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Clothes washing might be a bit of an issue on Kilimanjaro.  Every bit of water has to be carried up, so will be in short supply.  When I ask people who have done it before, they tend to say that they wore the same outer garments most of the time, but rang the changes with inner garments, and tried to keep something clean to sleep in.  I hope to get enough into my bag – 15kg max – to allow for some changes.

I did read on the internet of one guy, who recommended putting any damp garments into your sleeping bag, on the basis that they would be dry in the morning.  I find it hard to believe that that would be a comfortable way forward!

The washing of clothes has gone through a complete transformation during my lifetime: nowadays it is hardly a task even worth mentioning.  However, it used to take up an extraordinary amount of people’s time and energy.

I remember my mother having a wash board, when I was a child.  She had to stand at the kitchen sink and rub each garment on it, before rinsing them out, putting them through a wringer, and hanging them outside to dry.  Many people did not even have the facilities in their homes to do that, particularly people who lived in tenement buildings.  When I was a small child it was a common sight to see women pushing prams full of washing to and from the “steamie”.  The one near where I lived was next to the swimming baths, where it was not only possible to wash your clothes, but also to have a bath.

When I was a student and during the early years of marriage, I had no laundry facilities of any kind – certainly not for bedding – and used to take my dirty washing to the “bag wash” in the morning.  Later in the day it could be collected, either washed or washed and dried.  I think they tipped everything into a bucket of bleach, as everything would come back a few shades lighter in colour, but passably clean.

We were pretty chuffed when we were able to afford a “twin tub”.  This was a washing machine of sorts.  There were two bits to it: one for washing the clothes in, and another for spin drying them in.  It was not a tumble dryer – the stuff still came out wet at the end of the process, but at least they were not soaking wet.  I think it was the mid 1970s before we first had what we would recognise today as a washing machine.

It is salutary to think that there are many parts of the world today which don’t even have running water, let alone electricity.  The people in Tanzania around Kilimanjaro are extremely poor, and generally have neither in their homes.  I have heard that some of the porters who queue for jobs carrying stuff up the mountain are practically dressed in rags, which have been repeatedly washed, probably by the most basic of methods.  A quarter of the money we are raising by climbing will go to the Kili Porters School which is supported by Exodus Travels.  I hope that will result in making life easier for a few people in that respect.

I am full of admiration for our heroic 3 G Kili climbers. I’ve always known they’ve got physical and mental determination, demonstrated by Jae’s salsa dancing and netball playing while working full time with 3 young sons, Oscar’s fab footie skills, and Sheila’s sea swimming and cycling. My boys Ben and Alex have really fond memories of cycling with Sheila along the Crab and Winkle Way from Canterbury to Whitstable to stay in Sheila’s Seasalter caravan.

My own relationship with exercise has always been shakier. Memories of being the last to be picked for PE teams at school die hard. But inspired by a Guardian article about people getting hooked on running at the age of 40+, I bought my first proper running shoes at the age of 40 ¾ . Purchase achieved, they lived in their box under my bed until I was 41 ¾ ! Then my fabulous friend Sid talked me into entering the Royal Parks Half Marathon with her. Application form sent off, sponsorship money pledged for the charity Action Village India, there was no turning back. Over the summer of 2012, while following the fearless efforts of the Olympians and Paralympians, Sid’s unwavering encouragement helped me build up from a 10 minute jog to running 3, 5, 7 …. and finally 11 miles on our practice runs.

At the starting line of the Royal Parks Half Marathon in Hyde Park in October 2012, I had no idea where I was going to get the stamina to run the full 13 miles, 2 miles longer than I’d ever done before. Sid assured me it was simply “mind over matter” and that we’d do it. With jelly beans for energy stuffed in my bra (no pockets in my running bottoms!), buoyed up by the cheering crowds, blue sky and autumn leaves, the first five miles felt wonderful as we passed the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament. The next four miles felt unspeakably hard. The only things that kept me going were Sid’s amazing and constant support, the jelly beans and, weirdly, the soundtrack of ‘Chariots of Fire’ playing over and over in my head. That, and seeing the energy and determination of other runners of all ages, shapes and sizes, none of whom seemed to be giving up!! I reached a weird state of euphoria at the 9 mile mark which carried me through the next 4 miles and over the finishing line, shortly after the unexpected delight of seeing my sister Charlotte cheering us on at the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens.

I’m casting back to 2012 because it’s the only half marathon and the hardest exercise I’ve ever done. But Sid and I still run every Sunday and are planning to enter another race one of these days! I don’t think the wonderful Kili 3 need tips from me about keeping going when the going gets tough, but here goes anyway: Dig deep, think of all the money you’re raising for Catching Lives and Tanzanian charities, feel carried and galvanized by the collective effort of everyone else around you, keep some jelly beans handy and have an inner soundtrack of inspiring music to urge you on as you climb. I’m really enjoying your blogs and following your adventure and feel very proud of you all.

A friend recently asked me if I had read an Anita Shreve book about Kilimanjaro.  She said it was called “A Change in Altitude”.  I am quite a fan of Shreve and said I did remember reading a book about people climbing a mountain – and someone falling to their death – but had not remembered that it was Kilimanjaro.  It gave me quite a turn, as I remembered that in the story, the climbers had all been clipped together on to a rope, but a woman unclipped herself on a glacier and slipped off the edge of it.

I therefore went hot-footing off to the local Catching Lives charity bookshop to see if they had a copy, so I could check out whether I was remembering it correctly.  The bookshop is one one of the oldest building in Canterbury – 16th century, I think.  It was built as a private house, but served many different purposes over the years.  In 1925 it was a tea shop: I love this old picture which advertises its “wireless music”.  I guess that was as essential then as wi-fi would be in a cafe today!  Subsequently it was the shop for the prestigious Kings School – that’s where they bought their uniform – and now it is a great charity book shop, raising money to help get homeless Canterbury people back on track.

I was lucky enough to get a copy of the novel in question, so I have been able to see whether my memory was right or not.  Well, mine was, but my friend’s was a bit faulty: the woman does indeed fall off the mountain – but off Mount Kenya, not Kilimanjaro!  Mount Kenya is not as high as Kili, but much more precipitous.  I was thrilled to read the following in the book:

‘So Kilimanjaro is higher?’ Margaret asked.

‘Higher, but easier.  I think you simply walk to the top.  In large circles.  It takes a while, but most amateurs can handle it.  It’s supposed to be fairly boring.’

Boring will do me very nicely: getting tied together with ropes and slipping off a glacier isn’t what I had planned for August.  What did surprise me in the book was the quantity of “meds” the group thought necessary to take on the three day trek up Mount Kenya.  They list ‘Aspirin for fever and headache, ibuprofen for muscle aches, paracetamol for colds, Diamox as a prophytactic for AMS (acute mountain sickness) Immodium to stop you up if you get the runs, oil of cloves for dental use, and water purification tablets.’  They also add in ‘oral rehydration salts for replacement of fluids, and the Nytol for sleeping, of course.’  I dare say I may take some of those, but it is very nice to know that I am doing the trip with a solid organisation like Exodus, whose leaders no doubt carry most of that and more.

However, rereading the novel has raised another “nasty”!  I thought I had it covered mentally by preparing for the possibility of leopards, rats and big scary birds.  I didn’t know about fire ants!  There is a scene in which one of the women stands in a nest of fire ants and within seconds she has dozens of bites “as if she were being pricked hard by needles…… She felt as though she were being assaulted by Africa itself, the ground rising up to sting her to death…..There were dozens of trails of the red ants, some of which Margaret could see through the nylon of her underpants.  She tried to fetch them out, but then realized that would take too long.  She pulled the underwear down and ran away from it.  After that, her blouse, her bra”.  So the risk of being Naked on the Mountain rears its ugly head yet again: see the blog of 24th of February for another such possibility.  At least I know what to watch out for now, I suppose.

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Note from Jae: I was reading A Change in Altitude when I got offered the job at Exodus last year. I remember being chuffed to bits, and then thinking, “I won’t ever need to climb a high, scary mountain like Mt Kenya will I?  No – they do lots of other types of amazing adventure travel”! And here I am absolutely loving that I’m taking on a big challenge with my Ma and lovely Oscar – few people find themselves lucky enough to be able to attempt something so fantastic with both the generation above, and that below. I feel very privileged (and just a bit scared!). I won’t bother reading it again for a while.

I know my sister loves her collection of stones, lava and sea glass and I had the mad idea of bringing back for her from Africa a tiny piece of tanzanite. It is a beautiful stone which changes colour according to the light; sometimes it’s blue like a sapphire, sometimes purple like amethyst. Its name comes from the only place in the world it is mined, in Tanzania, in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro. Of course I knew she couldn’t take it with her – I’m not that daft – but I hoped a crystal would inspire her at home in Canterbury as her grueling preparations for the big climb continue.

What’s more, tanzanite is claimed to have good vibrations when you hold it in your hands and it has powerful properties for metaphysical healing. It helps you develop physic power, strengthens the immune system, and detoxifies the blood. Just Google it – it even increases fertility!

So when we went to a diamond wholesaler in Capetown whose entire front window was advertising the “Queen of Kilimanjaro” I felt hopeful. Wholesalers are cheap, right? Perhaps the champagne as we came in should have rung warning bells but no, I still hoped for a tiny crystal at a tiny price. No way. Every crystal came encrusted with diamonds and a BIG price tag. So, sorry, Sheila, next time you need a burst of psychic energy please gaze at this picture. Good luck guys.

I’ve been baking banana cake, one to eat at home and one to take on holiday when we go off to Charmouth, for a week walking with a group of old friends – old being the operative word!  Banana cake is one of my staples, because whenever I have any bananas which look past their best, I peel them and freeze them to make cake with in future.  It only takes a moment to fish them out and zap them in the microwave, ready to make into a cake.  It was banana and crystallised ginger today.

Bananas are a great food.  I recollect that my sister Leslie fed my niece Katharine almost exclusively on bananas – or so it seemed – as a baby.  Katharine wolfed them down and thrived on them.  Leslie decided to write to Fyffes, the main banana importers, to let them know that her daughter had eaten a banana every day for a year.  She hoped that they might at least send her a bunch or two, or if she was lucky, decide to finance Katharine’s banana habit in the future.  She was not so lucky!  They did respond, but by sending her a three foot long inflatable banana – not quite what she had been hoping for.

I remember my grandfather telling me a story involving a banana.  When he was young, he was a very keen harrier.  I am not even sure that term exists any more: I suppose nowadays he would be called a jogger.  He used to participate in competitive races over quite long distances before the First World War.  My grandfather was entered into a very big race, which he hoped to win – there was a money prize.  Somehow, my grandfather had come by a banana – not a common commodity at that time – and set out on the race with it in his pocket.   He was running at the front, along with another guy, an equally good runner, whom he couldn’t shake off.  Suddenly, my grandfather had a brainwave: he took out his banana, and made as if to peel it.  He could see the guy beside him looking at it hungrily.  In an apparent show of benevolence, he handed the fellow his banana.  His rival was so amazed at his luck that he slowed right down to peel and eat the banana – and my grandfather shot on to victory!

Chelsea, who featured in yesterday’s blog post, tells me that every meal and snack on Kilimanjaro seems to involve bananas and all food ends up tasting like them.  I guess they are provided on the basis that they are a good source of energy – not that they will cause one to “lose the race” as in my grandfather’s story.  Just as well we all like them!

I went to London again recently to visit Jae at Exodus, where she is the Marketing Director.  Everyone who works for Exodus, whether they are office-bound or not, has the chance to go on an *educational*.  How cool is that?  Jae was doing her educational when we went to the Amalfi coast in March (see Jae’s blog post about it here).   I hasten to add that taking along your Ma is not a freebie: I paid for myself, although I got a little bit of a discount.

The reason for me visiting her office was to see her presentation of our holiday.  That is the downside of an educational: you have to present a slide show of your holiday to your colleagues, so they can all learn and note anything that could be done better in future.  A pretty good way of doing things, now I think of it.  I used to feel sometimes as a children’s lawyer that some of the people involved in court proceedings had no idea what it must feel like for children to learn that they may be removed from their parents.  It wasn’t possible to give that a trial run or learn much about what it must feel like from colleagues – but anyone can have a shot at an adventure holiday!

Jae’s presentation was on a Thursday after work: they have one every week.  One friendly guy I was talking to, Imran, told me he had worked there for ten years, and must have heard about five hundred such presentations.  Despite that, he seemed to enjoy Jae’s – she managed to inject some humour and unusual photographs into her talk – and there was some entertaining heckling from the audience of about sixty people!

Needless to say, it all ended up afterwards in a trip to a pub – and that is where I feel I got the best run down yet on what climbing Kilimanjaro might be like for me!  I have talked to several superfit people who have done it and lots of other such climbs too, but talking to a young girl, Chelsea Dorey – who was also visiting Exodus, and had been good enough to bring her own photos of her trip to the pub – was for me, the most enlightening yet.  Chelsea seems just a normal person like me, who decided to do the climb for charity.  At the last minute her friend, who was to do it too, fell ill – so Chelsea’s sister, Natalie, stepped into the breach at two weeks’ notice without any training at all – and they both got to the top!  Chelsea was the first person to tell me that it would be cold all the time from the first night onwards.  I had imagined that starting on the equator, it would be really hot for the first few days and nights, and then gradually get colder as we near the top.  Not so!  We will need layers of clothes and our down sleeping bags from the first night onwards – really useful to know when planning our clothing.

Chelsea said that both she and her sister had taken a drug used for altitude sickness from the beginning of the climb, and that they were the only people in their group who did not have headaches and/or sickness.  I had decided not to use such medication – but that did give me pause for thought.  She said that others were actually vomiting and found it almost impossible to eat, which meant they had no strength.  NHS websites and my GP are against it – but many other fairly reliable sources, particularly American ones (or is that a contradiction of terms?), favour it.  The jury is still out, as far as I am concerned: any advice welcome.

Chelsea also said that most of the time, the walking is not arduous.  You just have to keep going slowly on – the incline is generally gentle.  The only really difficult bit, where you have to scramble, is the Barranco Wall.  She had some great photographs of it, and it is clear that we will have to climb up a steep rock face and over huge boulders.  A foot wrongly placed could result in disaster.  However, what no-one else had told me was that it would be all over in about an hour and a half.  I think I can do that!  I like a bit of variety, and so long as I keep my concentration and take it slowly, I will make it.

After that, what we will have to worry about is the last night.  We have a very early night and get woken before midnight for the assault on the peak.  We will be climbing in the dark for about seven hours, to be on top at dawn.  Exodus say they get 95% of people to the top on the route we are taking, but if I end up in the other 5%, so be it.  I will do my best, but none of us have any idea how we will feel at such a high altitude: that is truly in the lap of the Gods!

The best thing that Chelsea said was that it was the hardest thing she had ever done in her life – but she would agree to do it again in the blink of an eye, if she got the chance!

The title of this sounds a bit like one of these – usually awful – jokes starting ‘Have you heard the one about….?’.  However, this is not a joke, but a true story of Sheila in her early twenties, when she met a Professor and spent a summer in Jail.

Away back in the mid sixties, when only about five per cent of school leavers went to University in Scotland, I think it fair to say that bright girls who were channelled to university were often encouraged to take general degrees or degrees in school subjects in which they excelled.  Teaching was seen as their ultimate destination, which fitted in with getting married, having children and following one’s husband in his career moves.  Boys were possibly pushed to be a little more focussed on what their ultimate employment might be,  but Sheila arrived at Glasgow University, perhaps a little uncertain about what she would do.  Halfway through she discovered Social Sciences and immediately became a late convert.

During her last year at uni, Sheila did a short course in criminology.  At the end of the course, the Professor teaching it said that if the class was interested in a visit to see Barlinnie Prison, he would set it up.  At that time Barlinnie was a very notorious prison in Glasgow housing many infamous career criminals, including the gangland murderer,  James Boyle, who subsequently held a “dirty protest” there, became a renowned artist and wrote a book all about it (described on Wiki as: Jimmy Boyle (born 1944) is a Scottish sculptor, novelist and convicted murderer)!  Sheila organised for about a dozen students to visit the prison with the Professor.  During the trip the Professor mentioned that he was looking for someone to do some research work for him during the summer, if anyone was interested – and Sheila perked up her ears!  She and Stewart were getting married that summer, as soon as they had graduated. Stewart intended to further his career by doing post-graduate research at Glasgow University and the summer job would be within walking distance of the flat they had already lined up in which to start married life.

Even before she had graduated, Sheila had contacted the Professor, demonstrated her interest in having a summer job and started work as his research assistant.

This was one of the eras in which Glasgow gangs flourished.  The gangs were very territorial, with members usually in their teens, rather than the more mature men who had been in the renowned gangs of Glasgow in the nineteen twenties and thirties.  And it was before drugs became a big part of gang culture.  In some ways, for non-gang members, Glasgow was still a relatively safe area to move about in.  But if a gang member ventured into the territory of a rival gang, then they were lucky to escape with anything less than a ‘good kicking’ (can kicking somebody ever be good?) or a slash or two, usually fairly superficial and treated by gang members as a badge of honour.  They also decorated any bare wall with gang slogans, pretty crude and not anything like the art form of Banksy.  This was the professor’s area of interest.

The downside was that all the records of gangs, old and new, were held in the cells of the Central Police Station in the middle of Glasgow.  And this is how Sheila landed with a summer in Jail, actually locked in one of the cells with the records she had requested for that day.  She told me that she often had to shout for quite some time to be let out for loo and meal breaks.  However, it did have its upside: she so impressed the Professor, that he employed her for the next two years and acknowledged her hard work in the credits of the book she helped him with.

If you are still reading this, you might well wonder what this has to do with Sheila’s family trip to Kilimanjaro.  Well, I do remember my brief from Sheila – ‘write about anything as long as it has something to do with the trip’.  I think the ‘Jail Incident’ shows early manifestations of what made Sheila rise to the 3G Kili Climb challenge and what she will need in buckets to get to the top.  She had the imagination to defy convention and set her own target; having done that she showed great forbearance when the situation turned out to be less idyllic than she had bargained for.  With all of these characteristics, can Sheila fail to make the summit?

I have been attending a weekly U3A class in French during the last few months.  My spoken French is still absolutely abysmal, but I have loved the chat with the sparky teacher and other elderly students.

In the interests of getting fit for climbing Kilimanjaro, I have recently started to walk all or at least a part of the way there. The class is in Herne Bay – probably about nine or ten miles from home on footpaths.

My friend Pat walked to Herne Bay with me last week and we stopped off in a cafe on our way for a cup of tea.  It is a cafe which seems to be frequented largely by dogs!  There were four little dogs within six feet of us, one of which was occupying the seat right beside me.  I asked its owner what sort of dog it was and she replied, “Shit poo”!  I was about to say I knew they all did that, when she went on to explain that she meant it was a Schitzu Poodle cross.

Of course I had to tell the French class about this: it is an extremely doggy orientated class.  The teacher, whose house the class is held in, has a gorgeous dog called Beau, a Cocker Spaniel Poodle cross.  Beau bounds around amongst us during the class, ensuring that all of us keep wide awake!

The teacher is also an occasional dog sitter: she moves into people’s homes with Beau to care for their dogs, when they are on holiday.  The French class has, therefore, on occasions taken place in other dogs’ houses, so to speak.  We loved being in Bella’s house!  We couldn’t get over the fact that her owners seem to have matched her perfectly with a giant rug!

My first ever doggy experience was with my grandparents’ Cocker Spaniel, Glen.  He was considered to be a working dog and lived outside in a spacious kennel.  However he had the run of the gardens and was an extremely gentle and patient dog, and I loved him.  Although I have never owned – or been owned – by a dog, I have always felt happy with dogs around, thanks to Glen.

I spent some time in Scotland last year, helping my friend Susie, whose husband was dying.  Susie is owned by a wonderfully intelligent Spaniel, Archie. When Susie and I accompanied Archie on one of his long cross-country rambles, he would sometimes disappear for long periods to chase a pheasant or a squirrel, reappearing occasionally, just to check we were alright.  I was quite nervous when I set out alone with Archie for a walk in case he disappeared: I didn’t want him lost on my watch.  I needn’t have worried!  Archie was aware of his responsibilities.  He wandered off on his usual side excursions, but never once did he let me out of his sight. I was too much of an unknown quantity to be trusted out unsupervised.

When we visit my brother Robbie, dog loving is compulsory. He and Mary have three “boys”, Finlay, Rhuari and Mungo.  Mary takes great pleasure in training them as PAT (Pets as Therapy) dogs: they accompany her into various care and nursing homes.  It was there that an elderly lady first held out a piece of banana to one of the “boys”.  The dog obligingly wolfed it down, and then decided it was the most exciting flavour ever.  Since then, bananas have been considered the best treat ever by all three dogs and have to be carefully hidden out of sight and smell, if an easy life is to be had at home.

On our recent training exercise in Italy, Jae and I, in the Exodus group, were accompanied up and round the crater of Vesuvius by a dog.  We were told that he lived on the mountain and was fed and received medical care there.  I don’t know whether there are dogs on Kilimanjaro or not and if so, whether they enjoy bananas, which are in plentiful supply there. I may have to wait till I get there in August to find out.

Note from Jae: If you’d like to receive each blog post on email just enter your email address where it says “subscribe” on the menu (on the left hand side on a computer, or when you click the three-little-lines menu icon on a phone or tablet). And don’t forget to “like” us on Facebook. Thanks lots for your support, Jx

I met Sheila and her family for the first time in 1978. Her husband Stewart was visiting the department of Nijmegen University in the Netherlands, where my husband Arie worked. Arie said, “Wouldn’t it be nice to invite them for dinner?” So, we did and became friends.  We swapped houses with them one Easter, went to the weddings of both Jae and Gwen and also to Stewart and Sheila’s 25^th wedding anniversary do.

In 2008, a year after Arie died, Sheila helped me make a quilt using some of his clothes.  In May, we will spend a few days together turning a lot of squares of fabric into another quilt. (See Sheila’s blog of 31st March).

Recently on a Thursday evening I went to the monthly meeting of my women’s group.  We have thirty-two members aged between 44 and 74 years old, who all used to be women working in quite a lot of different professions.  We have a hairdresser, a  judge, an art professor, a lung specialist, several teachers, a beautician and so on. Three or four of us will generally organise an interesting evening with the theme being the broader sense of ‘art’.

This time, a friend of two of our members told us about her stay in Tanzania – about two small villages – Shimbwe and Uru East, at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. She lived there for three and a half years, her husband having been sent out as a doctor/specialist.

She told us that life is very hard in the hills, the little farms having uncertain harvests and crops, and so uncertain income. She started together with a very special local woman investigating the strengths, ideas and possibilities of women in order to work to improve their economic situation. “Sewing for Growing” is one project with which the Minjeni Women’s Group (slogan “we can only do it together “) are doing very well.

There were a lot of products that we could buy: aprons, pan-holders and tablecloths.  I bought a very nice scarf and a necklace made by another group called Acorn.  All of us paid more than the price asked in order to donate extra to the groups.

She told us about Mount Kilimanjaro and that when people are talking about climbing it, it means climbing one of the two summits.  People generally climb Kibo, not the other one which is called Mawenzi .

I liked the story and the products. And was of course highly interested!

Those of you who know me well or who have read some of my blogs, will know that there I nothing I like better than a bit of scrumping or scavenging!  I know it isn’t logical, but there is something very satisfying about finding something that can be put to some use.

The best ever such find was nearly forty years ago.  I was doing a bit of digging around our broccoli patch in the garden, when I came across a coin.  Jae, aged four, was playing nearby, so I popped it in her pocket, thinking she could use it next time she was playing at “shops”, a game all little children love.

Later that evening when Jae was in bed, our friend Clare came for a meal.  Somehow the conversation came round to the garden and I remembered the coin I had found.  Once I had mentioned it, Clare was keen to see it, so I retrieved it from the washing basket, where it had ended up.

She seemed to know immediately that it was gold and of some value – not something for a little girl to play shops with.  She said I needed to take it to a coin specialist.  So Jae and I set out with it the next day to take it to a coin shop which existed at that time in Canterbury.

The shop identified it as a George II guinea and offered me £168 for it on the spot, which at that time was more than our monthly income. Flabbergasted wasn’t in it: without Clare’s intervention it would probably have been lost as easily as it had been found!  However, the shop said that first the coin had to go to the police, as all gold treasure trove belongs to the Crown.

The police kept it for a while, but subsequently returned it to us.  They told us that under a magnifying glass it was possible to see indentations on each side, suggesting that it had been mounted in a piece of jewellery, and was not therefore likely to be part of a horde of coins. A friend ran a metal detector over the garden, but nothing else of significance was found.  I did take it to London to Spinks the coin specialist, but they were not willing to offer as much as the Canterbury dealer.

So we hot-footed it back to the local shop and the deal was done: we sold it – but not before Stew had taken a photo of it.  The shop was willing to offer such a good price because they had a customer who collected George II guineas, but that particular year was missing from his collection.

It was later that summer that Stewart’s father retired.  His parents had never had a phone in their house: we had to phone a neighbour along the road if we needed to talk to them.  We were really pleased to be in a position to pay for a phone to be put into their house and to undertake to pay future bills from the money we got from the sale of that gold coin.

In later years, people have asked us whether we were sorry not to still have it.  The answer was always “No”!  What comes around, goes around.  We made good use of the money.

And the same will be true of every penny made from the 3G Kili Climb.  Every penny raised will be put to good use either helping the Canterbury homeless get their lives back on track or on Exodus’ charities in Africa and elsewhere.  Whatever size a donation is, whether large or small, it will make a difference to someone else’s life.  And that is pure gold!

Note from Jae: Bizarrely I remember the moment Ma found this coin quite well. She was gardening and I had a yellow plastic sieve that had come in a beach bucket set in my hand. She handed me the coin to go and wash, so I put it in my sieve. I ran it under the kitchen tap, and when I brought it back I said, “It’s not real money”, and that’s when she popped it into my pocket

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If you’d like to donate this is the link: VirginMoneyGiving.com/3GKiliClimb
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Today’s guest post is from a colleague of Jae’s at Exodus Travels. Elise is one of “The Cornrow Five“! The Exodus team loved Sheila’s “Baby v Mountain” post and, in some ways, this is a homage to that! Over to you Elise…

This past week I have both climbed a mountain and run a marathon. Jae asked me which was harder so I’ve compiled a list of important issues and curious comparisons…

1. THE START LINE

I’d heard bad things about marathons. People’s legs so damaged they get stuck in their basement flats for 3 days afterwards, blisters, fatigue, “St Johns Ambulance” was mentioned a lot….so at the start line accompanied by 38,000 others I was pretty nervous to say the least. It took over half an hour to properly get going. The build-up was unbearable.

Compare this to Mt Toubkal in Morocco, a beautiful flat valley with a towering mountain rage ahead of you inviting you in with its tranquil white peaks. You feel at one with nature and don’t care what awaits you higher up; you just casually plod on taking in the scenery without a worry in the world.

WINNER = MOUNTAIN!

2. TOILET TALK

Immediately as those EasyJet wheels touched down in Marrakesh, the toilet talk started. I knew from past experience that it would crawl its way in and take over all conversations at some point, but it got in there fast this time. “Better go now than up the mountain” people were muttering…”but I don’t need to go now” I thought, panic rising, not knowing where I would get the next opportunity.  But in all honesty there is nothing to worry about. There are plenty of toilet opportunities up a mountain, you can even fashion yourself a rustic looking toilet seat out of rocks, sit back and enjoy the view. After the deed you can go back to your group, let them all know how it went, and inform them of where the best spot is. You’re a toilet hero!

But not the marathon. Nobody talks about these toilet problems before you agree to undertake this challenge. It’s a silent issue that lingers over every runner. The problem is that while running a marathon you never know when you’ll need to go, it’s usually sometime after the 7/8 mile mark just when you have a good rhythm going. You obviously can’t go anywhere you want (unless you’re Paula Radcliffe) like up a mountain and, like me, you will probably get caught out a while before the next Portaloo stop, so when you arrive at your absolute limit there is a huge queue. You panic and look for other options: a bush, a bin, behind a post box…self-respect goes out the window. Luckily for me a run-down pub full of locals was on hand, so I ditched the queues and popped in there. I didn’t care about the funny looks or comments; I was a smug #toilethero!

WINNER = MOUNTAIN!

3. LEGS

It was the coming down that did it. 4 hours of continuous downhill, sliding through snow and climbing over rocks. Don’t underestimate the downhill walking! I thought I would need some serious physiotherapy when I got out of bed the next day.  The entire group were hobbling around like something terrible had happened to us. The main issue was stairs – we could go up them, but had huge issues getting down.

It’s now 2 days after I completed the gruelling 26.2 mile marathon course and I feel surprisingly good. I was terrified of what was in store for me this week but apart from the odd blister and tender stomach(?!) muscle I’m raring to go!

WINNER = MARATHON!

4. MATES

You only have temporary friends during a marathon. Eccentric friends who you haven’t met before who make you laugh with their crazy costumes and inspire you with their wild outlook on life. They use you for your support and kind words…then they run off and leave you. Although there is a great sense of community during the race you realise that you are completely alone. It’s scary.

You don’t often get elderly men in tutus with a boom box karaoke set in hand singing “hit me baby one more time” up a mountain, but you do get a group of top individuals who have got your back. They are with you every step of the way, waiting if you fall behind, and willing to pick you up if you fall. They stay with you right to the bitter end!

WINNER = MOUNTAIN!

5. THE FINISH

Unfortunately we didn’t make the top of the mountain due to extreme blizzards and avalanche risks! So there’s your first mountain problem. If we had a clearer day I’m sure we would have been greeted with astonishing views, but as it stands we couldn’t see an inch in front of us and just wanted to get down. Then there is the altitude issue, which has you gasping for breath every step you take, although I was probably doing exactly the same amount of gasping during the marathon, for very different reasons.

With a marathon you know where the finish line is. You count down every mile the entire way until you see it – covered in balloons just for you, and surrounded by a cheering crowd shouting “GO LISA” which I happily accepted (it’s only a two letter difference after all). Once you cross the line you raise your hands and bow your head with pride, as a lady with a very kind face places the medal over your head.  All we got up the mountain was dried figs.

WINNER = MARATHON!

6. REFUELLING

Whoever had to witness me eat (or should I say ravage) my salmon and cream cheese sandwich, moments after the finish line, I sincerely apologise. It was a hideous display of a loss of self-control which shamefully lasted just seconds. You are hungry by mile 15, you can’t eat because of the cramps, so when you finish you would go to the lengths of robbing a child of their lunch. But having burnt off over 3000 calories the feeling of being able to stuff your face with whatever you want is unbeatable!

Mountain hunger is different, it’s a creeper.  You don’t notice until you sit down, take off your boots, have a cup of local tea and reflect on the day. Suddenly you realise you’ve been walking for 9 hours and you must be starving! You eat with the rest of the group courteously around a beautifully laid table, politely forking the food into your mouth like a normal, sane human being.

WINNER = MARATHON!

So there you have it Jae – the results are neck and neck – both equally as wonderful or terrifying (depends how you look at it) as each other! I’m sure you, Sheila and Oscar will have lots of highs on Kili, and some lows too. You’ll create loads of memories, and have a new experience to compare all others to! Good luck, Elise x

Those of you – poor souls – who have been following the meanderings of my body and mind in the blog during the last few weeks, will know that it is a mishmash of the past, the present and the future.

I think that may be why I like making quilts out of bits and pieces so much: they represent all of that, but are also something real and useful in themselves.

I made a small baby quilt recently very quickly to send off to daughter Gwen in Oz for a new baby, Thomas, born to two of her close friends. In that quilt are bits of fabric from some different people and I have written in the blog about most of them.  So I suppose in a way such a quilt represents the scrambled wanderings of my mind!

There is a bit of:

– Gwen’s duvet cover (pink clowns) from about 1980

– Auntie Elsie’s duvet cover (blue with daisy)

– my friend Mary’s skirt (small blue flowers) chopped off as it was too long

– fabric (round the edge) brought from Holland by my friend Gerda and her sister Els

– fabric (large blue flowers) bought from a garage next to Grandson Samson’s nursery in Sydney

– fabric (spotty) bought from Spotlight, an amazing Australian department store

– a remnant (the green backing) picked up in a salvage yard

– a dress (pale blue) I made for myself in the 1970s

– a scrap of Laura Ashley fabric (stripes) bought in a 50p bag of bits in the 1970s

And that, I think, is what the best of life is about – a melange of different people and places all brought together and somehow forming something that will be of use to someone else in the future.

I hope that is what the climb up Kilimanjaro will be about too: three different generations spanning more than half a century in age, sponsored by dozens of people from all over the world and all different walks of life to raise money to help both the homeless of Canterbury at Catching Lives and those in several different countries, whom Exodus’ charities help.

When I was a young child, it was a great treat to visit my paternal grandparents. I had three grandparents – or so I thought. They were my grandfather (“the faither”), my grandmother (“the mother”) and my grandmother’s older sister Auntie Annie, who was affectionately known as Yanos.

When my grandparents got married, Yanos was part of the deal: it was like a BOGOF – buy one and get one free!  She moved in at the beginning of the marriage and stayed there for the rest of her life.  She was part of that generation of women who would have married one of the young men sent off to fight in the First World War.  Both my grandparents lost brothers in that war, as did almost every big and not so big family.

They must have realised when my grandmother married in her mid twenties, that there was not going to be a suitor for her sister, who was two years older, and that she had better come along too.  Yanos was one of the gentlest, kindest and put-upon women I have had the privilege to meet.  As each child in the family came along, Yanos was the one who did the bulk of the child care, the wiping of snotty faces and the settling of the child who couldn’t sleep.  Because she was capably in charge of the eight children back at home, my grandparents were free to go on cruises and take exotic holidays all over the world – something almost unheard of in the 1930s.  They led a very privileged life.

It was a great treat to go into Yanos’ bedroom, especially so because I knew I had been born in the bed in her room.  My parents did not have a home of their own when I was born – they were barely out of their teens – and were temporarily living with my three grandparents.  Of course, it had to be Yanos who gave up her room for my mother to give birth.

Yanos had an enormous wardrobe in that room, from which all sorts of interesting items would materialise – the most important being a seemingly endless stream of butterscotch sweets, which we loved, and treacle toffees, of which we were less fond – but encouraged to eat because they were good for our bowels, which were very close to our grandparents’ hearts!

Auntie Annie would sit at her dressing table and brush out her long hair, then put it up and push it into place with Amami Wave Set.  She would change her glasses there, always keeping her eyes firmly shut between taking off one pair and putting on the other.

The most exciting things in her room were the fairies that danced around the walls.  The “fairies” were caused by the sun hitting the crystal decanters which sat each side of Yanos’ dressing table.  We would run around trying to “catch” a fairy on our hands.

I thought about Yanos when I read about how to warm up my “bed” when camping on Kilimanjaro.  Yanos had a hard hot water bottle in her bed, and that is what we will have too.  Hers was an enormous stone one, which didn’t seem at all cuddly.  Ours will be a drinking flask, filled with very hot water, serving a dual function – we can sip from it as need be during the night too. I think she had an old cardigan to wrap around her bottle and I am sure we will find something to make our bottles cuddly too.

Note from Jae: Look Ma – last time we were in the caravan I took a photo of Osc with a fairy on his nose!

It’s been a wild and wacky week of weather here in Sydney. In the space of a week, we’ve seen storms and rain that moved entire beaches into car parks, felled countless trees, and ground the city to a halt. We then had a couple of beautiful days of sunshine, during which I cruised around the city with our friend Katie with the roof down on the convertible, before yesterday’s pièce de résistance, a surprise flurry of giant hailstones that blanketed the city, caused flash flooding, collapsed roofs and flooded cars and houses. We’re all feeling a tad shocked as we put the city back together and are wondering what’s next – a giant plague of man-eating locusts, perhaps?

All sounds very crazy, right? And not like anything anyone would put themselves through by their own will…..but it just struck me that these are the extremes of conditions the Kili 3 – my Mum, sister and nephew – can totally expect to experience within the space of a week during their August challenge. Well, I’m guessing they might not have a convertible car up there, but you get the gist… I did a little googling and discovered that the journey from the base of Kili to the top is the meteorological equivalent of travelling from the equator to Antarctica in just a few days. They could traverse through 27 degrees Celsius at the bottom all the way to -27 degrees at night at the top! How the hell do you prepare yourselves for that?!?

Back in Sydney, most of us have warm, dry  houses to hide in, to protect us from wet, hail and sunburn. The Kili 3 will be trekking through the forces of Mother Nature, carrying all their necessities in daypacks and sleeping in tents overnight, sometimes surrounded by snow. Puts the challenge into perspective, doesn’t it?

When I was 19 and travelling around the world I was about to go on a trek up into the hill tribes of Northern Thailand when a fellow traveller suggested that I should get my hair plaited. She said that she’s not found anywhere to wash her hair when she had done a similar trek, and that she wished she’d done it. Fortunately a Thai waitress in the bar we were sitting in overheard us and said she’d plait my hair for me. By the end of the evening my head was covered in neat corn rows with beads dangling and clacking as I walked back to my bamboo hut for the night. I looked the very epitome of a gap year traveller.

The trek was amazing; we were a group of eight trekking with a local lad who called himself Rambo (we called him Rambutan – which he had the grace to pretend he found funny), and another called City who ended up having to leave us when his Malaria “got worse”!! I remember one particular night when I lay awake wondering whether I should have joined in with the opium pipe that almost everyone else had partaken of (was I a wimp / prude / missing out on life’s experiences?) only to spend the whole of the next day congratulating myself as the entire group looked greener and greener and had to dash off to the bushes as we walked to empty one end or the other!

And the other thing I was pretty smug about was my hairstyle; all the girls, and a couple of the boys, had long hair and were cursing how manky it felt with its sweaty greasiness and suncreamed edges! This thought came back to me recently when I was chatting to some of my colleagues at work. It was late in the day and there were only a few of us left in the office; the lovely Gina suggested that I might want to take Batiste dry shampoo up Kili to do a quick freshen-up when my hair feels horrid. I recounted (a very little of) the tale above, finishing on the word “corn rows”. I looked around and realised the young things I was talking to were all horrified at the idea that I’d do the same thing again. How hideously uncool I’d look up a mountain with beads dangling! Eventually they all burst out laughing and I said a cheery, “bye” and dashed off to catch my train. When I checked my email 30 mins later I found this:

How brilliant are they? I completely love that they’re challenging me to do it, and tempting me further with the promise of cash into the 3G charity pot! And with our new match-funding that’ll be worth £250 to our charities – wow!

Now, where can I find the right type of hairdresser…