Will I be awake at the right times? Reading about Kili, it seems that a lot of people have trouble sleeping at night at high altitudes in unfamiliar circumstances.
I have only spent a few nights in my life under canvas – and none of these nights was in the last 40 years. I remember being very excited as a child when my little brother and I were allowed to sleep overnight in the front garden in a tent. (My big sister Leslie, was far too proper to embark on such an undertaking.)
Sheila, Leslie & Robbie in the garden where the camping took place
The one abiding memory I have of it is of my mother bringing out Scottish mutton pies to us, and biting into them, only to discover the pies were off! Such a disappointment: there was nothing else to eat. I think it was only for one night. So I can’t claim to be an experienced camper – but, against the advice on the websites, I have no plans to practice sleeping out between now and the climb in August. I can, however, claim to have lots of practice in insomnia! I have been a bad sleeper all of my adult life, so maybe I will not be too distressed by lack of sleep.
On the other hand, it seems that quite a few people claim that they can sleep while walking, particularly during the last stages of climbing Kili, when there is very little oxygen. There are a few mentions in wartime literature about sleeping while marching. I see that someone refers to it as “magic feet”: the feet just keep on moving regardless, “particularly when drunk or really tired I can have a cat nap and my feet just take me home”.
So I live in hope! I already know that the way to deal with being unable to sleep is to be relaxed about it. Stressing out about it only makes the whole thing worse. And who knows, maybe my feet will get me there, whether I am awake or asleep!
Well, I have had my five minutes of fame in my local paper, the Kentish Gazette, under the heading Thrilla-gran-jaro! Just as well I am not a sensitive soul.
Now I come to think of it, I have made the news before. In 1971, the Guardian newspaper ran a competition to celebrate the 150th anniversary of their first edition. Every day for ten days, they published an extract of an article which had appeared in the paper at some time in the past, and the competitors had to try to work out on which date each extract had appeared.
Nowadays, I imagine the answers could be worked out in minutes using the internet. However in 1971, the only way to find the answers was to go into one of the two libraries in the country that had the Guardian on microfilm, and go through looking for the actual article. I was between jobs then, so decided to spend two weeks working on the competition in the Central Reference Library in Manchester, where we lived at the time. Each morning first thing Stewart, who knows stuff, would look at that day’s extract and tell me what he thought it might have to do with and when. Each microfilm held three months of newspapers, so I would go through the relevant film looking for the article. I did manage to identify all ten extracts, but was very disheartened when my name appeared in the paper along with several others, who had also done so. A tie-breaker competition was announced: they gave us another half dozen extracts. These six were nearly impossible! I remember one of them started “The security of Europe is being threatened…..” and not much more! I found four of them, but the other two could not be located. I remember meeting Stewart as he left work, after having spent a long day in the library, telling him I was going to give up. Happily, Stewart persuaded me to send my answers in, making calculated guesses for the two we couldn’t find – and I won! We discovered later that I was one day closer in one of the guesses than anyone else.
The prize was the amazing thing! Someone said at the time that the Guardian staff must have thought of it on a drunken night out! There were twelve parts to the prize and we got them all! They were:
1. Bacon, egg and marmalade every day for a year to go with your morning Guardian.
2. A weekend for two in the Mediterranean. (More about this to follow in future blogs).
3. A trip round the Guardian presses.
4. A print by Papas, the Guardian cartoonist.
5. Four premium bonds.
6. Two test match tickets.
7. Four LPs of your choice. (Long play records: this was the olden days!)
8. A family subscription to the National Trust.
9. Twelve bottles of wine.
10. A copy of “The History of the Guardian” by David Ayhurst.
and two more, which I can’t currently remember, but will no doubt come back to me when it’s too late – my brain is definitely going.
A guy from the paper came to our flat to discuss and negotiate about the prize. It turned out that a chef was not going to serve us up with our breakfast every day! We agreed a price for that, but did get all the other prizes. Stewart remembers that we were shown round the Guardian presses by a man whose job was to sit in a van with a telephone outside football grounds. All the football results would be phoned through to him and he would tell printers, who were in the van with him, what to put in the “Late News” section of the Guardian’s sister paper, the Evening News, so that when the fans came out of the game, they could buy a newspaper with all that day’s results in. All of that has been eclipsed by the arrival of the digital age.
At least my moments of fame have been original! I was the only person to get anything in the Guardian competition – I got everything- and I might be the first granny, accompanied by two other generations, to climb Kili!
My nephew, Samson, has just started school in Australia. He brought home a book which Gwen assumed he was meant to be reading. She was quite shocked to turn to the following page (he is five!):
She pointed out that she has gone 39 years without reading the word “lackadaisical”! (I have to say, it’s a word I love, but I did think there was an “s” after the “k” until I was well past 30.) Anyway, it is a beautifully poetic story by Eric Carle of Hungry Caterpillar fame, and seeing it reminded me of all the Kili reviews I’m reading which talk about how it’s important to go slowly. “Pole, pole” (pronounced pole-eh, pole-eh) means “slowly, slowly” in Swahili. Apparently it’s one of the most common calls of the guides and porters – presumably as they dash past us having packed up the previous campsite, to get to the next one, set up, and start preparing food, before we get there. No dashing for us though – to give ourselves the best chance of making it we will be dawdling and dillydallying from the low slopes. Mum has written about taking her watch off and just living in the moment. So we certainly won’t be lazy, but maybe – like the sloth – we will be relaxed and tranquil, and live in peace. For the first couple of days anyway!
A lot seems to have been written about the issue of peeing on Kili. Everyone is expected to drink at least three litres of water every day, because dehydration can very quickly become very serious, leading to altitude sickness.
One site I looked at referred to hourly daytime stops for a quick snack, a drink and a wee, adding that “It’s a miracle that Mount Kilimanjaro hasn’t completely eroded in a tsunami of urine”!
Most of the advice on this issue is aimed at men, referring to the use of “pee bottles”, especially at night. Once you are in bed, wearing a few layers of clothes, socks and a hat (yes!), inside a sleeping bag and zipped into a tent, the prospect of getting oneself outside with shoes and a head lamp on for a wee is not attractive. I see mention of people being kept awake all night by the sound of people zipping and unzipping their tents to go on such trips.
There is an upside: apparently the stars are the best I am ever likely to see, with absolutely no light pollution and a moonlight night is something really special up there. The Milky Way is reputed to be fantastic and I am really looking forward to seeing that.
One of the suggestions for women is to pee in a zip lock bag at night. That would take some skill, I imagine! However, one clearly experienced woman says that “firm receptacles are easier to hold and use, while having less potential for spillage”. She recommends taking a “plastic mayonnaise/pickle/peanut jar” as large and wide as you need. She is clearly an American: I don’t think these commodities come in suitable plastic containers in the UK. Another woman recommends taking a “quart size empty yogurt container”, which I imagine would do the job, so long as it didn’t end up cracked during its daily trip up the mountain in a back pack.
However, the prospect of that, when there are three of us in the tent, including a 13 year old boy, is not inviting. I think the shoes, head lamp and stars beckon.
What are the differences and similarities between climbing Kili and having a baby? To date, probably the most extreme physical activity I have ever been involved in is pushing out a baby – and I think that is something I have in common with very many women. I am now a bit out of practice for that, not having done it for almost 40 years – but the two activities have much in common!
The similarities
Preparation (including shopping in readiness!) takes several months.
It is in your head all the time during the build up to the event, and you have to avoid obsessing about it to all in sundry.
You need to abstain from smoking and drinking alcohol.
During the actual climb/labour you need to use extreme mental and physical strength for a prolonged period of time – possibly for several days. The ability to “zone out” is useful.
There can be a lot of weeing and vomiting involved.
Having done it, you get one of the greatest emotional highs of your life and it is something you will remember for the rest of your days.
The differences:
The weight goes on during pregnancy, but ideally should come off in preparation for going up Kili (unless one is already thin or a child!).
You can back out at any point up to the last minute from the climb: no such choice with a baby.
You need to pile all your clothes on for summiting Kili: they all need to get stripped off for giving birth.
Once you have got to the top of Kili, you have to turn round and do it all again in reverse. Not an option with a baby!
You get a good night’s sleep as a reward for the climb, but can’t expect to get one in the foreseeable future after having a baby.
You might manage to raise money for a good cause by climbing, but birth will result in the haemorrhaging of money for the next few decades.
I am sure there are lots of other similarities and differences: any suggestions?
Jae, seconds after having number three. Will childbirth be any preparation for Kili?
My friend Anne and I were invited to join a regular walking group this week, on a walk from Blean Church, just outside Canterbury, to Whitstable on the coast, so we went along, taking our Nordic walking poles for a bit of exercise. They were a nice bunch of about eight or nine women, including the organiser’s mother, Nina, whom we were told is 93 years old! If I am as sprightly as her when I reach anything like her age, I will be thrilled. We walked along the Crab and Winkle Track, which used to be the route of the train between Canterbury and Whitstable – one of the first railways in the world. It is now a great cycling and walking route, well away from all traffic. We walked fairly briskly, and Nina was there with the best of us, when we arrived in Whitstable.
Anne and I decided to go into a pub for a quick lunch, having said goodbye to the rest of the group. I noticed she was wearing a lovely cashmere sweater. and wondered aloud if I should think about buying one for extra warmth on Kili. Then it suddenly struck me: I already have a cashmere jumper, which belonged to my mother.
My family lived in Hawick, in the Scottish borders, which is famous for quality knitwear, and the men worked for Braemar Knitwear in the local mill. It produced very fine lambswool and cashmere knitwear which was exported all over the world. I recollect that my paternal grandmother’s claim to fame was that she wore the first ever twinset. For those born in the last half century, a twinset was a short-sleeved woolen round necked jumper, worn underneath a long-sleeved button up cardigan – an outfit rendered obsolete by the advent of central heating!
My mother died in 1959 at the very young age of 34 – when I was 12 – leaving behind a tallboy (a piece of furniture, which we used to have in the olden days!!) full of beautiful knitwear. My sister Leslie and I wore these jumpers and cardigans during our teenage years, and wore most of them out. However, for some reason, I held on to one peach coloured jumper, and it has spent the last 50 years or so, pushed in at the back of my jumper drawer.
So when I got back from the walk I pulled out all my jumpers, sorting out a few for a charity shop while I was about it, and at the back was indeed the vintage Braemar cashmere jumper. It probably dates from the mid 1950s. It has a few small holes in it and has seen its best days, but is an ideal garment to take up Kili, being extremely thin and light, but warm.
I am really thrilled to be able to take something of my mother up the mountain. I have already “bagged up” some of my lovely mother-in-law’s ashes to leave on the top – they are currently stored in a pretty cloth bag with lace round the top, which she would have liked – and now something of my own mother can come too. Great to have something of two much loved women forming a 4th generation along on the trip.
Hawick is a small border town where Sheila grew up
We’re in this week’s Kentish Gazette. How exciting!
The journalist who wrote the article was Chris Pragnell, who was in Gwen’s year at school, and whose sister, Charlotte was in my class. When he called her to chat, Ma recognised his name and remembered that his dad had recently had a book published. Despite technically being a city, Canterbury sometimes feels like a very small town!
The headline makes me smile; I can just imagine them in the office trying “Killer-gran-jaro” or worse, “Kill-a-gran-jaro”, before coming up with, “Thriller-gran-jaro”!
It reminds me of my lovely Grandpa – Dad’s dad. His name was Charlie Miller. He smoked a pipe, wore a bunnet (a flat cap in Scotland), and loved his garden. He was a man of few words but his favourite saying was, “silent like the p in swimming”, and he used to spoonerise everything. It was his thing. “Fifes and norks”, “chiskets and bees”, a “cack of pards”, and they even lived at number “torty foo”! If Grandpa knew about our trip I’m sure he’d wish us luck on “Miller-can-jaro”. It feels appropriate. Ma’s a Miller, I used to be, Oscar has Miller blood in him, and I certainly hope we “can”!
+++ Additional note from Sheila: I always enjoyed the “sharley boogers”! He liked going close to the edge! +++
I am sure you will have heard it said that there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing. Well my friend Mary carries that saying a bit further! She thinks that you can cope in any circumstances, so long as you have the “right underpinnings” on! And I do take a lot of heed of what Mary says. I have known her for more than 40 years and she has done some amazingly diverse things during that time. She has been trained to wield a chain saw, has surf boarded regularly with her children and grandchildren, worked as a film extra, stood guard for a week over an osprey’s nest and has been a catwalk model. So perhaps you can understand my obsession with getting the base layer right for the climb: with the right underpinnings, you can conquer all!
With this in mind, I made off to Mountain Warehouse again this week, to pick up some skiing underpinnings for Oscar in the sale. I have bought him an identical kit in merino wool to that which I bought for myself last week: base layer top and bottom, plus a mid-layer top. I have become especially attached to my mid-layer top because the sleeves come half-way over my hands with a slot to pass my thumb through. It is such a great way to stop sleeves wrinkling up, when struggling in and out of coats. I always thought it looked really sloppy when I saw youngsters with long sleeves, often with home made holes cut for their thumbs. Well, all is forgiven. It keeps everything so snug. Jumpers I knit in future are all going to have long sleeves with thumb holes. The only drawback is that it makes it impossible to see the time on your watch, but as you will already know from previous blogs, my watch is not coming up Kili, so that won’t cause me a problem there.
When Jae’s three sons were a bit younger, I remember overhearing a conversation between them when they said it was strange, that the only woman who seemed to find farts funny was their aunt, Gwen. They, and I regret to say most of their sex, seem to think farting is hysterically hilarious.
Well, Gwen is missing a trick! Does she know about HAFE? That is: “High Altitude Flatus Expulsion, which involves the spontaneous passage of increased quantities of rectal gasses at high altitudes. The phenomenon is based on the differential in atmospheric pressure. As the external pressure decreases, the difference in pressure between the gas within the body and the atmosphere outside is higher, and the urge to expel gas to relieve the pressure is greater”
So it looks like Oscar might have lots of laughs up Kili. I am not so sure than Jae and I will, if we are all in one tent. Perhaps Oscar should be doing this climb with Gwen: they could fall about farting and laughing together!
Jae, Oscar and I went to a talk with Apples, the lovely guy from Exodus, during the recent half term week. He mentioned during his talk that he assumed that we three would all be sharing a tent. I said that I thought there were two person tents – optimistically imagining I might get a tent to myself. Well it seems that he had a word with Jae afterwards and told her that as Oscar is so thin – taller than I am, but as thin as a pencil – it might be best if we had a three person tent and we slept with Oscar in the middle to keep him warm. Cosy indeed!
I looked on the internet about the risks of being cold and found this gem about hypothermia on Kilimanjaro:
“Treatment for hypothermia involves thoroughly warming the patient quickly. Find shelter as soon as possible. Put the patient, without their clothes, into a sleeping-bag with hot water bottles (use your water bottles). Someone else should take their clothes off too and get into the sleeping bag with the patient. There is nothing like bodily warmth to hasten recovery”.
Did I really sign up for this? Am I going to end up naked in a sleeping bag with someone else? My grandson???!!! Some stranger? Is this for real?
We got a fab surprise this weekend. My little sister, Gwen, made us our very own logo!
Litlun is a real life Wonderwoman. As well as looking a little like Lynda Carter (!), in the last eight years she’s got married, moved to Australia, had two children, run 5 half marathons, set up her own design agency (Boxer & Co), and written and published a book. If the phrase, “If you need something doing ask a busy person” was made about anyone, it was made about Gwen. She can also whip up a delicious meal for 14 with no fuss in very little time – taking vegetarians, and gluten-free folk into consideration!
It hadn’t occurred to me to add to her “to do” list but, without even mentioning it, she just sent through the logo.
I love it almost as much as I love her. Hope you like it too!
Sheila, Paula & others create nourishing home-cooked meals with lots of veggies. This day it was salmon en croute.
I noticed recently on the VirginMoneyGiving site, where charity sponsorship money linked to our walk is raised, that my friend Paula has made quite a big donation to the charities we are supporting in Tanzania and Canterbury.
If you had said to me a couple of years ago that I would have a friend, who was a Roman Catholic nun, who was supporting me in climbing up the highest free-standing mountain in the world, I would have said that you were fantasizing! Every part of that sentence would have seemed quite bizarre – but it is the reality.
When I stopped working as a solicitor at the end of October 2013, the next day I started as a volunteer at Catching Lives, the local charity which works with the homeless in Canterbury. I had looked at their website, and really liked that their aim is to work with people to get them back into work and accommodation – not just to put on a sticking plaster by giving them food and somewhere to sleep for a night. I also thought it was great that they suggest that all volunteers should spend three months working in the kitchen before moving into any other volunteering roles with the charity, so that both the volunteer and the charity can be sure they are comfortable with each other. Their centre is only ten minutes walk from home, so I went round to have a look. I said that I could be free every Wednesday to come in. I was told there was a “nun of about 80” in charge of the kitchen on Wednesdays (not quite true!!!) and that it might be better if I came in on Thursdays, when there were a lively bunch of recent retirees in the kitchen. However, Wednesday was the only day I could be sure of having free – no Pilates, patchwork, nor U3A classes – and it wouldn’t interfere with any weekend plans!
I remember nuns living round the corner, when I was a child in Hawick. They were very forbidding people, dressed in black, very like those in “The Sound of Music”. I was quite terrified of them. However, my experience in the kitchen has been so different from anything I might have expected – and 15 months on, I am still there every Wednesday, because I love it. There are four of us regulars, who come every Wednesday, and we always find something to laugh about. Sometimes there are also students and other volunteers.
Paula turns out to be a highly intelligent right-minded, (although left wing) feminist – who will not be 80 for a few years yet! We have had discussions in the kitchen about everything under the sun, including Aids, divorce, and even frequency of sexual intercourse, and Paula has participated in a matter of fact way without showing any signs of embarrassment or shock. She welcomes me in the kitchen with a hug and I am proud to count her as my friend. She knows I am an atheist. I know she believes there is a God. We have respect for each other.
I got an email from Ma about an experiment done in the Himalaya a couple of decades ago. The attached article is pretty long but Ma sums it up in her email so you’ll get the drift even if you don’t have the inclination to read the medical report! Here it is:
Hello Jae,
Stew’s cousin Eleanor phoned me today, having read of our proposed jaunt. As you know she specialised in nursing people with brain injuries and illness at Frenchay hospital in Bristol. She said she knew of this research into Intracranial Pressure (ICP) that had been done and written up in the attached article. It really is the most bizarre thing! These guys had operations to put ICP monitors put into their heads and then went up mountains to study the effect! Apparently the main guy – Mr Cummins – didn’t think it worth having another op to remove the monitor from his head afterwards and just left it in, and died with it still in. The article says that this research would never be allowed today for ethical reasons. Too right.
To summarise the article, it seems that younger people have tight brains without much space. Old people have a few holes here and there. This means that when a brain swells at high altitude because of lack of oxygen, it is more likely to cause altitude sickness in a young person than in an older one, who is likely to have a few gaps to allow for expansion! I knew there had to be something positive about not being able to remember anything – I have loads of empty space, I reckon. Eleanor was a bit concerned about Oscar’s brain, but I told her that Exodus are really careful, and whip anyone back down the mountain, if they seem to be losing the plot.
I actually laughed while reading the article: one of the highlights includes a replacement of someone’s piles digitally! That’s one reason why it is me, not your father, going up the mountain!!!
I read Jae’s blog of 14th February, which detailed her height and weight, and thought, blinking heck, I have to lose some weight, if I am going to get up this mountain! I know that Oscar is almost exactly as tall as me – well, I am 5’7″ and he is a tad more -and asked Jae to let me know what he weighed. It was half term, so had to wait quite a while for an answer, but eventually about mid-day, she managed to lever him out of bed on to the scales. I was horrified to discover that at 7 stone 2 pounds, he is nearly 4 stone lighter than me! So it seems like I will have to work 50% harder than him to move myself up Kili, unless I lose a chunk of me. I thought I would work out all of our BMIs on the NHS site – and was surprised and pleased to discover that all 3 of us come within the “normal” category. Jae is just below the middle of “normal”, Oscar is at the low end of it, and I, of course, am at the top end of it. So the diet starts here! If I could get to 10 stone, I would be bang in the middle of normal for my sex, age and weight, so that seems what I should aim for. I did get below that in 2006 in preparation for Gwen’s wedding – well I had to be a glam mother of the bride – but the weight did seem to come off my boobs and face. I hope I can get it off my thighs and bum this time!
PS By Jae – Here’s a photo of Mum looking completely gorgeous at my little sis Gwen’s wedding.
Oscar, Jae and I recently went to a talk/slide show, given by a gorgeous big bear of a man from Exodus, who has the unusual name of Apples. He is one of their experts on Kilimanjaro: he seems to have been up and down the mountain about as many times as I have been to the cinema! In fact, he told us that once he had led a group up Kilimanjaro and when he came down, he discovered that the guy who was supposed to lead the next group up had been taken ill. So he simply turned round and went up again, leading that group!
Apples told us a bit about what happens. Apparently every morning, we will be woken by a porter knocking on our tent door (?) saying “Wakey, wakey” with a cup of “bed tea” in his/her hand. Just as well there will be someone else to take over Stew’s usual job of bringing me tea in bed! Twenty minutes later, the porter will reappear with a bowl of warm water, saying “Washy, washy”. It seems like the day continues like that: there will even be someone there to remind me to wash my hands when I appear out of the toilet tent.
In a sense, it is almost like returning to childhood: someone else is in charge, and I will only have to do as I am told. I could just live in the moment as children do, not having to think about what comes next, until I am told to do so.
That’s a bit different from what my working life has been. As a legal aid solicitor, my time was divided into six minute units: I had to do “time recording”, accounting for what work I was doing for whom, during each unit of time. I have always had to keep my eye on the clock and lead a very structured working life. I pretty much always know the time, day or night, within a few minutes. Could I hand over to others for the duration of the trip? Leave my watch behind (my phone definitely isn’t coming due to lack of charging facilities up Kili) and just live in the moment? No thinking about how long I have been walking or have still to walk – just drift along putting one foot in front of the other, eating when told, sleeping when told, waking when told and washing when told! It could be an even more amazing experience if I can manage it!
PS From Jae: Check out free talks with Apples and other Exodus experts here:
