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I was interested to read about the 10 year old British boy, Sam Irving, who got to the top of the Kilimanjaro with his Mum, Ros, on 15th June this year. Brilliant achievement for such a young lad, and we were very grateful to get advice from Ros in yesterday’s guest post.  Apparently by the time their group reached the summit, everyone was feeling the altitude in one way or another! Some of the symptoms felt by the team included nausea, headaches, dizziness and shortness of breath as the air is very thin at altitude.  Sam trekked at the front of the group and although he was encouraged by the mountain guides, he took every step himself to get to the summit, despite being sick several times during that night-time final push for the top.

I mentioned to Jae that poor Sam – and it seems very many people – seem to spend time vomiting during summit night; not exactly the best experience!  She blithely replied that all three of us are very rarely “untidy”, as Mary Plain (2nd June) would rather more politely put it, so we would be fine!

However, it did make me start along another line of thought. All the experts advise that you should bring high calorie snacks and bars to give you the necessary energy to keep going through the night – and Sam and Ros followed that recommendation.  Now I wonder, what other sort of extreme physical activity does one do, while munching on a Mars bar?  You don’t see marathon runners or Tour de France cyclists stopping for a quick nosh, do you? You don’t shove down a quick Milky Way while you are pushing out a baby! Hydration, yes, in all these instances, but food – no!  It seems to me that if your body is flat out trying to do something really important like breathing or giving birth, it is going to give short shrift to what it thinks is inessential. Your body knows it won’t starve during these few hours – it is concentrating on something else more vital to existence. 

I understand that digestive woes during long distance races are so common that they even have their own (deceptively benign) name: “runner’s stomach.” Most experts say this happens because, during hard races and on long runs, your body focuses on getting your muscles the blood they need and your lungs the required oxygen, consequently sending less blood to your digestive system.   One of the solutions for runners seems to be the use of sports gels – a sweet high calorie jelly in a tube, which is easily absorbed to give you energy.  However, it seems these are not suitable for use up high mountains because the altitude makes them explode when opened.  No-one needs a mass of jelly stuff splashing in their face – and in any event, I guess they may well freeze too.  Apparently even things like peanuts in sealed packets can become hazardous at such heights.

Ideally, I suppose, sipping on some sort of high calorie easily digested drink would be the answer – but that seems to be impossible too!  During the first six days of the climb, we are recommended to carry a hydration pack in our day sacks – a sort of bladder full of liquid with a tube attached – to suck from as we walk.  But on that last night climbing up the mountain the tube is likely to become frozen.  I have taken the advice offered by John (blog post 8th July) to cut up an old wet suit and use it to lag the tube of my hydration pack, but John said that this does not always work, depending on how cold it is.  

So what happens during that night is that everyone stops for a couple of minutes every hour or so to answer calls of nature, swigs some water out of a large bottle, which hopefully will not be frozen, and to wolf down some food.  It would be a better solution if it was possible to nibble small amounts as one walked, but if you are wearing your undergloves and your overgloves and are holding walking poles – not to mention probably having much of your face covered by a balaclava, worn under your hat and hood – you are not in a position to put anything in your mouth.  

Talking of overgloves, Stew bought me a fab pair for my recent birthday.  They are real state of the art equipment.  There is a very soft piece of fabric on each thumb.  It took me a little while to work out what special purpose that has.  It is to wipe your nose with, as you go, as getting a hanky out is just as impossible as eating, with all that kit on.  Isn’t that delightful???!!!   Now I wonder if I could adapt my super gloves to cover them with some little pockets on the backs to put in some Werther’s Originals (which I love), so that I could just grab them off with my mouth, to give me energy as I walk?  That would be the answer to the vomiting problem, possibly – just something to keep slowly sucking on as one plods on.  I am working on it, and any suggestions would be most welcome!

Intro by Jae: What a treat it was recently to get an email from Ros Irving, who had heard the 3GKiliClimb story, and got in touch to say that she’s just climbed Kili with her 10 year old son, Sam. Ros offered to answer my questions so I sent back a slew of them! The brilliant response is below and Ros has given us permission to publish it as a guest post. She did say, “maybe you could tone down some of my comments about wee-ing!! Or make them a bit less blunt!” but at 3GKiliClimb.com we know our wonderful, pragmatic, supportive audience and don’t think you’re in need of censorship. Before you read it, I’d just like to take a second to say thanks and a huge “CONGRATULATIONS” to both Ros, and to Sam – who is one of the youngest people to summit Kili. Over to you Ros:

MY TIPS

–          We took Nalgene water bottles (not bladder packs) and it was brilliant to use one stuffed into a hiking sock as a hot water bottle overnight when it got cold (first night was colder than I expected overnight!) our lovely cooks happily filled it with hot water for us after supper and it was great to snuggle up to into a sleeping bag.

–        Stick all your clothes for tomorrow at the bottom of your sleeping bag the night before – it was after the first night when it was rather cold in the morning that I vowed to do that the next time (I am not much of a camper so all this came as new news to me!)

–         A bit gross… but here goes… take a spare/old water bottle for weeing into (this was Sam rather than me) that can sit in the “vestibule” of the tent overnight. Again we didn’t think this through beforehand, and on the first night camping Sam had to pee FOUR times overnight – because it was pitch black and freezing cold (and I felt I should go with him to be sure he could find his way back to the tent) it was freezing and disruptive! After that night he used an old tin with a lid that one of the cooks gave me, and slept better as a result.

–       Take lots of snacks – I made up sandwich bags each day for sam full of all the stuff I spend my life telling him NOT to eat normally. So we had Jelly babies, mini mars bars etc and loads of biscuits – he then had free rein to keep himself going. At all the water stops you want to quickly be able to have a snack even if not hungry – apparently eating LOADS helps with acclimatisation

–          I researched water purification tablets that DON’T taste of chlorine – and ended up giving them to most of the group as they were so good – they are called KATADYN and available on Amazon – they actually taste like normal water.

–         As I was worried that my son wouldn’t drink enough I bought loads of those new Robinsons squeezy cordials – to add to water- the ones that are highly concentrated and in packs about two inches square if you know what I mean.

–        Write your names very clearly on your water bottles ( I didn’t!) as if you are in a group- each morning the cooks take all the bottles, put them in a big basket and fill them up – and in our group lots of us had identical Nalgene bottles

–        For recharging small electronic devices I bought a “power chimp” (about £30 on Amazon) which takes 4 AA batteries and then simply connects to your cable for whatever device (via a USB port) it was great and I just threw a load of batteries in my duffel bag

–        We both took Diamox. There is no medically approved dosage for a minor so I had a chat with my doctor and gave Sam a half tablet in two doses either end of the day – (so a 125g dose) It is hard to say if it makes a difference. In our group of 17- about 6 people took Diamox and the rest didn’t. It gives you pins and needles in your fingers about 10 mins after taking it, for about 10 mins. I still had headaches and shortness of breath but didn’t feel nauseous at any point (lots of the team did – and threw up) Sam was generally okay (few small headaches) until summit night when he threw up at least four times on the way up. On reflection, I’d still take it again

–        I didn’t take Malaria tablets (but I made Sam do so) apart from in Moshi (before we started the climb) I didn’t see any mosquitos. Apparently there are very few at 1800 m or higher

–        I made Sam wear his skiing salopettes (with long johns underneath) for summit night – he was definitely not too hot in them, otherwise he wore ordinary walking trousers on the other days

–        I wore 3 base layers, 3 fleeces, a down gilet and a down coat plus a shell on summit night (and three pairs of trousers (skins/walking trousers and waterproofs) it was very cold- down to about minus 15. But I am reptilian in my feeling of coldness!

–        I left a bag of clean clothes/toiletries behind in the hotel for our return and it was lovely having some clean/new stuff to change into

–        Travel in walking trousers/hiking boots as our luggage came a day late (and only when we went back to Kilimanjaro airport to retrieve it!)

–        On the way back down we met quite a few children near the gate (Mweka gate I think) collecting firewood and Sam enjoyed giving them all his remaining snacks – the chocolate was great. If we had had any pens and pencils I am sure they would have gone down a treat

SUPERFLUOUS STUFF I PACKED

–        Books – despite being an avid reader I took two books up the mountain with me and they came down unread. Even though we were going to bed early we were sleeping (or trying to!) A pack of cards was about our intellectual limit!

–        Too many “changes” of clothes – even though we didn’t carry the duffel bags and so had enough space – it was just more to wade through in the mornings searching for things!  Once we were at day two we really just wore the same stuff but in greater or fewer layers. And when it was cold in the morning I had no desire to strip off and change!

–        My She–wee (again TMI – sorry!) on the route we just went behind boulders/trees and then used the long drops at camps. It is very worthwhile buying loads of those little packs of tissues and stuffing them in pockets – better and more accessible on the go than a whole loo roll!

–        Walking poles- personally I didn’t use them, but you can also hire them at the gate (Machame gate) when you set off – for about $20

–        I packed about 4 packs of baby wipes – and was planning to be clean. As per the point above, we ended up in the same clothes and so one pack would have been plenty!

Note from Jae: Thanks for all the brilliant advice Ros. It’s actually quite nice just to be told to expect to be filthy the whole time – at least I’m not going with any preconception that I might try to get clean each night. As someone who can’t usually get through 24 hours without washing my hair, let alone without showering, I have four weeks now to get my head around crustiness! I do remember lovely cousin Lou once telling me that the only way she could enjoy camping with her boys and Nigel, was to have a word with herself at the beginning telling herself that however dirty she felt she could be clean in an hour when she got home, so she wasn’t to worry about it!

Today’s post is a bit different! Mary Wilson – Sheila’s sister-in-law – has written some 3GKiliClimb limericks. And Katie Vermont (read this post if you don’t know how Katie came to join the Millers) has done some sketches to go with them. Don’t we have talented family? And it’s given us all a giggle. If you’re feeling creative why not send us your poems, drawings or anything else you fancy conjuring up (contact@3GKiliClimb.com)? Anything that reaches us before the end of August will go into a blog post (or two!) in September. No quality requirements – we’re big believers in effort being more valuable than ability!

There was once an intrepid trio
Who aimed to climb Kili con brio.
They got to the top,
But then couldn’t stop.
They’re on their way home- via Rio???

There was once a grandma from Kent,
Off to Tanzania she went,
With a mountain to climb
Amidst dust and grime
And sleeping all three to a tent!

Grandma Sheila, Oscar and Jae
Decided to climb Kili one day.
They did lots of training
Through sunshine and raining.
“Good luck to you three!” we all say.

Thanks Mary and Katie! I wonder what else you’ll inspire…

Swimming is going well this year. We have had some gorgeously warm days, which have made Canterbury U3A‘s weekly swims at our caravan particularly pleasant (this post has a bit more info about U3A).  There is the initial chill when we go into the sea on a hot day, but it’s lovely once properly in.

We had a bit of an alarm the other day, however.  Peter – a regular swimmer – brought his wife Sue for the first time.  She seemed to be enjoying the water until suddenly, her ring fell off.  Peter carefully took stock of where she was, looking to land to establish where she was in relation to the steps and from side to side to note which of the breakwater posts she was in line with. As usual, we were swimming at high tide: half a dozen steps and we’re swimming.

After the swim we all repaired to the caravan for a cuppa as is our wont, sitting outside in the sunshine.  Once everyone else had gone home, Peter, Sue and I went back to the beach to see if the tide had retreated sufficiently to look for the ring. Peter said no – it would take another half hour – so he and Sue went off for a walk while I washed the cups in the one-person kitchen.

When we met up thirty minutes later, I thought we would be in for a long evening searching the beach.  However, we had been looking for about two minutes when Sue waded in and pulled out her very lovely ring!  She said she had had a certain feeling that she would find it, and she was right!

It’s not the first time something a bit like this has happened.  Three or four years ago, after swimming on the beach, Peter returned to his clothes lying on the pebbles and realised his car key was missing.  There were a couple of young lads mucking about on the sea wall nearby, and Peter was convinced that they had taken his key while he was in the water.  He decided he was going to keep an eye on his car in case they stole it: meanwhile two other people volunteered to go to Peter’s home to get the spare keys from Sue.

An hour passed and the young lads disappeared, so Peter went down on to the beach to look for the key, and found it where we had been swimming. He had unwittingly gone into the sea with the key in the pocket of his swimming shorts and it had fallen out.  The two young boys were blameless!

The most amazing bit of this story is that Peter then went to his VW car  with the electronic key, which had been submerged for well over an hour, and clicked the button to open the doors. The doors opened as usual and everything worked perfectly.

I haven’t lost anything on the beach yet – although we have found quite a few things.  Jae’s boys were particularly pleased when they found a pirate’s sword washed up on the tide line and I actually found some sunglasses while looking for Sue’s ring. We left the sunglasses on the sea wall on top of an abandoned sock, in case anyone returned for them.

I removed my engagement ring after my first swim this year, as I realised there was a risk of it coming off because I am so thin! Who knew you could lose weight on a finger?  After KiliClimb is over and the weight goes back on again, as it inevitably will, my ring can go back on again.

I will not be taking anything I need to worry about losing up Kilimanjaro: no watch, no phone, no camera, nor any form of electrical equipment. I sincerely hope that nobody else in our group loses anything precious while up the mountain, as one thing is absolutely certain. If I make it up that mountain, there will be absolutely no chance of me going back up again to help them look for it. This will be a once in a lifetime experience, as far as I am concerned!

Nudity seems to have almost become a leitmotiv in this blog, although that was never my intention – in fact it would normally be the last thing on one’s mind, when going off on a “holiday” intended for families with one’s daughter and teenage grandson.

The issue was first raised in the blog post of 24th of February – Naked on the Mountain – which dealt with hypothermia and the preferred treatment, which involves someone taking off all their clothes and getting into a sleeping bag with the naked sufferer.

Nakedness came up again on the 7th of May – A Change in Altitude – when it became evident that the only way to deal with fire ants is to strip off all of your kit.

And, of course, things have spiralled out of hand since Jean threw out her Calendar Girls challenge in the blog of 14th of May:  nude Grannies have been appearing with the flimsiest of excuses at regular and irregular intervals!

However, what seems to us a bit of fun, may not be so for people of other cultures.  That fact has been pulled into sharp focus by the reports of the earthquake last month on Mount Kinabalu in Malaysia, which killed eighteen people.  The local state deputy chief minister has blamed the quake on a group of travellers showing “disrespect to the sacred mountain”, by posing naked on the mountain.  While it seems to us unlikely that there can be any link between the alleged cause and effect, to do anything which might unnecessarily cause offence to local people, seems to me to be plainly foolish.

The Tanzanians do not seem to be as concerned about nudity – but I don’t propose to check that out.  I have, however, recently read a book by Sarah Williams – “Kilmanjaro – Tips for the Top” which features just such a photograph taken during her climb of Kilimanjaro.  The guys just chose to line up for a photograph with Kili in the background and their breeks around their ankles, apparently for no good reason.  I can’t imagine anything like that is likely to happen in a group which includes teenagers and at least one granny, but who knows?

What did surprise me about the book is that there were fifteen in the group, but if my maths are right, only ten of them got to the top of Kilimanjaro – and everyone in their group was a youngster aged between 22 and 52.  The guys in the photo all look pretty fit, and Sarah, who was one of the ones who made it to the top – but certainly didn’t find it at all easy – was extremely fit.  She says that she writes a list of twenty goals every Christmas and mentions in passing that she had run the London Marathon five times before she turned thirty.  She also refers to the others in the group having done a substantial amount of training.  Reading that makes me wonder what chance do my sea-level-dwelling averagely-fit goal-less family have of making it?

The one consolation, I suppose, is that Exodus have chosen to send their first family group to climb Kili on a different route from the one taken in the book.  We will be taking the Lemosho route, which has the best chance of success as far as altitude preparation is concerned – but even so, it will not be a picnic!

Dealing with the cold was a major issue for Sarah, and will be for us too.  A good tip is to put your clothes into your sleeping bag to warm them up in advance.  I was surprised to read that she was advised to wear three or four layers of clothing on her bottom half on summit night and four or five on her top half, not to mention two pairs of gloves, two pairs of socks and two hats.  We will be going up dressed like Michelin men!  Just as well I went to the sales earlier in the year and bought us sets of reduced skiing base layers: I hadn’t realised then though that we would be wearing them all at once!  So one thing seems absolutely certain: we will all be very properly attired when and if we get to the top: we will not be stripping off all these layers of clothes for any reason at all on the summit – not even for charity – in temperatures which are likely to be well below zero!

Stew and I had an early wake up call at 5am recently.  I was sound asleep and dreaming that I could hear a baby crying somewhere in the distance.  The sound was coming closer as I woke up and it gradually morphed into miaowing.  I heard Stew say, “Alright I’ll let you out”, to the black cat standing beside our bed, as he got to his feet – a scenario which I am sure takes place in millions of homes each morning – save that we don’t have a cat!  Stew says the cat led the way downstairs and through the hall to the kitchen and stood back for him to open the back door, whereupon it politely made its exit.  We went over the whole house to try to work out how the cat had got in, and have come to the conclusion that its only way in must have been through the small window over the back door – by way of the scaffolding currently in place for our painter.

I have since sat quietly at the window watching, and see that the cat is quite adept at using the scaffolding, clearly enjoying this new dimension in space!  We are very pleased that the cat had enough sense to work its way through our house looking for someone to let it out, and didn’t decide to hide up a chimney or in a cupboard, as has happened to others we know.

We had another bit of excitement a couple of days earlier, when Marcus, our painter, came across a recently born baby bird in our guttering.  It had fallen from its nest, which has been cleverly made in a space where half a tile on our roof has slipped.  The bird looked very weak and Marcus and I agreed that it was probably doomed.  However, I saw him later in the day, and he said he had looked at the bird again later and it seemed to have perked up a bit.  He managed to get it balanced on the end of a clean paint brush and lifted it upwards into the eaves, from where it seems to have managed to hop back into its nest.  A happy result!

Paula, with whom I cook at Catching Lives, has also had baby bird stories to tell recently.  Seagulls are nesting on the roof of her house, and one of the sisters in their community has taken on the job of being guardian to the baby birds.  As regular blog readers will know, I am not a big seagull fan – but who could resist a baby seagull which had enough sense to go round the house to the front door to be let in again, when it fell from its nest?  It was of course carried carefully indoors and placed back in its nest again via the window.

It would be very satisfying if it was as simple to help human beings in crisis, as it has been in the case of these little creatures.  Unfortunately it rarely is.  Catching Lives exists specifically to try to give people that helping hand either back into the community they have fallen out of, or to try to help them get established in a new community.  Paula and I have been co-mentors for more than a year now, working with a couple of guys who have been rehoused, with the aim of helping them get re-established and to give them the confidence to take control of their own lives again.  We have taken real pleasure in seeing these guys gradually take up the reins of life, to look physically better and to see smiles on their faces on occasion.   Despite extensive efforts, neither of them have yet been able to find work, but one of them has done a substantial amount of voluntary work near his home, and has endeared himself to the locals in the process.  He has a purpose in life again.  The other guy, with our support, has been able to meet up with his young children and re-establish his relationship with them after a long absence.  I met him in the park recently walking proudly along, one small child’s hand held in each of his big ones – and all three of them looking as if they didn’t have a care in the world.  The nests of these guys are no longer looking quite so bare as they were a few months ago, thanks to Catching Lives.

I am amazed to note that 3G Kiliclimb has now raised over £4000.  When we first discussed raising money for charity, we had no idea how much we could raise. We didn’t know whether to go for a few hundred – but hit on the idea of trying to raise £1 for every meter of height we would climb on Kilimanjaro.  It seemed very optimistic – but it now seems that we might indeed reach our target of £5,895 by the middle of August!  With the promise from our kind donor of matched funding, we are pretty much certain to be raising a five figure sum – half of which will go to Catching Lives.  That will potentially make such a big difference to the lives of many homeless people.  Thank you so much to the dozens of you who have contributed.  Some people have donated quite small sums, but I know that their donations represent quite a big proportion of their income.  To them particularly, I say a big thank you for their empathy and generosity.

A friend who used to live in Nairobi worked in an office at the top of a high rise building. From his window he could see the snow-topped peak of Mount Kilimanjaro and on stressful days he used to dream of going there and climbing it. He never had that good luck, but next month all being well, the 3GKiliClimb adventurers will go there and do that.

Even though he did not make it, the dream sustained him on many difficult days and I am quite sure the theme of today’s blog will resound with many readers. One of the many reasons I love the musical South Pacific is the song “Happy Talk” that Bloody Mary sings to the two lovers:

You gotta have a dream, if you don’t have a dream,
How you gonna have a dream come true?

On a more serious note, we remember Martin Luther King’s inspirational speech, “I have a dream” delivered on August 28^th 1963, calling for an end to racism in the United States and Nelson Mandela describing “I dream of an Africa which is at peace with itself” in an interview he gave in 2000.

Both these men were driven to achieve amazing feats, driven by their hopes and ambitions for their country. But in a minor way, any one of us can set ourselves a personal goal that seems at the start almost impossible but can be achieved, with good luck, or hard work, or through the kindness of others or a combination of all three. I think it’s easier to do it without everyone watching but in this respect the 3G Kili Climb is already in the public eye before it even happens. This must increase the pressure but here is the consolation: thanks to the publicity generated by the blog, a huge amount has already been achieved through the three charities being helped by our donations. Thank you to everyone who has donated.

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.