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July 2002 |
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Monday 1 July [This is a continuation of yesterday's entry.] Seeing that the weather looked just slightly better on Wednesday than it had done for the first part of the week, we had a very early lunch at the cottage and then set off for a afternoon hike over one of the lower ranges of hills in the Rough Bounds of Knoydart. The two Andrews, being about 30 years younger than the rest of us and far more energetic, went off on a separate expedition to one of the higher peaks. The rest of us climbed a hill of about 500 metres and along an undulating ridge, until we saw a peak ahead of us, labelled An Caisteal (Gaelic for The Castle) on the Ordnance Survey map. It looked very formidable, with steep rocky crags on all sides. Bob and Barbara were feeling tired and decided to turn back at this stage, but Allan wanted to continue. I went on with him, and so did Freda and the dogs. When we got to An Caisteal we found that there were ways up the crags. We had to backtrack at one point where we got stuck, but we soon found another route up to the summit. The dogs scrambled up with no difficulty at all. Did I mention that Freda has a couple of long-haired collies that she takes with her wherever she goes? They are very good natured dogs, and excellent mountaineers. (But they messed up our sleeping arrangements. There were three bedrooms in the cottage, a large one for Allan, Bob and me, one for the Andrews and one for Freda and Barbara. But Freda insisted on having the dogs in with her, and Barbara very understandably refused to share a room with two large and usually damp dogs. So she ended up using the third bed in the Andrews' room. An unconventional arrangement, but nobody seemed to mind.) We were hoping that when we reached the top of An Caisteal we would find it easy to get down the far side. The map marked the contours as being much less steep there, and so it turned out. We made our way to a col, and from there down a steep grassy slope to the valley floor, and so back to the cottage. This was quite a short expedition, but better than nothing after four days of being unable to climb at all. On Thursday morning it was again wet and windy. By now, we were beginning to be despondent of our chances of getting any serious climbing at all. The rain stopped at lunch time, and in the afternoon I walked down to Barrisdale Bay and took a few photos. I'll probably put some of them online when I have had time to process them. We woke early on Friday morning to find that at last the cloud level had lifted above the mountains, and it looked as though the day would stay dry. We had a quick breakfast, made sandwiches for lunch, and set off at 8.20 to climb Ladhar Bheinn. According to The Munros,
I'll go along with that. You could add that one of the attractions of Ladhar Bheinn is its remoteness. I have wanted to climb it for years, but I never thought that I would get the opportunity. After almost a whole week of bad weather, it was very exciting to get a day when we would have a view from the summit. For most of the day our group consisted of just me and my two old friends Bob and Allan. Barbara, Freda and the dogs went off to climb another mountain. The Andrews followed the same route as us, but at a much faster pace. They set off about an hour later than us, and arrived home about an hour before us. But for the most interesting part of the climb, along the very narrow summit ridge around the head of Coire Dhorrcail, they stayed with us, and we all had lunch together at the main summit. The view from there was as magnificent as the guide book claims. But the boys (as we call the Andrews, although they are in their late 20s) missed the view altogether, because as soon as we reached the summit they sat down on the lee side and started their lunch. Us old folks are cannier than that, however. We spent ten minutes walking over to an outlying point where we could see across the sea to Skye and to the many other mountain ranges in all directions. Then, almost as soon as we got back to the summit and sat down to eat, the cloud level dropped and we were in thick mist with no view at all. The cloud didn't lift until an hour or so later, by which time we were well past the best viewpoints. We got back to the cottage soon after 4 in the afternoon, in time to prepare the final evening's meal, which consisted of just about all our remaining supplies. We had run out of wine by this time (having had too much on previous evenings), but fortunately the boys had brought a couple of dozen cans of beer with them. So we were able to celebrate a memorable day's expedition in a suitable style. On Saturday morning, when it was time for us to leave, it was again raining heavily. I was wearing my climbing boots, waterproof overtrousers and two anoraks, but after walking two miles from the cottage to the landing stage at Barrisdale Bay and then being ferried six miles along Loch Hourn in an open boat, I was beginning to feel the damp penetrating to my skin. I said goodbye to my friends, peeled off the soaking outer layers of clothing, turned up the heater in the car, and set off on the 385 mile drive back to Leeds. I suppose we could have hoped for something better than six cold, wet, frustrating days on our annual holiday week. But that seems a small price to pay when the seventh day was as memorable as last Friday.
This is the time of year when we meet our publishing partners from Russia. The meetings are held alternately in Moscow and London. Last year I went to Moscow, so this year they came to London, which is where I have been for the last two days. I don't have anything to say about the meetings themselves, which went very smoothly. The significant thing is that Mary came too. She didn't attend the meetings, of course, but she came to the dinner that we hosted for the Russians at a hotel just round the corner from the British Museum. This time last year, Mary couldn't have imagined doing such a thing. She was suffering so badly from MCS (multiple chemical sensitivities) and food allergies that she was more or less a prisoner in our house, and couldn't cope with any social activities at all. After a year of very carefully controlled diet, and desensitising injections that she gives herself every day, she has got to the stage where she thought it would be worth risking a trip to London to see how she coped with it. It wasn't altogether easy for her. She was very conscious of the air pollution everywhere in the city. When I booked the hotel room, I asked them to make sure not to use any cleaning fluids in the bathroom, or to use any kind of "air freshener" in the bedroom. They promised to see to that. But when Mary checked in on Tuesday afternoon she found that they hadn't taken any of the precautions that we had requested. That doesn't surprise me at all. Most of the staff there are foreign students working for a pittance, and some of them scarcely speak any English. So one learns not to have high expectations of the place. But Mary is pretty good at getting what she wants, and she persuaded them to upgrade us (for the same price) to a much better room that was relatively quiet and unpolluted. The dinner for the Russians turned out to be a self service buffet. This had the advantage that Mary could pick and choose foods that she doesn't react to. It's not always easy entertaining the Russians, and I was very grateful to have Mary there to bail out my inadequate social skills. She has the knack of being able to talk to anyone and make them feel at ease. Mary was exhausted by the time we got back home yesterday. But she survived this overnight trip pretty well, and at least it doesn't seem to have triggered any kind of relapse. That's just as well, because part of the reason for going to London was as a test run for our visit to Shanghai and Beijing next month. If the London trip had caused serious problems then she would have had to cancel the visit to China. She is still apprehensive about how she will cope next month, but I think she will be okay.
Today being the Fourth of July, our friends across the Atlantic will be celebrating a holiday. According to a report on the radio this morning more than 50% of all Americans are expecting another terrorist attack today. That seems highly unlikely to me. Your average terrorist doesn't give a shit for Independence Day. He is much more likely to choose a significant day in the Islamic or Saudi Arabian calendar for the next atrocity. If I were Director of Homeland Security I would be much more concerned about an attack on 3 October this year (the eve of the festival of the Ascent of the Prophet, Peace Be Upon Him). But I very much hope that I'm wrong about that, and that we can all celebrate our holidays and festivals in peace.
The West Yorkshire Playhouse runs a very generous scheme for groups of disabled people and their carers to go to theatre performances at absurdly low prices. These outings are very popular with Mary's M.E. group, and we often go with them, as much for the company as for the £3 admission price. We could easily afford to pay the full price, but we take advantage of the cheap offer and make up for it by giving the Playhouse an annual donation. Mary tends to sign us up for these visits without me knowing much about it. Yesterday evening we went to see a play that I knew nothing at all about except that it was called Dirty Blonde. That didn't sound a particularly promising title to me, and I wasn't altogether looking forward to it. But it turned out to be an excellent play, hilariously funny and very well acted. It tells the story of Mae West's life. This also is something about which I previously knew very little. The play incorporates plenty of her famous one-liners ("Goodness, what beautiful diamonds," someone said to her. "Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie," she growled.) More seriously, it shows how her open and uninhibited attitude to sex and sexuality challenged and helped to change the buttoned-up attitudes of the inter-war years. In the play, her story is cleverly interleaved with the lives of two present-day New Yorkers, united by their admiration for Mae West. The play uses their insecurities and hangups to hint that the sexual liberation fought for by Mae West is by no means complete yet. This production was apparently a hit on Broadway. The West Yorkshire production is the British debut, and it is likely to transfer to the London West End when this run is finished. Claudia Shear, who wrote the play, is very convincing in the part of Mae West, and the two supporting actors are also excellent. I strongly recommend this play if you get a chance to see it.
At the weekend, I organised and uploaded the few photos that I took in Scotland last month. If you're interested, you can find them here.
[The Guardian's review of Dirty Blonde was even more enthusiastic than mine: "These are performances worth crossing the Atlantic for, never mind a trip to Leeds. You really should come up and see it sometime." It gets the full five stars.] I hesitate to tempt fate by mentioning it, but it seems as though summer has finally reached Leeds. We had a few fine days at the beginning of May, but since then it has been almost uninterruptedly cold, overcast or rainy, or some combination of those three. In a recent journal entry, Andrew captures, much better than I can, the dispiriting effect of this relentless dismal weather. I suppose one ought to get used to it, though I never have done. It seems to happen most years here, and in fact we often don't really seem to get a summer at all. Some neighbours of ours, who moved into this area a few months after us, decided to give a party to commemorate 21 summers in Leeds. When I saw the invitation, I said to Mary, "How come they've had 21 summers here and we've only noticed about three?" But as it happened, they had got their timing just right. The party took place yesterday evening, and for the past couple of days it has been genuinely warm and sunny here. We were actually able to stay outside in their garden for most of the evening. It was a pretty good party, too. We hardly knew any of the other guests, but they were a friendly bunch and we enjoyed our evening. This was another milepost on Mary's journey to recovery. This time last year, a similar event was a major adventure for her, requiring a lot of detailed planning. But now, she can more or less take an outing like this in her stride. Tomorrow is St Swithin's Day. According to folklore, if it is a fine day then it will remain that way for the next 40 days. Conversely, if it rains then the next 40 days will be wet. So our prospects for having a summer this year apparently depend on whether it's a sunny day tomorrow. The forecast is good.
One of the first gay-themed novels I read was Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story, and I have since read several of his other books. Naturally, when I saw that his latest book was called A Married Man, I had to buy it. As usual, I waited until the paperback edition came out, then I stacked it in my pile of books waiting to be read. When it came to the top of the pile I read it slowly, a few pages at a time, and now I have finished it. The married man of the title is Julien, a Parisian in his 30s, in the process of divorcing his wife. He meets, and falls in love with, Austin, an older American expat living in Paris. As you would expect from Edmund White, their deepening relationship is subtly and convincingly portrayed. White is also a master at capturing the atmosphere of different places. He vividly conveys the feel of the many locations that Austin and Julien visit in Europe and America, and the differences between European and American culture. At one point one of the characters says "The best people are Europeanised Americans." I think there's a lot of truth in that, except that I would say Americanised Europeans are just as good. There's a darker side to the book, though. Austin is HIV positive, and Julien discovers that he has Aids. Whether or not he caught it from Austin is never made clear. In the second part of the book, White unflinchingly charts Julien's deteriorating health and inevitable death. After Julien's death, Austin discovers some surprising things about his past, which make him realise that he never really knew Julien at all. I found this part of the book very painful to read. I'm glad that I have now finished it, and I'll look for something lighter to read next.
Who would you say is currently the world's greatest athlete? I don't think I'm qualified to answer that question, because there are only a few sports that I follow with any interest at all. One sporting event that I always like to watch on television is the Tour de France. For many years, Channel 4 used to cover the Tour, but for the past few years they have not done so, and nor have any of the other British TV channels. So I was pleased to discover this year that one of the digital stations, British Eurosport, has been following the Tour, with a half hour summary programme on weekdays and live coverage at the weekends. This year, as for the past three years, the race is totally dominated by Lance Armstrong. He has to be my nominee for the greatest living athlete, because of the way he completely outclasses everyone else in his sport. In the flat stages of the race, and the time trials, he is content to stay somewhere up among the leaders. But when the Tour reaches the mountains he just totally blows away the opposition. Last week, when the Tour reached the Pyrenees, he simply moved up into a different gear from all the other riders, and won two successive stages in an apparently effortless way. Today's stage, a ferocious ascent to the summit of the 2,000 metre Mont Ventoux, was won by the veteran French rider Richard Virenque. ("Veteran", in this context, seems to mean someone more than about half as old as me.) Armstrong came in third, but still managed to double his lead over his nearest rival in the overall classification. He seems certain to win his fourth consecutive Tour. What makes his achievement all the more impressive is that he comes from a country where cycling is virtually unknown as a competitive sport.
This goes back to my entry about Mae West a couple of weeks back. I came across another anecdote about her. Maybe you already know it. An interviewer asked her how many husbands she had had. Her reply: "D'you mean my own, or other people's?"
We're going to stay with Liz and Paul for a few days. They are living in a small town near the south coast, where Paul works. Liz also has a part time job there for three afternoons a week. On the other days she commutes to London for her osteopathy studies. This is a trip that we were going to take last summer, but Mary's MCS (multiple chemical sensitivities) meant that last summer had to cancelled altogether for us. Things have now improved sufficiently that she reckons it's worth risking. Liz and Paul have a small flat, and we weren't sure that they would be able to accommodate us. So we had been thinking of staying in a B&B. We got Liz to check out a couple of local places, and she reported that they smelled strongly of "air fresheners" and cleaning fluids, which would have been disastrous to Mary. Liz then said that it would be quite feasible for us to stay with them, but that she was worried that we would find the flat very dusty because they only have a very old and ineffective vacuum cleaner. The obvious solution to that problem is that we have bought a new vacuum cleaner for them. It's a lot cheaper than the cost of staying for a week in a B&B, and it will come in handy for them in the future (if they can ever be bothered to use it). While we're staying with them, there are several other relatives to visit. My brother and his family, and Mary's brother and his family, both live fairly near by, and so does a cousin of mine whom I usually only see at weddings or funerals. We'll be away for the next week, and maybe a day or two longer. So this is the last journal entry for July.
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