Before I moved from Canterbury to Wiltshire, Sheila and I had job shared as secretarial assistants at a local firm of solicitors, Harman & Harman, in rather cramped little offices above the post office in St Dunstan’s. We were not to know then that this initiative would lead to our future careers, albeit in different branches of the law. Unbeknown to each other, we both enrolled on four year courses to qualify as Legal Executives. Sheila went on to become a family law solicitor. I took a different route, into corporate law and the world of software contracts, mergers and acquisitions, and intellectual property. This was a challenge of a different sort, as by then we both had full time jobs and young families. One year, we decided we needed an in-depth revision course, and we met in Oxford for a few days intensive study. For me, the highlight was bumping into Peter Cook, my comedy hero, in the Randolph Hotel, where we had sought solace from our studies one evening. (Any readers who need to refresh their knowledge of this comedy genius can do no better than watch this You Tube sketch).
Thankfully, over the years, we have never encountered Frog à la Pêche, or even Pêche à la Frog, but our various walks and expeditions up and down the land have frequently included memorable meals, the locations often researched beforehand by Stewart with suitably impressive results. Meals at the Michelin starred Sportsman, conveniently reached by walking along the sea wall from the caravan at Seasalter, live in my memory. Equally unforgettable was a trip to Margate on the bus (upstairs seats, of course, and hoorah for the bus pass) to visit the newly opened Turner Gallery – we had fish and chips on the sea wall so our day out cost the princely sum of £2.80 as I remember! And the best lobster I have even eaten, in a pub we came across while cycling in Sark. Food has figured large in our annual spring time walking holiday too – indeed the group’s mantra became “never knowingly underfed”. Packing the picnic lunch every morning after breakfast and deliberating over the home made cakes is always a highlight.
Food for free has remained an attraction – this colourful salad of leaves and wild flowers was part of our lunch when we did a foraging course a few years ago.
Sheila and I have never climbed any mountains together, but we have had many aquatic adventures … we have jumped off sailing boats into the clear blue waters of the Canary Islands, snorkelled on the coral reef at Eilat, floated in the Dead Sea with the obligatory copy of the Jerusalem Post, and covered ourselves in black mud at Ein Gedi.
Together with Jae and Gwen, we achieved our PADI open water diving certificates (much school girl hilarity in the class room sessions over the prohibition on touching any sandy bottoms was soon eclipsed for me by the utter terror of descending to the bottom of a flooded gravel pit near Maidstone, where the early swallows and house martins dipping over the water were no preparation for the old pallets and the supermarket trolley vaguely discernable through the murk at the bottom).
So, open to new experiences as I like to think I am, I know that intrepid is not an adjective anyone would apply to me! The same cannot be said of Sheila. I have been trying to find an inspirational quote to send her, Jae and Oscar on their way … “stiffen the sinews” didn’t seem quite right (stiff sinews surely won’t help on such an endeavour), nor did “summon up the blood” (enough of bodily fluids already!), though Sheila is certainly standing “like a greyhound in the slips” after all her training. So I will just send much love, positive thoughts and a mental image of them standing on the summit!
