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We had a lovely easy Wednesday cooking recently at Catching Lives, the charity where I am a volunteer, which supports homeless people in finding accommodation and getting their lives back on track.

Three out of four of the regular Wednesday cooks were there, but in addition three other lovely  new volunteers turned up to help.  What was special about these three was that they were what I call “self starters”.  They could see what needed to be done:  they tore into washing up the dishes and popping toast in the toaster for clients’ breakfasts.  It was an absolute joy having them there, as we regulars were freed up to put away donations of food that had come in and get cracking on the lunch.  Actually, even that was not too taxing, because pudding was already well on its way to being made.

Every so often a group of students from Jae’s old school – the Simon Langton Girls’ School – come in to cook for a couple of hours, and they had clearly been in the previous afternoon. They had made scones and biscuits, which were put out to supplement breakfast/elevenses.  They had also made some banoffee pie and cup cakes, some of which were iced.  I think they must have left abruptly, as they had also left behind some bananas and a tin of carmelised condensed milk.  So it was a very quick job to make enough puddings to go round out of that for lunch.  The un-iced cakes got a dressing of condensed milk and we quickly had about thirty plates, probably containing about a thousand calories each.

There have been times when we have not been so well endowed with helpers.  Some months ago a young graduate in computer science spent a few weeks with us.  On the first day we asked her to open a few tins of beans.  After ten minutes of struggling, she gave up in defeat.  One of us went to find out what the problem was and realised she had been trying to open the tins with the garlic press!  We thought that potato peeling might be an easier job, so set her up to do that:  she somehow managed to inflict several cuts to her hand with the potato peeler, which put an end to her activities in the kitchen that day.

When she returned, we thought that washing dishes might be more of a success.  Washing dishes is a constant activity at Catching Lives – there is an endless supply of dirty crockery all the time.  However our young volunteer could not grasp this.  If asked to wash up, she would wash one plate and then sit down: she seemed to be quite comfortable watching four old age pensioners cooking, cleaning and rushing around, while she sat watching.  We did wonder how she had managed to survive and feed herself as a student.

We were rather relieved when she disappeared and was not heard of again, until this week.  Terry, the manager of Catching Lives, came into the kitchen to tell us that he had been asked to provide a reference to another charity for our young friend. None of us wanted to do anything to cause her difficulties, and looked at each other wondering how it could be phrased.  Terry then said that one of the things he was being asked was whether she would be able to work on a one to one basis in a kitchen with vulnerable teenagers.  Paula, who is a nun, said quick as a flash – “oh God no!”  The rest of us fell about laughing.  Terry said that that seemed to be a definitive answer.  We all wish the young woman well and admire her desire to do voluntary work – but just not in a kitchen, please.

I am really looking forward to seeing how food is cooked on Kilimanjaro.  It must take real skill to feed a group of about forty people – for that is how many there will be – en route on a mountain, climbing higher every day.  There can be up to twelve walkers, but we will have about thirty guides, porters and cooks to support us.  We cook for that kind of number at Catching Lives and find it hard work.  How much more expert must these cooks on the mountain be?

About a year ago, I undertook training at Catching Lives to become a mentor for a client who has been accommodated after a period of homelessness.  It is part of a pilot project to try to help people make the transition into a more settled way of life.  The idea is to help to resolve any difficulties at an early stage.  People might need help with budgeting, making links in a new area, cooking a meal – or, unfortunately most commonly, dealing with the Jobcentre when they arbitrarily cut off benefits without any notice.

Mentors work together in pairs, and Paula, with whom I had already been working in the kitchen, and I were jointly nominated to mentor a guy together.  We decided to car share on our way to meet him, so I called round at her house and was invited in.  Paula lives in a community with a few other religious women, all of whom, I think, used to work as psychotherapists. She showed me round their lovely house.

I was absolutely gobsmacked when I saw the room they have turned into a chapel: an entire wall of the room is made up of the most beautiful stained glass panels, looking out on to the garden. Two of the women in the house designed the windows based on the idea of the sky, the sea and the sand and found craftsmen to work on making their idea a reality.  As I looked at it, I started to wonder if I could make anything like it in fabric.  I have gone to U3A patchwork classes for years – the teachers are amazing – and I had learned some stained glass techniques in patchwork.  What would be new would be trying to use these skills on fine fabric to make what would effectively be a net curtain.  I have great reservations about net curtains: they are mostly fairly hideous, but essential in, for example, my caravan, where I do most of my sewing.  I remember reading somewhere that more net curtains are sold in Edinburgh per head of population than elsewhere in the world!! What does that say about Edinburgh?

 

Anyway, once I had the idea, I started experimenting, and ended up last summer spending quite a bit of time on my stained glass curtains.  I made one a bit like the stained glass windows, then launched out into “Mockintosh” ones and even made a couple of commissions.  I thoroughly enjoyed myself sewing in the wonderful light that comes into the caravan.

I am not going to be doing so much sewing this year: I need to do a bit more cycling and walking instead.  However, I thought I would do just one small curtain this week for the window in Jae’s office, to celebrate opening up the caravan again after the winter.  I haven’t finished it yet, but this it is so far – showing the 3gkiliclimb.com logo designed for us by daughter/sister/aunt Gwen.  Here we come snow capped mountain!

We had a struggle this week at Catching Lives in putting a meal together.  Supplies at this time of year seem to get to an all time low.  I can see why.  We get masses of food given to us from harvest festivals and then again at Christmas.  By about March, supplies start to run out, but pick up again in early summer, when people start to bring in surpluses from allotments and gardens.  At the moment, the only thing in plentiful supply is pasta. Even the baked bean mountain is looking low.  An appeal is being put out, which will hopefully fill our shelves.

I was the pudding person this week as usual – and there was very little to make anything out of.  No fresh fruit at all – really only store cupboard items.  I decided to make chocolate sponge and custard, but when I started to make the custard, I realised that we were pretty much out of custard powder and I don’t rate my skills at making mega quantities of egg custard.  However, I found some packets of strawberry blamange and reckoned that would do the job – it’s just custard really, only pink.

When I was a child, pink pudding, as we called it, would be served up at least once a week with a dollop of jam on top.  Exciting stuff!

In the 60s, we got excited about the first burgers in Wimpy bars, and in the 70s about chicken in a basket.

Chicken took a stranger turn in the 1980s.  When my daughter Gwen had a birthday party.  The chicken was served on strange hanging gadgets with sparklers on top.  Super trendy!

Maureen, one of the Wednesday cooks at Catching Lives, has recently been in a visit to Scotland.  She was very struck by the availability of haggis, and the variety of ways in which it is served from haggis pie to haggis lasagne.

We have all heard about the Scottish health food, deep fried Mars bar, but I was intrigued by a fusion offering in an Indian restaurant in the Scottish Borders – Snickers Pakura.  It actually looks like a nasty accident, with its embellishment of whippy cream and red sauce.

I hope to avoid such fusion delicacies on Kilimanjaro.   I am not too sure what the promised mealie meal mix or dry wors are exactly, but I think it likely that they will be healthier options than the Scottish/Indian fusion pudding!

I’ve just come back from a week in the Swiss Alps.  I had started reading Sheila’s blog before I went away and was loving it, but in Switzerland it took on an extra dimension of pleasure.  I came to think of it as that tiny piece of chocolate the Swiss produce with whatever you are drinking (tea, coffee, even hot chocolate) – a value-added sweetness at the end of a hard day in the mountains.  A little gift from Sheila that made me smile… and even, dare I say it, LOL (particularly when Worried Pat got involved).

I wasn’t skiing – that was for the brave and expert.  I was walking with my sister-in-law, up and down along snowy Alpine ridges, or steadily downhill from a high up ski station to the village.   Some days the snow was slushy and slippy, others it was fresh and deep. I learnt two lessons: first, never approach physical exercise without getting properly fit first, and second, always take the right equipment!  The first couple of days were pretty agonising.  Not only was there the extra pressure of downhill walking on my poor old cranky knees (one of which was bust when I last stood at the top of a mountain and tried to slide down it on little wooden planks 25 years ago). There was also the issue of my boots.  They were comfortable enough but not built for walking on snow.  So for the first couple of days I was basically terrified of once more sliding down a mountain, totally out of control.  Bend Ze Knees! echoed in my distant memory of trying to learn to ski in my twenties, so that is what I did. Margaret and I trudged through lovely forests of pine trees covered in icing sugar snow and through huge glacial valleys with stunning picture postcard views.  But of course, come the evening and a bottle of wine by the open blazing fire, the knees retaliated…

And then bossy Caroline, Margaret’s friend from Norwich, sprang to the rescue.  Caroline had thought she might be too scared to ski so she had brought with her something called ‘Yaktrax’ – a pair of sort of tyre chains which you attach to your walking boots.  But fortunately Caroline, and William (my husband, who hadn’t skied for 25 years), formed themselves into a morale boosting skiing partnership, and were off early every morning to tackle the pistes and enjoy boozy lunches at ski stations with new pals. So Yaktrax was available for me.  Suddenly I discovered, whatever the snow conditions and whether we were going steeply up or down, my boots would hold. This pair of chains kept me upright. All day.  The knees stopped complaining, and instead of watching my feet and sticks all the time I could relax and enjoy the blue skies, the stunning views and the cold fresh air in my lungs.

As we walked I thought of Sheila and the Kili Climb.  At least Sheila will be as fit as she possibly can be (I wasn’t, even for these relatively miniscule Alpine ups and downs) and she really does seem to be researching what is needed, in terms of equipment, for this adventure.  That is a comfort!  And I also thought of my own encounter with Kilimanjaro – I think it was 1969 – but that, maybe, is a story for another day…

I spent a lovely afternoon with my friend Anne this week.  When people meet Anne and me, they assume that we are old friends, as we have similar Scottish accents – and to a certain extent, they are right.  However, we met in Canterbury, not Scotland.

Stew and I arrived in Canterbury when Jae was eighteen months old.  Stew had a job as a lecturer at the University of Kent.  I knew absolutely nobody within a fifty mile radius.  However, the University Wives Association sprang into action!  These very virtuous ladies were determined that no new wife would remain friendless.    I was telephoned and told that Jae and I would be collected – it would be another decade before we had a family car – and taken to a University Wives’ Coffee Morning.  I know that many newcomers, especially those from abroad, would welcome this – but I hated the idea of being an adjunct to my husband.  However, I was not so churlish as to say I would not come, so made up my mind that I would go once, sit beside whoever was next to me and try to make a friend of them, and then not go again.

Well I sat beside Anne.  She was a total fraud: she was not even a University Wife, but had met one of the virtuous ladies elsewhere and somehow got brought along too.

When we started to talk to each other – our children playing alongside – we realised that not only had we both attended the same school – Rutherglen Acadeny – but we had also at different times lived in the same road in Rutherglen, just outside Glasgow.  We knew several people in common.  I had my friend and I was out of there!

We have been good buddies now for over forty years.  So I arrived at her house this week for a catch up.  Anne and husband Ken (aka Ken the Kilt) had just spent a week on a Scottish Dancing holiday.  They do several such weeks every year, when kilts are donned and new dances practiced every day.  It was a lovely sunny day, and it was great to see Ken’s kilt socks dancing on their own on the line: Anne had been delivering some special treatment to them.

We then came indoors and before we went out for our planned walk in the woods Anne got the tissues out.  She wanted to show me a film featuring her granddaughter  Maisie, and said that tissues were compulsory.  Anne was right as usual.  Maisie is a student of theatre studies and had participated in a film made by the students entitled “A Tribute to a Generation”.  Anne said I only had to watch the first minute or so of the film, as Maisie is first up.  And there is this lovely twenty year old girl talking about her grandparents, Anne and Ken, in the most wonderful terms ever.  It could hardly fail to bring tears to anyone’s eyes.

How lucky are we have the opportunity to enjoy such great relationships with children and grandchildren, to have time and health sufficient to be part of their lives and to have it put into words while we are around to hear it too?

As I said to Anne, when our families are casting round for some kind words to say about us at our funerals, they will only need to show Maisie’s film or cull a few words from the 3GKiliClimb website, and the job will be done!

My friend Pat gave me a jar of the jam that she made with the giant lemon I gave her, brought back from Italy.  We have a similar giant lemon still sitting on our kitchen table: I had better do something with it soon.

Pat said that her marmalade had caramelised slightly in the bottom of the pan, which she thought had actually improved the colour and flavour.  That put me in mind of some marmalade I made in the early 70s.

At that time, Stewart was very involved in local government.  He stood as a Labour Party candidate for the local council in Glasgow in 1970 and in Manchester in 1971.  He didn’t get in – but it was quite a feat to stand for election in two cities in different countries in consecutive years.  He paved the way for others to succeed in future years – and they did.

In Manchester, the need to raise funds to support the local party was a priority.  I remember going to beetle drives, sales of work and coffee mornings to try to build up the coffers.

I decided that making marmalade to sell at coffee mornings might be a winner, though I had never made marmalade before!  I think the idea came from the easy availability of small jars.  Jae was a baby at the time and I had several friends with babies of the same age.  I asked my friends to give me all the jars and lids from any jars of baby food their offspring ate and they gave me bags full of jars.  Jae actually rarely got such baby food: I was fixated on making her food from scratch, usually based on tripe or liver – hence her lifelong embrace of vegetarianism!

Marmalade in small jars with pretty fabric circles tied on top proved to be extremely successful and added much needed funds to the party coffers. What no-one knew was that not one piece of citrus fruit entered into my kitchen.  I bought tins of Mamade: just add sugar and water to turn it into marmalade.  However, to give it a rich dark colour, I hit on the idea of stirring in some gravy browning too.  It looked quite special and sold like hot cakes.  The only problem was that people enjoyed it so much, that I was constantly being stopped in the street by people asking for my marmalade recipe. I just couldn’t admit the truth – that it came out of a tin and had artificial colouring added to it!  I just had to prevaricate.

I understand that the food on Kili is top notch, so I am sure there will be no such adulteration when we are on the climb. I have been told that bananas, porridge, chicken and eggs are the mainstays.  Bring it on!

I have been keeping up my exercise regime – trying to do something physical every day – and took a cycle ride through some country lanes around Canterbury.  I found myself riding through what used to be one of the former Kent County Asylums, St Augustine’s Hospital in Chartham.  It is now a modern housing estate, the old mental hospital having been closed, as so many were, in the early 1990s.

I got to thinking about the many poor souls who had been shut away there in the past, often for very little reason at all.  Young girls were often “put away” because they were considered promiscuous and spent many years there.  However, since the closure of the hospitals, I am not so sure that society has done much better.  Now vulnerable people are often left to cope on their own, the only support available coming from charitable organisations such as Catching Lives, to which up to fifty people turn for help every day.

I then got to thinking about when I used to go to the old hospital to represent clients who were detained against their will.  I was a lawyer specialising in family and mental health problems.  I actually started doing mental health work because my predecessor had been hit by a client at St Augustines Hospital and refused to return there!  It was quite a scary place with enormously long corridors: I always walked around with a key or a pen in my hand in case someone jumped out at me, but happily no-one ever did.

However probably my scariest moment as a lawyer – I had quite a few now I think about it – does have a connection with the hospital.  I was in my office in Canterbury one afternoon and was phoned by the solicitor for Mr X.  I represented Mrs X in a dispute about their children.  Mr X’s solicitor said that Mr X had just been into their office and had said he was going to kill Mrs X – and had shown their receptionist the gun he intended to do it with!  The solicitor had phoned the Law Society to ask what he should do, and had been told that he would not be breaching client confidentiality if he phoned to warn me that they thought Mrs X was at serious risk.  It seemed that they were not required to do anything more than warn me: it was my responsibility to alert Mrs X, contact the Police etc. This was before the days of mobile phones, so I had no way of contacting Mrs X, but luck was on our side that day. Mrs X happened to have an appointment with me that afternoon, and she walked into my office about an hour later.  The Police came to pick her up, so she could be kept safe until Mr X and the gun were off the street.

I was not sure what had happened to Mr X until about three weeks later, when I was walking along one of these long corridors at St Augustine’s Hospital and he and I came face to face!  I don’t know who was more frightened – him or me.  We took one look at each other and rushed off in opposite directions.

Mrs X gave me a tiny glass vase, which I still have in my caravan: it is perfect for a little bunch of whatever flowers I find.  I hope her life has been less exciting since that time.

The cycle ride around the lanes and through the old grounds of the hospital takes about an hour.  It is a very beautiful area and I plan to incorporate that ride into my training regime during the next few months, in the lead up to the 3G assault on Kilimanjaro.

—– Note from Jae —–

Well Ma, you never mentioned the pen / key thing to me when I went to volunteer at St Augustine’s in the 1980s! I guess I must have been in a low security-level area, but I do remember long faceless corridors which were often filled with moans and shouts. Quite scary for a teenage girl, although I remember having lovely conversations with some of the patients who seemed very glad to have someone to natter to.

Just a quick note in case any of you still haven’t realised. Yesterday’s eruption news was an April Fool. The 3GKiliClimb challenge is still very much on! If you look closely at the article’s author you’ll find out her name means “April Joke” in Swahili!

Hope we didn’t panic anyone too much! S, J & O xxx

Sheila and I have been friends for over forty years and throughout that time we have shared various interests. Running, cycling and walking have been three of them.  But rarely just walking, running and cycling. There usually has to be some ulterior purpose – usually foraging and scrumping (or thieving as Sheila prefers to call it) whatever is in season. We never venture into the Kent countryside without an empty rucksack or saddle bags. We have foraged for blackberries and damsons; scrumped apples, pears and even mulberries.  Sometimes we’ve come back so heavily laden that we could hardly peddle. Once we even nicked a couple of avocado pears when walking in Spain.  Visiting Sheila at her caravan in the summer, we’ve picked sea kale, sprouting broccoli and apples from the beach across the road. Sheila has even been on a foraging course with her friend, Mary, and found out how professional foragers go about it.

However, the best bit of scrumping was the most recent. On her return from the Amalfi coast last week, Sheila presented me with an enormous fruit which at first I mistook for a pommelo.  It was, in fact, a huge lemon – almost the size of a football. This afternoon, I cut into it and found that the pith was an inch thick.  I decided to turn it into marmalade and, from one lemon and two pounds of sugar, I now have five jars of delicious lemon marmalade – one jar of which will return to the scrumper who brought it all the way back from Italy.

This set me thinking about scrumping opportunities on Kilimanjaro – what booty will she bring me back from there, I wonder? Wikipedia tells me that the climbers will pass through five climate zones on their way up and that coffee, bananas and other crops are grown in the lowlands. Although it would be interesting to taste an African banana, (maybe they’re small like the Canarian ones?) I doubt that it would survive the journey back. Perhaps I’ll settle for a handful of coffee beans…

I expect most of you heard the news yesterday about Kili reactivating.  Apparently all tourist trips are being put on hold until more is known: wouldn’t this just happen to us?

When the possibility of the climb was first raised, I knew nothing at all about Kili and was pretty much out of condition. Looking back at the early blogs at the beginning of February, I was pretty vague about it all.  But I did get really into it: I have lost weight, read about it and got into training.  Now it looks like it might not happen at all: isn’t that Sod’s Law?

I will have to have another look at the Exodus brochure and see if there is something else Jae, Oscar and I can do instead.  I wonder if they would consider a family climb up Everest – or would that be a step too far?  Now what’s the date today?

I have always liked sewing, but am going to have to cut back my sewing activities in the next few months, as a sedentary life is hardly compatible with getting fit enough to scale the highest free standing mountain in the world.

When I was a child, it was not considered acceptable to buy presents for adult relatives: I had to make something.  My grandfather got endless spill holders (spills were for lighting his pipe with) and book marks, carefully made from whatever came to hand.  My female relatives got an endless stream of embroidered tray cloths. If anyone was ill in bed – and you did have to stay in bed if you were in any way unwell in these days – then meals would be brought to you in bed on a tray covered with an embroidered cloth.

To get the pattern, you would buy a transfer and iron it on to the cloth.  One then had to embroider over the blue markings produced.  I loved doing this, and must have inflicted dozens on my relations.

However, when I got to secondary school, my sewing career took a dip.  The teacher, the dreaded Mrs Darroch, took against me for some reason.  I expect I was too mouthy – the fate of most females in my family.  I remember her telling me that she was “sorry for the man that got me”! I suppose that was better than what a friend of mine was told by her sewing teacher.  She was told she would “Never get a man”!  You can start to see why it has been such a battle for women to gain equality and to believe they are entitled to be taken seriously during the last half century.

I made quite a lot of clothes for myself and others during my teens and twenties.  It was much cheaper to do so then – garments were relatively much more expensive then.  Nowadays it would probably cost as much to buy a skirt zip as it would cost to buy a ready made skirt in the likes of Primark, but that certainly didn’t use to be the case.

When my sister had children and later I had my own, I quite often made baby and children’s clothes out of cut down adult clothes.  Fabric was still pretty expensive.

I taught Jae to use a sewing machine when she was still in primary school.  We all still remember the “strawberry shortcake” jump suit she so proudly made out of a remnant of cotton for her little sister, Gwen, to wear in a school fair fancy dress parade.  Maybe that’s where Gwen got the love of dressing up she has passed to her children: they often seem to wear exotic costumes.

After that, I didn’t have much time for sewing until the last few years, during which time I have gradually stopped working.  Sewing clothes makes no sense as they have become so cheap.  So I have taken up patchwork and have been taught the necessary skills mainly by brilliant teachers in Canterbury U3A – University of the Third Age.  I have got a bit of a reputation however for being unconventional.  My teachers all favour using new fabric, whereas my greatest satisfaction has come from making quilts out of old clothes.

For many years we have gone on walking holiday with a group of friends.  When the original organisers of the holidays decided not to continue, I asked everyone who had ever been on one of their holidays to give me an old blue or greenish garment.  My friend Mary and I then spent a few days in the caravan at the beach making the old clothes into quilts for the organisers.   We were doing the finishing touches sitting on the beach when Stew rolled up with his camera and a bottle of bubbly.  The smiles on our faces say it all.

Several times now, I have worked together with another woman to make a quilt from old clothes, which belonged to their late husband or parent.  I love doing this: it is such a privilege to be entrusted with something so precious.  My friend Gerda from the Netherlands was one of the first people I did with this: I think she was very pleased to go off after three days with a fleece-backed quilt to wrap herself in on chilly evenings made out of her late husband’s shirts, waistcoats and ties. Recently she turned seventy and she asked all of her friends to give her a ten inch square of fabric in rich jewel colours.  I look forward to spending another few days with her this year to turn these squares into another quilt – so long as she accepts that I will have to do a bit of marching up and down the beach to improve my fitness between seams!

Jae and I had a wander around the town of Amalfi, when we were on our recent training week (aka “holiday”) – part of our preparation for taking on Kilimanjaro in August.  We looked in shop windows at the lemon soaps, drinks and spices, then Jae thought of sending a postcard back to her colleagues at Exodus Travel.  She was very struck by this rather surprising postcard showing the Amalfi sea front, with what looks like nine little babies sitting on their own in the sand.  She went in and bought it, but somehow we never got round to acquiring a stamp – but it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?

One of the things I really loved during the week was earing into other people’s conversations.  I loved walking along listening to people chatter: I needed all my energy just to keep walking.

I spent a couple of Septembers in the early 1980s doing a job in which I could spend all day every day listening to others enjoying a good blether.  I was employed as a raspberry picker in a local farm.  The rows of canes were as tall as me, so it was possible just to stand in the sunshine quietly picking, while the sound of Kentish women having often quite barmy conversations drifted around me.  It was arguably the best job I have ever done!

However, one of the funniest snippets of conversation I have ever heard was on a much more recent occasion.  A year or two ago, Jae and I were bowling along in my car with her two young sons – Oscar’s brothers – in the back.  They were chattering away about what they had been doing at school during the previous week.  They both attend the same excellent – I suppose I should say “outstanding” – village school.  They started talking about a sex education class they had attended. Yes, it seems to happen in primary school these days. The only sex education I ever had was at age sixteen.  Most of my age group had already left school at fifteen, so why it took place then, I can’t imagine.

Anyway, the little boys had clearly been provided with quite a lot to think about.  They started talking about condoms and their potential uses, which somehow led on to multiple births.  Then they worked out the connection!  If you want to have twins, you need to wear two condoms, and if you want to have quadruplets you have to wear four!!!!  Jae and I, sitting in the front seat, had a real problem keeping our chortles silent.

I haven’t heard the boys’ opinion of the postcard Jae bought in Amalfi: I would love to hear their explanation for the nine babies sitting apparently abandoned on the beach. Two of them do look as if they might be twins, so that could be something to do with it I suppose!

My grandmother loved Gregory Peck, simply adored him.  As a special treat she took me as a small child to see him in ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro”.  I confess that I didn’t really understand the story and any attempt to get an explanation from Grandma resulted in a loud “Shush”.  But ever since, the very name “Kilimanjaro” has held a certain romance; after all it had been my first grown up film.

So I was really excited when the email from Sheila arrived announcing their Three Generation Expedition.  And I was delighted when Sheila asked me if I would contribute an occasional ‘Guest Blog”; I could write anything as long as it had some connection with the 3G Climb.  Now, Sheila and I have had a very episodic friendship lasting over fifty years – we were at school together. I was in the same class as Stew, her husband to be and Leslie, her older sister.  We were at University together (completely different subjects) when we shared a flat for some of the time.  That sounds grander than it was.  In these days students at Glasgow University had a tough time; sharing a bed-sit was the norm.  That is when I got to know Sheila really well.  Then marriages and careers came along causing us to drift apart – she to Canterbury and me to Edinburgh.  It is only thanks to retirement, e-mail and Facebook that the friendship has been renewed.

Thinking of Sheila’s character and her planned trip, all I can say is that the group with which she will be travelling is extremely lucky.  Sheila at eighteen was confident, practical and even a little determined.  We both found ourselves at the sharp end of our respective stepmothers’ tongues.  Sheila called time first and came along to my house to drag me off in search of our escape.  This we found in the shape of a double bedsit in a generously sized basement room of what must once have been a rather gracious residence in the west end of Glasgow.  It was not gracious in any way then apart from a rather grand dining table in the bay window, ideally positioned to capture what little light came into the room.  We agreed to take it – it cost us £2 each per week.

Needless to say our announcements were not taken well by either family and our transition was somewhat precipitous by necessity.  Various friends with cars were enlisted to help with the “flit” – the vernacular for removal.  I had packed all my textbooks and notes plus clothes and some bedding. (Thinking back made me realise just how lightly students travelled in the days before computers and portable TVs and coffee makers and microwaves).  Sheila had been much more practical, but only up to a point.  She had packed a set of camping pots, plates and cutlery; she had not brought any food.  Both of us came from households where food arrived in cupboards (via a delivery boy on a huge carrier bicycle) without intervention from us.  Fortunately Sheila’s resourcefulness came into play.  She had sussed out the nearest grocery and we set off.  This was the first self-service grocer’s shop I had been in and I was somewhat daunted.  Sheila somehow knew what to do and what to buy – “It has to be cheap and nutritious”.

We cooked our first meal and sat down round the one bar electric fire to enjoy it.  We eventually admitted that it wasn’t very good and that we were faced with a major problem about eating when our budget was so limited.  I bought a cookery book (I still have it) and we started to learn to cook, an exercise that has stood both of us in good stead.  And this is one reason I said that the people in Sheila’s group were lucky.  They can be assured that if the food porters fail, Sheila will show the same resourcefulness and rustle up a meal.

So what was our first meal of freedom?  It was a tin of Irish Stew with instant potato. Sheila, I thought I should send you a tin to take with you – but then decided a photograph would be enough to sustain you.

Exodus supports a charity in Tanzania which trains guides and porters to work on Kili – part of the money we raise will go to this.  Great emphasis is put on learning about health and safety: it is very important that no-one becomes ill on the trip!  No-one wants…

Dash
In
A
Real
Rush,
Hurry
Or
Else
Accident

…on a mountainside! (In the olden days we used to spend a lot of time at school learning such mnemonic phrases as an aid to spelling: I dare say SpellCheck has put paid to that!).

The guides and porters are taught about food and water safety – really important as they have to carry enough for more than a week – and also about the importance of hand washing.

However, I suspect that apart from washing ones hands, face and possibly feet using the small bowl of water one is provided with twice daily on the mountain, very little washing of bodies or clothes goes on.

I have a few friends who have expressed horror at the idea of not being able to wash their hair every day – but they couldn’t possibly carry up enough water for that as well as for drinking and hand washing.  However, I doubt the lack of such facilities will overly distress me.

As a child, my sister, brother and I all had a bath every Sunday evening.  My sister Leslie would always sit at the tap end: she was responsible, unlike me!  I had to sit right up the other end, to keep me from causing mischief with the taps or plug.  Brother Robbie was in the middle. Weekly bathing was considered fairly normal as houses did not have central heating nor constant hot water.  I think we had our hair washed in the weekly bath too, but others did not.  When we discussed this in the kitchen at Catching Lives recently, Christine said her hair was washed on alternate Sunday nights, as it was considered that too frequent washing would damage the hair.

I discovered a few years ago that my sister has spent her life sitting in baths with her head between the taps.  That’s where she was put as a child and it had never occurred to her that it might be more comfortable facing the other way.  I must find out if she has changed direction since I flagged that up.

So I think I should be able to revert to the 1950s standards of hygiene without too much difficulty on Kili!  We spend one night in a lodge both before and after our seven nights on the mountain and it has showers and even a swimming pool.  I imagine that there will be an almighty rush for both these facilities, when we make it down again.

One of the things I like doing best is making something out of nothing, or at least nothing much.  I like collecting things on the beach and working out what can be made of them.  The beach near my caravan is well endowed with stones with holes right through them.  It is very satisfying to collect a few such stones and some bits of fishing net and tie them all together to make paper weights, for use on the garden table when reading newspapers.

I have also collected sea glass on the beach.  Sea glass is glass that has spent years – I think – in the sea getting buffeted about, so that all the sharp edges have been rubbed away, and you are left with a coloured nicely smooth edged stone-like object.  I have made necklaces and ear rings with sea glass and distributed them to everyone who will have them!

Last summer, my friend Mary and I got the idea of making pictures from found objects on the beach.  We had fun with that, and when my sister arrived to stay with her eleven year old twin grandsons a few weeks later, the boys embraced the idea, making a great three dimensional representation of a wrecked yacht, which they entitled “Seen Better Days”.

Whilst they were still in the caravan, Jae, Oscar and his brothers also arrived to stay.  Happily my friend Caroline agreed to lend us her caravan too for the weekend, as eight people in one caravan doesn’t work too well.  The five boys had the best of times, and we grownups had a great fun too.  My sister had got the idea of making decorated lanterns out of jam jars, and the boys had great, creative ideas for interesting designs.   It is a real joy to get children involved in anything of that sort.  I have a happy memory of sitting outside on a couple of warm evenings, lit up by homemade lanterns, chatting with my sister and Jae and others passing by, while the five boys were in the caravan, which Jae had ingeniously turned into a cinema for the evening.  She put all the cushions together to make a big bank of them for the boys to lie on, while they watched the latest DVD release and munched on popcorn.

It is possible to eat off the beach too.  Jae’s husband, David, has collected mussels with the boys at low tide and he and the two younger boys – Oscar is a veggie like Jae – have eaten them without any ill effects.  In April and May a form of green broccoli can be collected, which is quite delicious after a quick boil with a dash of butter  and sea kale, which is very like spinach, can be collected during three or four months in spring/summer.

I generally collect bits and pieces – most often stones – wherever I go.  I have some beautiful white stones garnered off a Spanish beach, fossils from the beach near Lyme Regis, pieces of stone which seem to be made of shells collected on a hillside above Agadir and, of course, the bit of lava picked up on Vesuvius in 1972.  I wonder what I might find on Kilimanjaro.  The mountain is a National Park, so it may be that it is an offence to remove anything: no doubt I will find out.  I will be on the look out for anything interesting and particularly anything that can be fashioned into something useful or decorative, if it is allowed.