Month: July 2015

Many many years ago, it must have been 1971, I travelled to Tanzania.  I was 26 or 27, working in London and involved in a network which included a number of people, particularly doctors, who were on the political left.   The previous year I had made a new friend, confusingly also called Clare, and she and I had had a wonderful long holiday travelling down the Italian coast on very slow trains and finally landing up in Sicily.  The following year we were determined to do something similar but beyond Europe.  The ‘hippy trail’ to Afghanistan did not appeal – too risky, too uncomfortable, too long.  Both Clare and I were working and couldn’t take the time off.  And anyway we weren’t hippies.  We thought of ourselves as rather more serious.

So too did the young doctors we knew in London.   Two of them, both men, one married to an old friend of mine from schooldays, had gone to Tanzania to work in the hospital in Dar es Salaam, the then coastal capital city of Tanzania.  The appeal of Tanzania for them and for other Europeans and Americans of the left was that Tanzania was thought to be developing a form of African socialism which would be an example for all those African nations emerging from the shadows of colonialism.  Under the leadership of President Julius Nyrere, agriculture was collectivising around Ujamaa villages, medicine was developing a specifically public health focus and the whole nation was determined to become self sufficient and not subject to the pressures of Western capitalism and neo colonialism.

Clare and I were lucky.  Because we knew people already living there we could get a taste of this socialist utopia without actually committing ourselves to living there for three years (which is what our doctor friends had done).  The doctors, one in particular, told us what to do by way of preparing ourselves for tropical climes, including going to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for our jabs and, in particular, for a little red book full of good advice about avoiding disease in the tropics.

Armed with this little book, two small suitcases (we were so far from being hippies that it hadn’t occurred to us to take backpacks) we set off for East Africa sometime in early July.  The idea was that we would fly to Nairobi and then take the train to Kampala in Uganda, spend some time in Uganda looking at animals, return to Nairobi and then take trains and buses south through Kenya and into Tanzania.  We would then stay with our doctor friend in his house in Dar es Salaam for about two weeks.  All in all we would be away for five or six weeks.

Everything started brilliantly. The trains were wonderful (Made in Birmingham), the scenery spectacular, Kampala beautiful.  We were tourists and untroubled.  Staying in the YWCA in Kampala, opposite the court house, we were struck by how much crime there appeared to be in Uganda since every morning we were woken early by the arrival of large lorries full of dejected looking men who were frogmarched into the court house. When we booked a Safari with an Asian travel agent, all he wanted to do was talk to us was about how life was terrible for him in Uganda.  We took all this with a huge pinch of salt – he was an Asian, a successful capitalist, clearly some form of neo colonialist.  Idi Amin had come to power at the beginning of 1971 but we knew nothing of his ways and were very unsympathetic to our Asian friend.

After about two weeks in Uganda we took the train back to Nairobi.  In obedience to the little red book, we had been scrupulous in our observance of all the rules of hygiene it advised.  We peeled all our vegetables and fruit and didn’t eat meat.  Above all there was one hygiene topic the little red book was extremely hot on: on no account should lettuce ever be eaten in the tropics! By the time we got back to Nairobi I was really really fed up with our rice and potato based diet and, never one to be very keen on rules, I had begun to develop an absolute craving for Lettuce with a capital L.

I can’t remember where we stayed in Nairobi, but somehow or other we found our way, for dinner, to an ex colonial watering hole of extreme luxury called the Norfolk Hotel.  Half timbered, with a dining room replete with linen covered tables and silver cutlery, the Norfolk Hotel was reassuringly like any smart hotel in Britain in the 1960s.  The hotel even had its own walled garden and grew its own vegetables.  We were, as so many British colonials had discovered before us, At Home.  Relaxed, drinking wine, and faced with an embossed menu, the inevitable happened.  I opted for a salad.

The next day we caught a bus south, en route for Tanzania.  I was beginning to feel queasy but not enough to think we shouldn’t go.  But, to my absolute dismay, as the bus sped through the red Kenyan countryside, ‘go’ is precisely what I increasingly was desperate to do.  At each little town where the bus stopped, various of our fellow travellers got off the bus and simply ‘went’ in the street, in full view of all.  Here was I, a white European woman, extremely uncomfortable and yet quite unable to break a multivariate taboo.

As we moved towards Tanzania, so Kilimanjaro came into view.  Under any other circumstances this would have been really exciting.  As it was, I was really out of it.  My friend Clare was enjoying the journey, although even she began to worry as she saw the state I was in.  Finally we crossed the border and reached our destination: Moshi, a town in Tanzania, in the foothills of Kilimanjaro.  The Wikipedia entry for Moshi says, amongst other things, ‘Moshi is often considered the cleanest town in Tanzania’.  I would like to have a word with the authors of the UN report on ‘Solid Waste Management in the World’s Cities’, and tell them that my experience of the public lavatory in Moshi bus station was an experience of such awfulness that I have never and will never forget it!

I staggered out of the bus station into the arms of Clare, tearful and shaking. Third world and First world; the White Settler world of the Norfolk Hotel and the African world of cities without infrastructure had crossed paths and I was profoundly shocked.

The main topic under discussion in the Catching Lives kitchen on Wednesday 1st July was Health and Safety.  The Inspector had visited!  I was there in April last year when he paid his visit, and he is actually a really nice man, sympathetic to what we are trying to do in far from ideal conditions – but he has a job to do.  We are expected to meet the same standards as any other restaurant in town and are inspected in the same way by Canterbury City Council.  Last year we got a Food Hygiene Rating of 4, and felt quite disappointed, as we had hoped for a 5.  I haven’t seen that report, but we were told one of the difficulties was recurrent mould on one of the outside walls in the larder – since painted with special mould-proof paint.  It was also pointed out by the Inspector that our baked bean mountain was too high!  The baked bean harvest seems to occur between September and Christmas, when schools and churches have harvest festivals and collect food for local charities – and our supply of tins multiplies daily.  The result of this was in April last year, we had hundreds of tins piled up, and the Inspector was of the view that this was a potential safety hazard, in case a shelf collapsed on someone.

We started work fairly soon after last year’s visit on re-arranging our tins of beans two high, instead of three, as recommended by the Health and Safety Inspector, and it was while I was up the ladder working on that, that the worst accident I have witnessed in the kitchen happened.  Paula was cooking something at the stove, when her pinny caught light and the flames rushed upwards.  She rushed over to the sink, frantically pulling at her pinny to try and get it off, while Christine, was was nearby, splashed water on to it.  I jumped down from the ladder to help and managed to untie the pinny at the back.  We were all quite shocked, especially poor Paula.  However, amazingly, although her eyelashes, eyebrows and hair were all singed, she was otherwise unharmed.  As Maureen quipped, Paula was not meant for the eternal flames that day – or probably ever!  Immediately afterward, Catching Lives invested in a large number of proper flame-proof kitchen pinnies and we usually all put one on the minute we arrive in the kitchen.

Another problem we became aware of last year was the amount of filth and grease which accumulates on the panels in front of the extractor fans in the cooker hood.  It looked like the panels hadn’t been cleaned for months.  The Wednesday gang decided then to take responsibility for cleaning them and we have taken them down and done that on the first Wednesday of each month for over a year now.  That isn’t as easy as it sounds as the panels are about eight feet off the ground and have to be lifted upwards for removal.  We are always on the lookout for a tall person at the beginning of the month – anyone over about 6’4″ can just reach up and remove them.  If there are no giants around, one of us lesser mortals has to climb up the kitchen ladder and stand on top of the cooker to remove and replace them, after a thorough scrub.

We had been asking every week this year since the beginning of April, has the Health and Safety man been yet? This week he had.  Had he noticed the beautiful cooker hood?  It seems not.  Perhaps he did notice that we have hardly any baked beans left: by July the mountain is greatly diminished, awaiting the next harvest.  How did we score?  Another 4 – oh dear – we would love to get 5!

I have a friend who used to run a very successful restaurant in Canterbury, and he said it is pretty impossible to get a 5 in an old building, and perhaps he is right.  The Catching Lives building is hardly purpose built: since I have lived in Canterbury, I can remember it being used variously as a biscuit warehouse, a newspaper wholesale outlet and for many years by the forerunner of Catching Lives, as a night shelter for the homeless.  It is the structure of the building that has let us down again this time – happily neither hygiene nor management in the kitchen.  The Inspector’s eye lighted upon a small broken window, which has been patched up with a piece of cardboard ever since I have been volunteering.  It was like that when he came last year, but he can’t have noticed it then; he was unhappy with it this time.  The staff have already attended to that by putting a piece of wood over the hole.

He also noticed a gap at the bottom of an outside door.  That too has been promptly dealt with by attaching a draught excluder to the bottom of said door.  What is harder to deal with is the surface of the kitchen floor.  The floor is covered with an appropriate surface, but there are breaks and patches in it, which is unacceptable to the Inspector, it seems.

The other, and for us, potentially most time consuming point raised by the inspection, is the requirement for all foods to be labelled with details of any allergens they may contain.  Everything we use now has to be carefully scanned for details of any such ingredient and we are required to write the menu on the chalkboard giving relevant information about all allergens.

Happily, we have Christine in our team with her super sharp mind and she was straight away on top of the game as you can see from her menu.   We really went to town on the salads this Wednesday – such hot weather – but happily not too many allergens in them!

Perhaps if we achieve our target of raising £5,895 by climbing Kilimanjaro – and our kind donor matches it – Catching Lives will be able to afford to recover the kitchen floor – and we can hope for a 5 next year!

NB If you have, or know someone who may have, a few hours a week to volunteer at Catching Lives in Canterbury, please check out this link

In Hawick our first house was called Lintalee, at number 4 Buccleuch Place. This was a very short street which led into a much longer, very steep street called Beaconsfield Terrace. Great fun free-wheeling down it on your bike. Harder walking up to visit our school friends. Kent offers few hills for Sheila to prepare for the 3G Kili Climb but in her youth she sure did climb a lot of hills. There were so many in Hawick and in the countryside all around. One day we formed the BBC, the Buccleuch and Beaconsfield Club with its own secret rules. To be a member you had to live in Buccleuch Place or Beaconsfield Terrace.  No one told us and there was no plaque on the door but years later I found out that Anne Redpath, one of the most famous Scottish artists of the 20^th century, had lived at number 36 Beaconsfield Terrace.

She was of the same generation as our grandparents (her dates are 1895 – 1965) and a good friend of theirs. In fact, three of her paintings were hung in the sitting room at Woodgate (the home our BOGOF grandparents shared); a rather gloomy portrait of Auntie Sheila, (our father’s sister) a glorious painting of poppies, and a scene from the south of France perhaps or Spain of white steps leading up to a house, flowers spilling out of pots on either side.

She was born in Galashiels in 1895 but when she was 6 years old her family had the good sense to move to Hawick, a far superior town (Teris, that is Hawick-born folk, just know they are better in every way than Galashiels-born Braw Lads). To tell the truth, the move took place because her father was appointed head of design at Glebe Mills, tweed manufacturers. Later she was to say that she did in her paintings, “with a spot of red or yellow in a harmony of grey”, what her father had done in his Hawick tweed. She went to Hawick High School, (as we did years later). She then studied at Edinburgh College of Art, married and moved to France, devoting much of her time to her family and doing little painting. But she started painting again when she returned to Hawick in the mid 1930s and bought the house in Beaconsfield Terrace with money left to her by her father when he died in 1939.

This is her painting of Primulas at Wilton Park Greenhouse in Hawick.  When Sheila, Robbie and I were children, we would often be taken into the greenhouses in the walled garden by our mother.  Sheila remembers our mother occasionally nipping off a small bit of plant and popping it in one of our pockets, so that it could be potted up as a cutting to enhance our garden.  I am certain Sheila, who has inherited her green fingers, can be trusted not to pop any plants into her pocket during the climb up Kilimanjaro – she knows that anything growing up the highest free standing mountain in the world would not take kindly to being moved to Kent in any event!

Anne Redpath’s subjects were often domestic, still lives and portraits, but she travelled widely and painted wonderful landscapes and dark church interiors. When you look at her work, and there are many examples on the internet, the technique and wonderful colours remind us of Van Gogh, Gauguin and Matisse. Her paintings brought her fame in the Scottish art world and later still wider acclaim. She was President of Hawick Art Club, President of the Scottish Society of Women Artists and the first female painter to be elected to the Royal Scottish Academy, awarded the OBE in 1955. I bet if we had asked her she would have been thrilled to be President of our BBC.

Those of you with exceptionally eagle eyes may have noticed on the “Who, why, what, when?” page of the 3GKiliClimb site, reference is made to my dislike of toucans.  Toucans?  Why pick on them, you might ask?  Well, my horror of toucans goes back to the late 1960s.  I went on a visit to London’s Regent’s Park Zoo at that time, and the ‘must see’ exhibit then was the new Snowdon Aviary which opened in 1964. It was designed by a group of people including Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon, who was the husband of Princess Margaret, the Queen’s sister.

The aviary looked almost weightless – like a bird. Its frame was pioneering in that it made use of aluminium; it was an example of a kind of engineering that uses tension to support its structure. A giant net ‘skin’ is wrapped around a skeleton of poles – paired diagonal ‘sheer legs’ at either end, each lined to a three-sided pyramid or ‘tetrahedron’ – which is held in position only by cables.  I guess it was a forerunner of structures we have since become accustomed to, examples being many out of town sports or shopping centres and the Skyline Pavilions at Butlins. What was special about the aviary was that there was a walkway for people to walk through the aviary inside that ‘skin’ at a raised level – at bird height – and that’s where it all went wrong!  I was happily walking across, when I suddenly saw an enormous bill heading straight at me!  The toucan attached to the beak seemed bent on getting to the other side of the cage, regardless of me being in the way.  At the last minute I ducked and felt that big yellow beak brush across the top of my head!  I don’t like to think what would have happened to the bird and to me, if I hadn’t taken that evasive action.  I have been very wary of toucans and other big birds in close proximity ever since then.

I do get a bit freaked by predatory seagulls.  They are enormous in the UK – the size of chickens!  When I went to Australia, I was surprised to see that seagulls were much smaller there, although equally avaricious.  I thought I had better find out whether this was just my perception or really true, so I have done a bit of Google research to find out.  I am right!  In the UK, what we refer to as a ‘seagull’ is a herring gull: an adult can be up to 26 inches long.  In Oz, they refer to silver gulls as ‘seagulls’ – and they only grow to a maximum of 17 inches long. To my eye both birds look fairly similar, if on different scales – although I know that the ornithologists amongst you will probably tell me they look nothing alike!

Despite the smaller size of Ozzie seagulls, I was completely freaked by one, which seemed to be working in co-operation with a crow on the beach, when Samson, daughter Gwen’s firstborn, was about two weeks old.  I was on the beach looking after the baby, while Gwen went to and fro a cafe, bringing out fish and chips and drinks for lunch.  She brought out a polystyrene box of fish and chips and when she disappeared again, a seagull started to approach Samson and me on one side, while the crow approached on the other.  I was batting them both away alternately, when the seagull came right on to the rug.  I moved to sweep it off, while the crow, on the other side, opened the box and pulled out a chip and made off with it. I felt totally intimidated by the pair of them!

One of my neighbours in Canterbury became frightened to enter or leave her home because of seagulls last year.

They built a nest in her chimney pots, and took to dive bombing anyone who tried to go along the path to the door, presumably to protect their young.  She was absolutely terrorised by them, and was stuck indoors during much of the good weather.  She subsequently told me that to prevent such a thing happening again, she had spent a lot of money in having a seagull proof cage put over her chimney pots – and I had an opportunity to view her cage recently.  We are having our house painted at the moment and have had scaffolding put up.

Another neighbour, who knows about the proposed 3GKC endeavour, jokingly asked if I was having a special frame erected, so I can practice climbing up it in readiness for Kilimanjaro.  That would be rather expensive practice, but I did think I should take the opportunity to see the world from some different angles, so I have clambered up to the top a couple of times – and got a great view of the seagull proof cage from the top of the scaffolding!  I hope the birds don’t decide to nest in our chimney pots instead!

It seems I might have to deal with big birds on Kilimanjaro – though happily not toucans.  There are big greedy white-necked ravens with large, strong, scary looking beaks. They hang around the campsites and huts on Kilimanjaro scavenging and hoping for scraps. They are ready to grab the food from your hand, just like the seagulls on our beaches.  Breakfast and evening meals are happily served under canvas, which helps minimise this particular risk, but lunch is often in the open air, so that is a potential danger time.  I have also read that we shouldn’t leave anything lying outside the tent or the ravens will come to investigate and possibly ‘rearrange’ our possessions!

I have come across reference to vultures being on Kilimanjaro and wondered if that was something else to worry about, but it seems that it is considered a special treat to see them circling above, and they don’t come anywhere near you, so long as you are live and kicking.  Right then – live and kicking it will certainly be!

I have just finished reading “Kilimanjaro Diaries” by Eva Melusine Thieme.  I have now read quite a few accounts of people’s experience on the mountain, but this was by far the funniest and – for me – the easiest to identify with.

To start with, she admits that if she “did make any bucket lists, climbing a mountain is possibly the last thing I’d put on there.  I’m terrified of heights, and I might even be more terrified of being cold, both of which are hard to avoid when you go mountain-climbing”.  She gets involved in the climb principally because she and her family are temporarily living in South Africa, not so far away, and because a family friend gets carried away with the idea and starts making all the plans for the group – which includes three parents with teenage boys.  You can see there are some similarities: I can’t claim to be specially afraid of heights – I have been up and down the scaffolding on my house several times lately to inspect what both roofers and our lovely painter have been doing – but I am very frightened of being cold.  There have been several occasions in my life when I have become so chilled that the only way I have been able to warm up again is in a hot bath, and that certainly won’t be on the menu up Kilimanjaro!

However, Eva’s main preoccupation is definitely with toilets, as is evident from the cover of the book.  She writes that hiking on Kili, “reduces your topics of interest to three things: when will I eat, where will I sleep, and where do I shit, excuse my language”.  She says she could have written an entire guide about what to do when nature calls and what to do with the, ahem, results – and flags up yet another entertaining and relevant book for me with the glorious title of “How to Shit in the Woods“, which has chapters entitled “Anatomy of a Crap” and “How Not to Pee in Your Boots”!

She strongly recommends travelling with a private toilet tent, and I am so pleased that we are, having heard from many people now about the infamous drop toilets all the camps are fitted with.  She says that if “you’re planning to frequent those toilets, you might as well not worry about altitude sickness, because there is no doubt you’ll be fainting from the smell way before you’ve even reached 3,000 meters”.

In fact, it seems that even with a toilet tent, there are problems: one of the guys in her group suggests, “Let’s leave the roof off the shithouse tent to try and alleviate the asphyxiating smells”!  The suggestion is taken up and thereafter when tall people are using it, they “have their head poking out while the rest is hidden from view, if not from imagination”.  She also finds that the higher up the mountain they climb, the steeper the terrain of their campsites.  More often than not, you find yourself perched inside the tent at an “impossible tilt, fervently hoping that the whole thing won’t topple over with you on – or rather in – it, which would definitely not be a pretty sight”.

One of her most useful recommendations is to ensure that when you are in your tent, you always have your shoes, head lamp and toilet roll at the ready.  In fact Eva ends up sleeping with her head lamp wrapped tightly round her wrist. I will make sure that all three of us definitely take her advice.

It is clear from what I have read that most adults – though not, perhaps, teenagers – are unable to sleep much at altitude.  Eva says that “sleeplessness is your constant companion on Mount Kilimanjaro, along with the peanuts and the toilet talk”.   Coupled with that seems to be the need to urinate much more frequently than usual – she refers to there being queues at the tent even in the middle of the night and having to make the trip four times nightly!  I think that if Jae, Oscar and I are all three going to be in the same tent together, there will have to be a rule that if one of us gets up in the night for a wee, then we all get up, otherwise it could be that no-one gets any sleep.  Imagine the scenario: unzipping and getting out of your sleeping bag and its liner, locating your shoes, light and loo roll, unzipping both the inner and outer lining of the tent – then repeating that in reverse on your way back.  If there are three of us, each making four trips in the night, that would be happening twenty four times each night in one direction or the other!!!  Unless we get co-ordinated, there will be no time for sleeping, supposing we were so inclined.

Many people have asked me if I intend to take a Shewee up the mountain with me. In a very early blog – 7th February – I said that I had decided not to.  I referred to my squatting being up to scratch after years of practice in Pilates classes.  Eva also researches this issue and finds a “female urine device…..that looks like a stunted funnel and can be had… with an ‘extension pipe’  that is great for extra reach when aiming into a bowl”.  She goes on “Of course, only a woman could be enticed to spend money on a device to improve her aim into the bowl because her original device leaves something to be desired.  If only men could be made to carry extension pipes around with them, then toilets the world over would be a happier place”.   Of course, in normal life there is another solution for men: I have a friend – in fact one of our fab guest bloggers – who will not let a man enter her home unless he undertakes to sit down when using the toilet at all times!

Anyway, back to the Shewee. Eva decides – after writing several highly entertaining pages about them – not to take one up Kili with her for much the same reasons I have, and, I am pretty sure, Jae has too.  That is, as Eva puts it, “the somewhat disquieting debate of clean-up-before-stowing-away versus stowing-away-without-cleanup, and quite frankly I’m not inclined to explore either one of these options any further”.  I know that Jae would be with her on that: Jae managed to toilet train all three of her boys without ever introducing them to a potty.  They went straight from nappies to using a toilet in the usual manner – and each of them in turn accomplished the transition in a weekend.  I recollect I was looking after Oscar and his brother Milo in an indoor play area for a couple of hours during Milo’s special weekend, when I saw him heading for the loos. Given that he was very new to the game, I thought I should follow him in to make sure it went alright.  I saw him carefully look at the two available doors and choosing to go into the gents – and he had disappeared in before I could divert him to the ladies.  I went into the gents regardless and found him in a cubicle, managing perfectly competently.  However, when we turned to come out, I realised that we had company – I could hear that the urinals were in use.  After a bit of hesitation, I shouted, “Lady coming out”.  There was a bit of scuttling about, but a minute later when we came out, the coast was clear! Phew! I learned my lesson then to leave the boys to it.

Eva’s group was one of ten, but was, of course, supplemented by five guides and about thirty porters.  Of the ten, only one of them didn’t make it to the top: altitude sickness hit on the last day, when one of the group suddenly fainted and was rushed down the mountain on the backs of two of the guides.  However, I won’t tell you any more than that, as this book is a really good read and I wouldn’t want to deprive anyone of the mounting excitement to see who makes it to the top and how!

Note from Jae: Ha – I must read that book, I think I’d love the family element, and the fascination with Kilimanjaro Toilets! I’ve always hated the concept of potties – I can’t imagine why people want to deal with moving wee and poo about, and cleaning it up, when there’s a loo that flushes it away perfectly, but I’d forgotten about you getting caught in a mens’ loo cubicle Ma! With three sons – all of whom have been determined to go into “the boys” loos from toddler age – I’ve put my head round many a “gents” door, often to some very interesting looks! My most recent brush with toilet talk, though, was on safari in Kenya. We were on game drives for around six hours each morning, and four hours each afternoon – and for a whole day (dawn to dusk) on one occasion. Our photographer guide, Paul Goldstein, made it very clear from the moment we arrived, that all wees were to be taken within a few feet of the vehicle – with girls being allocated the back (quite handy for a little lean!). Despite the presence of coffee in flasks, and chilli in most meals, I managed not to need a number two during any of these drives – phew! Some of my fellow safari-ers were not so lucky. Let’s hope all our bowels play nice on Kili!

I love Brighton.  (I like the seaside in general and, as a vegan, I find the eating-out options in Brighton are very good.)

I also love swimming.

I am not so fond of combining the two: ie swimming in the actual sea in Brighton.

For a start, the beach is very pebbly and you have to walk across it in bare feet or “jelly” shoes (not very protective) to get to the sea.  For another, I sort of prefer swimming pools.

Once upon an August Bank Holiday Monday, my mother (Leslie) and sister (Louise) and I were enjoying the end of our long weekend in Brighton.  The sea had been quite rough when we arrived and it was still quite rough.

Louise and I said it didn’t look particularly good for swimming.

Mum called us “middle aged fuddy-duddies”.  She added, “Sheila’s girls would have gone in.”

And indeed, this is the link to the whole Kilimanjaro climb.  Jae and Gwen have always been adventurous.  I just didn’t realise that Jae was quite this adventurous.  Although once the Kilimanjaro plan was in place, it all made total sense.  Of course Sheila, Jae and Oscar were going to do something which no grandmother-daughter-grandson combination had done before.  Who else?

Back to our Brighton tale. Mum took her leave, and went to catch a bus back home. She assumed we would sit and watch the sea, maybe have a snack at the cinema café which used to sell 2 flavours of vegan sorbet, but definitely not go into the sea.

Louise muttered about not being a middle-aged fuddy-duddy. I assured her she wasn’t – she was 38 at the time and arguably not even middle-aged in the first place. Or fuddy-duddy. That goes without saying.

We both ventured into the sea. Which was rather choppy and slightly chilly. But we went in. And swam about there. So there.

Mum is less of a fuddy-duddy than she makes out, having once been swimming in a Russian river. She had an asthma attack and had to be rescued by one of her and Dad’s friends. Big shout-out to Peter Errington for saving Mum’s life.

Despite this, Mum still goes swimming. I’d probably be afraid of bathwater after an experience like that. But she clearly isnt. 😉

Note from Jae: How funny that Leslie used to compare you and Lou to Gwen and me. Particularly as Louise was always substantially more likely to swim in open water than I was – she’s convinced me into many a sea or lake! Ma used to do the same about you two! I remember a particular occasion, aged about 13, when she said to me, “How come you never do any homework? Louise does two hours every night.” To which I responded, “Well I don’t! So, knowing that, you’ll have to think about who you’d prefer as a daughter – me or Lou?”. What a cow!! And how extraordinary that I remember it so clearly. I think I’ll try not to compare my boys to Gwen’s kids – Samson and Onnie – or to Lou’s boys – Ben and Alex. At least not to their faces! Although maybe I should take reassurance from the fact that if they do respond in a mean way, at least they may be haunted by it thirty years later!

I have been thinking about my cousin Alex’s recent beautifully descriptive blog post in which she remembers Stew’s unenthusiastic response to me serving him a hot pork pie almost four decades ago.  Pork pies hold a special place in Stew’s world: there is nothing he likes more than finding a new and interesting variety to enjoy.  Jae, Gwen and Katie came up trumps for Father’s Day this year: they sent Stew a massive pie inscribed “Dad”, together with a few bottles of beer and some crisps to go with it.  Stew tucked into the pie with some beans in the caravan on the day – and consumed the lot very happily.

I know exactly what motivated me to serve Stew with a hot pork pie all these years ago: I was attempting to prove a point – but failed miserably!

When Jae was a small baby – well, she was never very small, but you know what I mean – we lived in Manchester.  I was persuaded one afternoon to accompany a friend to a local church for a meeting of the Mothers’ Union.  There were about a dozen or so young mothers there and a creche for the babies, which was probably the main attraction, as far as I was concerned.  The entertainment that afternoon was a game of Twenty Questions – which had been both a radio and a television show a few years earlier.  An answerer would be picked to go out front and was handed a piece of paper with something written on it and the rest of the group had to guess what was on the paper using twenty questions – with the answerer responding either “yes” or “no”.

Well, when my turn came to be the answerer, I was handed a piece of paper with “A Pork Pie” written on it.  Eventually I was asked “Is it edible?” and I replied “Yes”.  A few questions further on I responded to both “Would it be eaten hot?” and “Would it be eaten for breakfast?” in the affirmative.  I have no idea why I said “Yes” in response to either of them.  I dare say if someone had put anything in front of me to eat at any time in these days, when I was constantly hungry with breast feeding a giant baby, I would have scoffed it!  Well of course, given these answers, they didn’t guess it in the requisite twenty questions.  When I read out what the words were, they were all outraged at me.  They told me no-one would eat a pork pie hot or for breakfast!.  Needless to say, I was never encouraged to go to the Mother’s Union again!

So by subsequently serving Stew a hot pork pie, which Alex has reminded us of, I think I was trying to justify my answer – to no avail, unfortunately.  Unusually, Stew was on the same side as the members of the Mothers’ Union.  In reminding Stew of this today, I ventured that perhaps at the time, I had no idea what a pork pie was.  After all, in Scotland, didn’t we always eat delicious mutton pies, which certainly benefitted from being hot?  Stew scoffed at this possibility: of course I knew – hadn’t we spent hours wandering round Lewis’s basement in Glasgow lusting after the wonderful pork pies in their display – especially those with an egg running through the middle?  Yes, how could I forget that regular outing?

I have scanned the internet to see if there is any possibility of being served pork pies on Kilimanjaro, but the answer to that is definitely negative: no pies of any sort are mentioned.  A typical Kilimanjaro breakfast will involve eggs (boiled or fried), porridge, a saveloy (possibly with some tomatoes too), a piece of fruit such as a banana or orange, some bread with jam, honey or peanut butter and a mug or two of tea, hot chocolate or coffee.  Lunch on Kilimanjaro is usually prepared at breakfast and carried by the walker in his or her daypack. This packed lunch often consists of a boiled egg, some sandwiches, a banana or orange, and some tea kept warm in a flask and carried by the guide. The Kili park officials are trying to stop trekking operators from making cooked lunches along the trail for environmental reasons.  At the end of the day’s walking, afternoon tea is served with biscuits, peanuts and, best of all, salted popcorn: I love that.  The final and biggest meal of the day, dinner, usually begins with soup, followed by a main course including chicken or meat, a vegetable sauce, some cabbage, and rice or pasta; if our porters have brought up some potatoes, these will usually be eaten on the first night as they are so heavy.

So it seems that despite the absence of pies, we will not be too hungry.  And now we have another idea of what to do in the dark in our tent when we can’t sleep at night: we can play Twenty Questions to while away the time, though I had better be more careful how I answer, if I don’t want to be lynched again!

One of the enduring passions in my life (apart from Indian food) started through contact with Sheila and particularly, her sister Leslie.  Theirs was the first house I visited where they had ‘real’ paintings on the wall.  On one side of the fireplace in the sitting room, I remember a charcoal drawing of an exotic looking woman with wild, dark hair looking so like Sheila.  Leslie told me she was like their real mother who was then dead and that was why their father had bought it.  On the other side they had a framed print of Rembrandt’s ‘Man in Armour’.  I know now that neither was a real painting, but at least they were ‘real art’, so different to the chocolate box type of things that decorated the walls in other houses I knew in the early 1960s.

The education continued in many ways.  Sheila and Leslie had aunts – or rather great aunts – on their mother’s side who lived in London, all of whom seemed to have rather exotic names and ways of earning their living.  One I heard much about from Leslie was Tante Lily, who ran an art gallery in South Moulton Street in London.  I was a lot older before I realised that it must have been quite an upmarket gallery, although I was already getting the picture when Leslie returned from visits bearing me gifts in the form of catalogues for exhibitions in the Gallery.  I had been to the Glasgow Art Gallery a few times, usually with the art group from school.  I was ill prepared for the rather strange but arresting items illustrated.  Later, when both Leslie and Sheila studied ‘History of Fine Art’ at University, I received further indoctrination in Art, either from visits to galleries with them or as presents of various art books. They planted the seeds and my fascination with Painting and Sculpture grew.  Poor long suffering husband Jim can attest to the hours he has spent with me in various galleries round the world.

Recently we spent almost a full day at the Tretyakov in Moscow, with probably the largest collection of Russian paintings anywhere. (Jim did enjoy it also as the paintings were so different from most of what we see in the West.)

That visit nicely completed a circle of fascination by the Wilson girls.  Leslie studied Russian at school and university, and through her I also have an abiding passion for Russia and things Russian.  On one of her early visits to Russia, well before the Iron Curtain opened, Leslie brought me three or four posters of Russian works of art. I fell in love with them and they followed me around bed-sits and flats until they disintegrated – they were on rather flimsy paper.  After the visit to the Tretyakov, I was chatting with Leslie about the visit and mentioned how much I had liked works by Shishkin.  And then I reminded her of the posters; amazingly, they were by Shishkin, one of Leslie’s favourite Russian painters.  So I had carried my first love of Russian painters in my heart for almost fifty years – all thanks to the Wilson girls.

I hope that the experiences that Oscar has in the course of his climb up Kilimanjaro are as enduring as those which I had, thanks to his family, and that he will still have pleasure thinking about what he did and learned when he was thirteen, half a century from now.

NB Haven’t read Jean’s first “Brideshead” post? Click here.

I recently spent four great days on the Refugee Tales walk – it was the event I wrote about in this blog post, and I was pleased to be joined for part of it by one of Jae’s colleagues – Gina – of “The Cornrow Five“, who had decided to come after reading that post.  The route followed the North Downs Way, starting in Dover and taking nine days to reach Crawley, where the headquarters of the Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group, who organised the walk, are based.  On each of the four days I did, there were between 70 and 95 walkers, divided up into smaller groups of about 20 people.  I think I probably did about 40 miles in total and am pleased not to have a single blister or muscle ache as a result.  Most of the walkers were doing the whole nine days, sleeping in their sleeping bags in church and village halls en route.  I am afraid I chickened out of that and slunk off home at the end of each day for a bath and a comfortable bed.

It was pointed out to me by several people, however, that it would have been good practice for roughing it on Kili, and that is certainly true.  I think the last time I slept in a sleeping bag was probably in 1971, when Stew and I spent a weekend under canvas in the West Country camping with an American couple and their two little boys.  It was Stew’s one and only experience of sleeping anywhere other than in a bed, and he has not chosen to repeat it, so I haven’t either – though I did have some camping experience before that.  Come to think of it, it is rather strange that Stew didn’t take to camping, given that for many years as a student he worked in Roberts Stores, a camping and sports shop in Glasgow to earn money at weekends and during holidays. Somehow that experience didn’t turn him into either a keen camper or sportsman, although he is extremely knowledgeable about many spectator sports.

One of the highlights of the Refugee Tales walk was meeting the other walkers and talking to them on the way.  Sometimes two or three miles would just vanish, when I was deep in conversation with one of the many very interesting people I met.

For example, at one point I walked with Alan, who used to be the British Ambassador in Senegal.  He was a really nice guy, who wanted to hear all about our plans to climb Kili, and who has since actually made a donation on our VirginMoneyGiving site.  This is despite the fact that he is heavily involved in fund-raising himself for a very worthy small charity in Senegal called Femme-Enfant-Environnement (AFEE), which works to improve the living conditions for women and children, and to protect the environment.

Another interesting person was Joe, who was born in Tanzania, and who had climbed Kili when he was quite young.  He remembered how cold it was, especially at night, despite the mountain being on the Equator.  He is now resident in the UK and is looking forward to embarking on a university course.

John was the person I met who had most to teach me.  He has climbed Kili many times as a leader, but his latest project is to cycle right round the base of Kilimanjaro later this year – a total of 360km across rough undulating country – to raise money for primary education (Village Education Project Kilimanjaro) in the Kili region – even though he is not a cyclist!  He said he has been practising.  He was good enough to answer lots of my questions:

Should I take Diamox (medication for altitude sickness)?  Yes, but just a small dose.

Should I pad the toes of my boots with foam for coming down? No, just make sure your boots fit and are tightly laced (and he got down on his knees to show me how) and your toe nails are well cut.

Will my water freeze on the walk to the summit?  Possibly not, if you lag the tube to your water bladder with neoprene cut from an old wet suit (he showed me his) and put hot tea into your water bottle.

…..and so it went on as we walked, and the miles flew by.

I talked to a Kurdish asylum seeker, who had been a criminal lawyer in his own country; to a woman who was very excited about having met a long lost friend in the course of the walk; to a female barrister specialising in housing law who wanted to do the whole walk, but who might have to leave to do a court hearing for Shelter the following day; and to a lovely young painter called Benjamin Hannavy Cousen, whose first big exhibition was about to open and who was a bundle of nerves about it. If he becomes famous, remember you read about him first here!

We walked and talked through the most glorious Kentish countryside, and the weather was very kind to us – in fact there were quite a few sunburned faces.  There were lovely wild flowers, including expanses of ox eye daisies and some startling red splashes of poppies.

We stopped at churches and pubs on the way.  The Warden of Patrixbourne church managed to provide more than ninety of us with tea/coffee and cake in a church which has no running water!  Water had to be fetched from a nearby stand pipe and the dishes washed outside on a gravestone, while we were entertained in the church to a saxophone concert.

I could go on about the evening performances of music and Tales, about picnic lunches in exotic locations and lots more.  I have had a little taste of walking day on day and really loved it.  The next time I do that will be on Kilimanjaro.  A bit different from rural Kent, but I am so looking forward to it!

Today’s post is by Sheila’s cousin Alex Morgan. Alex wrote the novel “Tandem“, and is currently working on her next one. Thanks for the post – we love always love reading your stuff Alex!

We spend so much of our lives moving at a mechanised pace – by car, bus, train or plane – that walking has become a luxury to be treasured, a chance to enjoy the birds and insects and be dazzled by hedgerows dotted with yellows, purples and pinks.

Trevor and I are on the Llyn Peninsula this week, staying in a little house on the beach, walking small sections of the gently undulating Wales Coast Path and marvelling at the wild flowers.

Having grown up by the sea, I love watching the clouds creeping across the bay, the water shimmering in the changing light, and the small boats coming and going.

The past few days have been as sunny as it gets in northern British summertime, and the back of my neck and the top of Trevor’s head are nicely red. Coming from even further north, this is as hot as I ever want to be.

I can’t imagine what it must be like on the slopes of Kilimanjaro right now. The highest mountain I’ve climbed as an adult is Scafell Pike, and on the summer day we chose to do it, there was snow at the top and driving rain all the way down. When we finally reached the Wasdale Head Inn, I had to go into the ladies to wring out my knickers.

As a 12-year-old, I spent a miserable ‘holiday’ in the Cairngorms at Glenmore Lodge – a kind of prison camp for school children – and dawdled up various high things with my classmates. The names were lost on me, but I still remember the cold and mist, wearing a sweaty knee-length cagoule and eating a huge amount of sliced white bread slathered with sandwich spread.

Not long after that, I visited Sheila and Stewart in Canterbury. Jae was a toddler called Janey, and Gwen was a baby. We went for what felt like a very long walk one Sunday morning and, as I began to despair of ever getting any lunch, Sheila confided that she’d recently had a pork pie epiphany.

After years of feeding them cold to Stewart, it had suddenly occurred to her that they were actually meant to be served hot. So she’d heated one up for him – and was utterly crushed by his less than enthusiastic response to this culinary innovation.

Sitting here now on our roof terrace, almost forty years later, listing to the swoosh of the tide on the pebbles and the chatter of the drinkers outside the Ty Coch Inn, the furthest I feel like walking is the fifty or so steps across the slipway to place an order at the bar.

They don’t serve pork pies – hot or cold – or, thankfully, sandwich spread on white bread, but they do have excellent rare roast beef sandwiches and a fabulous choice of beers.

When Trevor and I get back to our terrace, we’ll be raising a glass to all three of you. Good luck, Sheila, Jae and Oscar – stay hydrated, and have a wonderful walk!

Your cousin, Alex

Here is Sheila celebrating her birthday this weekend with a splendid cake baked by Katie, Queen of Cakes.

Note the strawberries. Because Sheila’s birthday falls in July, strawberries have always been a very special part of Sheila’s birthday, sometimes, accompanied by cream, being substituted for the cake itself.  Since our grandparents grew strawberries in their garden at Woodgate, as children we had frequently stolen quite a few strawberries, before they officially appeared on the table. We weren’t too greedy, just a few here and there so that the gardener and grandparents didn’t notice (as if). Same policy for pinching peas, and tiny tomatoes from the greenhouse, with that wondrous smell that you just don’t get from shop-bought tomatoes. We could legitimately pick as many wild strawberries as we wanted, and they were delicious too.

Probably it is not surprising that Sheila continues in her very grown-up life to pick fruit which is just waiting there to be eaten on the spot, or brought home to be baked or cooked in wonderful ways. She lives in Kent, the garden of England, of course, which is a help. She and Stewart live near the edge of Canterbury and within easy walking distance there are many orchards, some of which have apple trees which are rarely attended to. She comes home from walks laden with plums (including damsons), mulberries, pears and blackberries too.

Thank you to all the kind people who, instead of giving Sheila a birthday present, have this month contributed to the 3G Kili Climb charities instead. Leslie x

Today’s post comes from Mary – Sheila’s sister in law (brother Robbie’s wife). Thanks so much for supporting us with this Mary. Do let us know if you anyone else out tbere fancies doing a guest post – we’ve had some brilliant ones and there’s only six and a half weeks before we go now. Eek! Over to you Mary…

I’ve tried very hard to come up with something witty or profound to write for the 3GKili blog but with little success!

So, here goes – as those of you who have read previous blogs (like this one) will know, Sheila’s brother, Robbie, and I are definitely very doggie people.

Whilst on holiday in Argentina two years ago, we were staying on an estancia near Bariloche and decided to go on a hike through the surrounding mountains. The owners said we didn’t need a map because the dogs would come with us and show us the way. Sure enough, these two wonderful golden retrievers came with us on the boat for the start of the walk and then escorted us for 4 hours – stopping at every junction in the path where we could possibly have got lost and at every waterfall or stream, where they watched their pathetic humans negotiate the rocks until we were safely on the other side and they could set off again. When we were almost back, about half a mile from the hotel, they obviously felt their job was done and ran down to the beach for a well – deserved swim.

The next day a Canadian couple who were staying at the same place decided to do the same hike. They looked like professional hikers with sturdy boots, poles, rucksacks with drink bottles and straws attached etc. We asked them if they were going to take the dogs and they answered very dismissively that there was no need as they knew what they were doing.

So, early morning off they went – lunchtime came and went with no sign of them, afternoon teatime came and went too. Eventually they reappeared in time for dinner, having taken 9 hours to do the same walk. “Didn’t you take the dogs with you?” we asked. The reply was a very grumpy ‘no, we thought we didn’t need them’!

I would offer Rhuari, Finlay or Mungo as guide dogs for the Kilmanjaro climb, but unfortunately I know that they would lead you, not to the top of the mountain, but to the nearest food source!

Note from Jae: I love your post and images Mary! We know just how useful a dog with local knowledge can be; you may have read about the dog who came up Vesuvius with us, and on one of the famous “girls holidays” (I think to Fuerteventura, but that may be the wrong Canary Island!) we went for a desert walk and had a lovely little dog follow us and bark when we went too far off track.

I don’t know how I happened into it, but while looking for information about Kili, I came across a reference to man-eating baboons, and of course, I had to look into it a bit further.  I kind of wish I hadn’t, and if you aren’t into horror films, maybe you shouldn’t read any further!

It seems that in the early eighties, Kenya was in the midst of a terrible drought. The people and wildlife began to run low on food and water.  This caused something unusual to happen.  The baboons of the area, who regularly left the human population alone, began to turn on them.  A few attacked humans and ate their flesh to feed themselves.  Most scientific and ecological experts would have said the baboons would first have started killing and feeding on each other.  In this case, however, several different species of baboon, at odds with each other during the normal run of things, organised.  They hunted together, stalking their prey and invaded villages. That’s where the truth of the story ends, and here’s where the fiction begins!

“In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro” (1986)

Based on the above events, this film tells the story of an incident in Kenya in 1984, when, because of a severe drought, 90,000 wild starving baboons went on a murderous rampage, killing and eating humans and animals alike in order to survive. Some people find themselves being hunted by the starving monkeys and must do whatever they can to stay alive.

I am happy to report that despite extensive research (well, a quick look round Google!), I can find nothing like this in the Kilimanjaro area in more recent years, although there are some accounts of attacks by baboons in South Africa.  Having discovered this horrible gory film – all reviews say it is pretty terrible – I then looked further back in time and stumbled across:

“Killers of Kilimanjaro” (1959)

In this film an engineer plans to forge through the wilds of Africa to lay tracks for his railroad company but must first contend with hostile tribes, man eating lions, stampeding elephants and angry crocodiles.   Apparently the film was based on the Tsavo Man-Eaters.  They were a pair of notorious lions responsible for the deaths of a number of construction workers on the Kenya-Uganda Railway between March and December 1898.  Well that is long enough ago, so I doubt if lions pose much risk now!

Of course, the one film (and book – I read it recently standing in a charity shop!!!) most of us will have heard about is “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” (1952) with the gorgeous, moody looking Gregory Peck. I couldn’t remember details of any scary animals in it, but the film begins with the opening words of Hemingway’s story: “Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai ‘Ngje Ngi,’ the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude”. The story centres on the memories of the disillusioned Peck from what he thinks is his deathbed from a severely infected wound, caused by a thorn.  (Yes – don’t worry anyone – I have had prescribed a course of antibiotics to take with us, for use in just such an event).  He remembers past years and realises how little he has accomplished during his life, and that he’s never made a written record of the events

He lives to see morning come. He watches vultures gather in a tree as he lies in the evening. He recapitulates his life and talks to his current girl-friend Helen (Susan Hayward). He tells her about his past experiences; then argues, then comes to a realisation about his attitude, and finally reaches a sort of peace, and even love, with her.

So there we have it!  Man-eating baboons and lions, then leopards and finally vultures hanging in there, waiting for the end.  However, one thing is for sure: after writing my share of the Kili blog during the last five months, I will not be lying on my deathbed like the swarthy Gregory regretting not having put pen to paper – or at least finger to keyboard!  It has all been written down in unnecessary and undignified detail for all and everyone who comes after to see.

Sometimes when I send one of my Guest Posts to Sheila for her censoring, she will ask how I know so much about her life and her family and tell me that in effect I am reminding her of things she had forgotten.  There is one easy answer for me to give, namely,  that I was getting versions of the same stories from both Sheila and her sister Leslie at different times.  The harder thing for me to admit to is that I remember so much because the Wilson family made such an impression on me.  They were so damned exotic and I felt so dull by comparison.  When I got to know them in my early teens I found everything about them was like something from a completely different world.   Years later when I read “Brideshead Revisited”, I could understand just how overwhelmed Charles Ryder must have felt when Sebastian Flyte took him to met his family at Brideshead.  (Please note; while I am likening myself to Charles, I am in no way suggesting that either Sheila or Leslie shared anything with Sebastian.  As far as I can remember, neither have ever been sick in my presence, let alone through my open window!)

I met Leslie first, when she arrived with a bang in my class at school, just after I had turned thirteen.  She was an exotic creature even then; my goodness, she had lived in Edinburgh (to Glaswegians a foreign country then) and been to school there.  She lived in a ‘big house’ – at least compared to where most of us lived and she had a stepmother and four siblings.  She even had grandparents in Hawick with, wait for it, an outdoor swimming pool!  Even today very few people in the icy north have an outdoor swimming pool.

Her two older step-siblings sounded particularly exotic.  Jan was at nursing college and she knew about ‘body parts’ and Leslie was soon spilling the beans to a regular group of wide-eyed teenage girls in the cloakroom. (Note: in our school days there was no such thing as sex education.) Hamish was at Drama School aka the Royal College of Dramatic Art, and he knew Actors, real Actors that we could sometimes see on the stage of the Glasgow Citizens’ Theatre when we went on the organised, educational school visits.  Even more exciting, Hamish had been in a film about Greyfriars’ Bobby, a tear-jerking story of a dog that wouldn’t leave his master’s grave in Greyfriars’ Churchyard, Edinburgh.  Leslie and I went to see the film together and I still don’t know if I was more embarrassed or proud when Leslie jumped up and down in her seat each time Hamish appeared, shouting ‘That’s my brother, that’s my brother’.

It was also the time of the famous trial about Lady Chatterley’s Lover.  Can you imagine the kudos Leslie gained when she brought a well thumbed and page marked copy to one of the cloakroom meetings?  I was so naïve I didn’t understand the marked bits.

Then I moved a step closer.  I stated to be invited for Tea in the ‘Big House’.  In these days ‘Tea’ in Scotland was an early evening meal, normally of one course supplement by cakes and biscuits with a cup of tea.  Then I met the rest of the family, including Sheila.  Sheila was a ‘blast’ even then and as I have already written about her,  I will quickly move on to other members of her family.  Next I met the father, Robert.  Despite it being a large house, there was only one bathroom; some houses didn’t even have a bathroom and weekly baths meant a visit to ‘the Public Baths’, usually beside the ‘Steamie’ where housewives did their family washing.  Anyway, the bathroom!  I went upstairs to it and I met Robert coming down.  I was rather taken aback as he was wearing a bowler hat, but always a perfect gentleman, he doffed his hat to me.  Unfortunately he then let slip the towel that was the only other item he was wearing.  I was shocked, horrified and I admit I couldn’t pull my eyes away from an area of male anatomy I had never seen before!  (I was the only child of quiet, older parents and had never seen my Dad in a state of undress greater than not wearing a tie.)  Robert just smiled and asked whose friend I was.  I just couldn’t get over the casual way he accepted a stream of unknown people wandering through his house. Anyone I asked to my home was carefully vetted and spent some time with my parents, who remained in the house for the duration of the visit and often ‘supervised’ any food I was to offer to my friend.

Step sister Jan, sometimes rocked home for the weekend from the Nurses’ Home to add a new dimension to my Friday evening visit.  She would arrive full of stories about the parties the student nurses had been to – a lot of them seemed to involve bedpans as sick bowls after experiments with alcohol!  I was both shocked and excited.  She was also highly political and was very against nuclear weapons.  She brought her soapbox with her and tried to persuade anyone who was in the house to come on the next ‘Youth Against the Bomb’ march.  My rather conservative (note the small ‘c’) parents would have snatched me away from such a hot-bed of ‘communism’ if they had known!  At these stories I felt thrills of subversive delight – even if I never went on the March, I knew somebody who did.  Jan would wave aside the meal Leslie had organised, usually Bird’s Eye Chicken Pies and frozen chips.  (Robert and his wife always ate out on a Friday so the children were allowed to have their friends round and choose the food.)  Jan would raid the fridge or the cupboards and produce something exotic like curried leftover lamb made with curry powder from a wee blue tin and cooking apples and sultanas.  Believe me that was exotic in the 1960s.  Hamish sometimes appeared and I think he once had his fellow actor Tom Conti with him; much later, Tom Conti played the Greek heart-throb in the film ‘Shirley Valentine’ as well as whatever role he had been playing then in the Glasgow Citizens’ along with Hamish.  How exotic could it get?  It sure felt exotic to me.  Leslie and Sheila had a younger full brother and like most younger brothers of bossy girls he kept well out of the way.  The few times I saw him he was a thin, long legged kid with a mop of dark hair falling over his eyes and always a rather sad look in his eyes.  Having met the grown up Robbie a few times I find it hard to connect the sad boy with the larger than life, very colourful, confident, successful businessman.

These memories still play in my life; I hadn’t realised how much when I started writing this,  wondering if I could remember enough for this post.

I started by saying how my early and formative experience had been very influenced by the Wilsons, just as Charles Ryder was by the Flyte family in “Brideshead Revisited”.  So, to those of you who have read the book or watched one of the films I ask,  “Was the Wilson household my Brideshead?”  Maybe the end for me is somewhat different in that I have grown through the contact – and I am still being treated to Wilson inspiration and exotica through Sheila, Jae and Oscar’s 3G Kili adventure.

I was interested to read in Kate Gordon’s inspiring Guest Blog on 9th June about a man confined to a wheelchair who had climbed Kilimanjaro. I am so pleased to live in an age in which modern technology combined with positive attitudes and sheer determination can make such a thing possible.

A couple of generations ago, people with his degree of disability were doomed to a life indoors – possibly even bedridden.  I feel like celebrating whenever I hear of or see someone who breaks new ground by accomplishing something against all odds.

It might be something that would be considered quite normal, for someone without a disability.  For example the other day, when I arrived back in Canterbury West station, I saw a guy in the car park going round bagging up the rubbish in all the bins.  Nothing special, you might think, but he was zooming from bin to bin in an electric wheelchair.  I am so pleased that thanks to having the right gadgetry, that he has been enabled to hold such a job.

I had a chuckle a couple of years ago, when I was ‘liberating’ a few apples in the orchards near my home.  There are acres of apple and pear orchards in my area of Kent, and the farmers never pick all of the fruit, so I regularly help myself to what’s left and often redistribute it to friends.  Jae’s boys enjoy joining in this activity, sometimes even engaging in apple fights at the end of the year.  My chuckle was caused by seeing a man on a mobility scooter moving through the orchard, filling his carrier bag as he went.  I love my meanders through the orchards and I rejoice that these days it is possible for him too to do something that gives me such pleasure.

I was lucky enough to get taken on as a volunteer driver during the Paralympic Games in London in August 2012.  Being a “Games Maker” was one of the most exciting things I have done in my life – though I have to admit that the prospect of climbing Kili does outrank even that great experience.   I drove all sorts of people around the London area, including a young Japanese girl who was a gold medal winner, Mr Cycling Australia (I forget his real name, but you get the gist), various referees and officials and high-flying people from the media.  It was absolutely inspiring to meet some of the competitors and to see how people helped each other.  For example I was sitting outside the Paralympic Village one evening in my BMW, when I saw a train of about a dozen wheelchairs appear, all attached to each other.  The person at the front had a super fast electric wheelchair and all the rest were in normal unpowered wheelchairs.  The guys behind were holding on to the handles of the chair in front and the whole chain of them went careering across the road in front of me at some speed, heading towards the Stratford shopping centre.  They all had great grins on their faces and we drivers leaned out of our windows to wave at them and smile with them.

However, the person who gets the most respect from me for her diligent embrace of all available technology and for her sheer determination not to be defeated, lives rather closer to home.  She is Jae’s mother-in-law Pat, who has Motor Neurone Disease.  Pat can neither walk, nor talk because of this horrendous illness, but uses machinery to make it possible for her to live independently.  Pat is very adept at steering her electric wheelchair to wherever she can possibly get it and takes real pleasure in being able to go out for ‘walks’.  She has found a taxi company, which has a taxi with a ramp, so she can drive her chair into the taxi, having texted the taxi controller in advance with details of pick up time and where she wants to go.

A very useful piece of her equipment is a ‘talking’ machine, happily provided by the good old NHS.  Pat types into it what she wants to say and when she presses a button, the machine both speaks her words and displays them on a screen.  She and I recently visited a friend who had just turned 100, but was a bit hard of hearing.  Pat joked afterwards about how it was useful to have me along as an interpreter for the woman who couldn’t hear and the woman who couldn’t speak!!!  The friend was too deaf to hear what the machine said, so I had to repeat all Pat’s words at top volume. The necessary loud repetition and the delay for typing didn’t make for easy communication, but we got there. Pat compared it to an old “Two Ronnies” sketch – always a sentence behind!

So here’s to the guy who climbed Kili in a wheel chair, to Pat and to all the many other people who daily defy people’s expectations by their determination to get on with their lives against all odds and to make jokes about it all too.  Good on you!

Note from Sheila: Sadly I’ve just learnt that, in the few days between our visit and this post going to press, Pat’s 100 year old friend has passed away. Our sympathies are with her family and friends.