the Battle of Waterloo, which brought to an end 23 years of war against Napoleon. The British commander, the Duke of Wellington, is being commemorated in exhibitions, newspaper articles, TV programmes and lectures all over the UK.

This level of publicity is a reminder of what happened in the 100 years after Waterloo when he was so famous that pubs, hotels, schools, streets and even towns here and abroad were named or renamed after him.  In 1850 a new street in Hawick was built and given the name Wellington Street and both our grandparents lived there when they were young.

By the time we were growing up in Hawick in the 1950s  this once elegant terrace had turned into a bit of a slum. Our grandparents lived at Woodgate, a lovely detached house on Sunnyhill, a desirable part of town,  and did not often talk about Wellington Street. They would never know but it was eventually demolished in 1973, the name living on in Wellington Court, sheltered housing built on the site.

In the 1950s Hawick was still the headquarters of the UK woollen trade, with some 25 woollen mills dotted along the banks of the river Teviot. A self-made man who left school at 14, our grandfather had made his entire career in that trade, working his way from the bottom to the top. Much of his job involved travelling widely, to Australia and New Zealand where much of the wool was now being sourced, and to the US where his company, Braemar, sold 70% of its cashmere sweaters and earned for Hawick the title, “Million Dollar Town”.

And now comes the connection to the 3G Kili climb. In 1953, his company provided long johns and woollen jerseys to the  British Mount Everest expedition, led by Colonel John Hunt. They were the first team to conquer the mountain and news of the successful climb arrived in London on the very day of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation.

Later that year, the newly knighted Sir John Hunt and Lady Hunt were received by Grandpa when they visited Hawick to say thank you. The 3G climbers are fortunate to be making their ascent in the 21^st century when they will wear the most up to date clothing but for old time’s sake, Sheila has every intention of wearing one of our mother’s old cashmere jumpers (see blog post of 28^th February). Here’s to another successful climb in 2015, the 3G Kili climb!

Stew and I are both keen members of Canterbury U3A – The University of the Third Age.  For those not familiar with U3A, it is an organisation for “older people”, which arranges classes and interest groups about all manner of things, mainly during the winter months.  It is run on a voluntary basis, and costs very little as none of the teachers are paid and a fair bit of the teaching takes place in people’s houses, village halls or even pubs.  There are close to 2,000 members in our area, who form themselves into hundreds of interest groups.  Stew has generally attended classes about erudite subjects, particularly historical ones.  He has also taught one about the Wars of the Roses for the last couple of years.  My choice of subject is much less serious.  I am not very good at sitting still in “talk and chalk” type classes, although I did happily survive Conversational French in the last academic year – see the blog of 2nd May.  My absolutely favourite class is Patchwork and Quilting: I have attended it for about seven years, I think, and have learned something new from the two wonderful teachers at every class.

This year, I have agreed to co-ordinate the U3A sea swimming group during the summer months.  We are really just a collection of people who turn up about once a week for a dip in the sea and a blether together.  I love swimming in the sea, however I am not strong minded enough to take myself in alone, but being part of a group of oldies is just great.  We had our first meet up in my caravan recently, followed by a swim.  We all had to get out our diaries and tide tables to sort out dates for the next couple of months.  Everyone seems quite happy to swim near my caravan, but the downside of that is that because it is so flat around there, it is only possible to swim at high tide – hence the need for tide tables.  At low tide, you could walk for half an hour towards the sea, and it would still only be ankle deep.  We have therefore arranged a couple of swims further along the coast at locations less dependant on the tide.

My first swimming experience was in the swimming pool which my grandparents had in their garden, when I was a very small child.  Of course, the water was freezing – it was in Scotland and the pool wasn’t heated – but I remember loving it, and thoroughly enjoyed splashing about with cousins and aunts.  Sadly, as they got older, my grandparents became very anxious about the pool, and by the time I started school, they had mothballed it.  They covered it over with wire netting so no-one could use it.  So then my sister Leslie and I attended the local public baths for swimming lessons.  We had individual lessons from a member of the pool staff – probably for about ten minutes each week.  The lesson consisted of being suspended in a kind of hoist attached to a pulley hanging from the roof.  The teacher would have hold of a rope which dragged the child along in the water, while the teacher yelled at the child what to do with her arms and legs.

I have searched the internet for photos of such a gadget, but have only managed to find this one image of anything like what I remember.    I doubt whether we learned much.  How much better swimming instruction is nowadays: grandson Samson in Sydney swims like a fish at six years old, and when Oscar was only nine years old, he was brave enough to take a flying leap into a swimming pool, when he and I were in Oz together.

My daughter Gwen – Jae’s sister – has always been a very enthusiastic swimmer, and as a teenager, decided to learn to become a life saver.  She signed up for the class, but was a bit concerned when told she had to have a “buddy” along with her.  None of her friends were able to join with her, so slightly reluctantly, I agreed to join the class too, although I knew that I was not a speedy enough swimmer to qualify as a life saver.  My memory is of spending several sessions being a body and getting rescued.  I would let myself sink and wait to be yanked to the surface again.  It wasn’t the pleasantest of experiences at the time, but had a very positive outcome.  When Gwen went to university, she got employment as a swimming teacher and life saver in the evenings and weekends, and managed to come out of university with very little debt.  Result!!!!

At the recent first swim with U3A, I brought out once again my towelling jacket with polar bears, dating from 1962 I think.  We were going on a family holiday that year,  and it was decided that the girls had to have a towelling jacket to keep themselves properly covered up.  We went to a department store to choose the fabric with which to sew our jackets: quite why I thought polar bears were appropriate, I have no idea – but they have stood me in good stead.    After the swim, as we had another cuppa, one of our number said how wonderful it is to have all these swims to look forward to during the summer.  We got into a discussion about how important it is to have things to look forward in old age – and it really is.  We might talk about the past a lot – maybe that is what we remember best – but to be able to look forward to something in the future is absolutely key.

In that respect, I guess I am luckier than most!  In August I will be attempting to climb the highest free standing mountain in the world with my daughter and grandson.  I find it hard to think about anything much else right now!  However, sometimes a little voice in the back of my head asks me what will I have to look forward to after attempting to climb Kilimanjaro?  I will definitely have to come up with something else: seven months of training and blogging is almost a full time job!  Any suggestions gratefully received.

This post might never have been written if Sheila had taken more care over the facts, when she was interviewed by the reporter from the Kentish Gazette about her small, but hopefully growing group of ‘KiliClimb Calendar Girls’.  She made me a year older than I am.  Isn’t that a heinous sin?  Actually I am not that fussed about my age, although hubby Jim would disagree and present evidence to the contrary.  I always think that being old is a state of mind rather than to do with years passed.  Some people are just born old, while others manage to maintain a youthful outlook well beyond three score and ten.  The reason why this would not have been written is that Sheila, who has written more than a few times about altitude sickness, said that she didn’t want any more stories about it.  But this one will be told.

Five years ago, when I was just 63, we set off on our Bucket List trip to South America, with a focus on Peru and Bolivia.  Machu Picchu and Lake Titicaca were among the highlights of our trip.  It had been touch and go whether we would make it as just four months before the trip,  I went to see an orthopaedic surgeon as one of my hips was playing up.  In fact it had been playing up so much that my pelvis was on the point of collapse.  So I had emergency surgery, involving three trips to the operating theatre just twelve weeks before our departure date.  Maybe it wasn’t sensible, but we went.

We were in a small group of twelve and our itinerary had been worked out carefully to acclimatise us slowly.  We saw wonderful Inca sites, some I thought rather more interesting than Machu Picchu, eventually reaching Cusco at 3,300 meters – a lot lower than Kilimanjaro.  Cusco was a fascinating town and we were in a hotel with a ‘borrowed’ history in that it was build around a dramatic Inca Palace that Pizarro, the conqueror of Peru had chosen as his base while in Peru.  Some of the public rooms had great stretches of Inca wall, made from unimaginably large, irregular blocks of stone, each fitting its neighbour with barely a hairsbreadth between.

It was the time of Halloween and All Saints Day when the Peruvians honour their ancestors.  It was startling to see how they had conflated North American ‘Trick or Treat’ with their own version of Christianity.  Young children took First Communion decked out as witches with plastic ‘turnip’ lanterns.  Fireworks were going off everywhere.  And this was where I chose to get altitude sickness, possibly helped by visits earlier in the day to sites at even higher altitude.  At first I thought I had picked up a tummy bug as my splitting headache was accompanied by D&V.  Immediately our guide put me on a diet that excluded everything except dry bread and cereals and Chicken Soup.  I had altitude sickness, probably because I was still somewhat anaemic after surgery.

My biggest worry was about the following day, when we were taking a ten-hour train journey over the Alto Plano at about 4,000 metres.  To be on the safe side I took some Immodium early in the morning and at first, on the rather glamorous train, I felt fine.  At about ten o’clock I felt really light headed.  Our guide called the train hostess who brought oxygen.  After ten minutes of oxygen I started to feel better.  It didn’t last and I realised I was going to be sick.  Sod’s law, the toilet was in use.  I propped myself by an open window to get some air as I waited and that was the last I remember.  Jim and Patti, our guide, filled in the blanks.

I certainly put my new hip joint to the test as I slithered down the wall into a tight little ball.  Patti and one of the hostesses straightened me out along the corridor and arranged me in an appropriate position.  I slept on, and on and on and the crowd of worried ladies around me grew.  Jim started to wonder where I was – and also about what was going on in the train corridor.  He looked closely and was reassured.  He recognised my rather natty grey and lime green basketball boots and thought I was in good hands.  A few minutes later he thought again and ventured towards the group, just in time to hear Patti and the Chief Hostess discuss a helicopter evacuation.  Oh Dear!  Then the Chief Hostess started to fill in some ‘incident report’ with Patti providing the answers, like name and nationality.  Then she was asked my age and replied, “About 70”!  Most of the group were about that.  Apparently, I sat bolt upright and announced, “I’m not 70”, before sliding back, while still retaining consciousness.  The shock must have brought me round and Jim maintains to this day that I must be quite paranoid about my age.

I was a bit ‘untidy’ as Sheila’s bear Mary Plain (blog 2^nd June) would have said, had about forty minutes of oxygen and a couple of those luridly-coloured sports drinks to rehydrate me and while not quite as fit as a fiddle, I managed to watch, photograph and write notes for the rest of the train trip.

So the lesson from that for Sheila, Jae and Oscar is to prime each other with some terrifying words that will raise them from their sickbed.  And don’t go if anaemic.

Sorry Sheila!!!