Monday 8 August
Home again, after another wonderful week in Scotland. We stayed at a large house in Glen Shee, with six bedrooms for our party of twelve (nine adults and three children). I shared a room with Bob, as usual on these holidays. He and I seem to be growing older at about the same rate. Although we're both slower on the hills than we used to be, we still climb at about the same pace, and enjoy each other's company.
There are many mountains in that area, but they all seem fairly similar, rounded grassy hills with bleak stony summit plateaus. We climbed nine Munros during the week, but two of them were hills that I had climbed before. Together with the four that I climbed last month, that gives me 11 new Munros this year, bringing my total up to 93 (out of a total of 284, so there's still a long long way to go).
Four days of climbing were interspersed with two rest days, when we went for low-level walks along some beautiful remote glens. I took several photos, and I'll put these on the family web site when I have time.
There's lots of wildlife in the hills. We saw huge herds of deer, big colonies of hares, and lots of birds. I'm no good at identifying birds, so I have to take other people's word for the fact that we saw ptarmigan, curlews, plovers, pipits, grouse, and many others that I have forgotten. I also saw an adder, only the third time that I have seen a snake in the wild.
The weather was tolerable by Scottish standards. That's to say, it stayed mostly dry (except on Friday, when our wet weather gear was severely tested). But there was a fierce, icy wind on the mountain tops, which made for very tiring walking. Perhaps because of this, I have come home with a heavy cold. I was only just recovering from a previous infection when I went away, but this seems to be something different. For the past couple of days I have had a thick head and a hacking cough, but I expect that will pass in another day or two.
The day after I came home, the papers were full of headlines that Robin Cook had died from a heart attack while climbing in the Scottish Highlands. His death was obviously a terrible shock for his wife, who was climbing with him, but I don't feel too sorry for him: he died while doing the thing that he loved, and there's a lot to be said for that. I'd be glad enough to go the same way (but not just yet, thanks). It is a tragedy that he died so young, though. He was almost alone among politicians in putting honesty and integrity before expediency, and he was the only person in the whole miserable Labour cabinet who resigned in advance of the Iraq invasion.
I'm grateful that he didn't die a few days earlier, though. Headlines like "Robin Cook dies after collapse on mountain" would not have been welcome to Mary if she had seen them while I was still out there climbing those mountains.
Friday 12 August
This cold has been getting worse all week, and yesterday I went to see the doctor. I avoid doctors when I can, and indeed there's no point on going to the doctor with a minor viral infection like a cold. There's nothing they can do for it, and it's best treated at home with plenty of hot drinks and occasional painkillers like Paracetamol or whisky. Usually that's all that's needed, and the cold clears up after a few days. But sometimes it will give rise to a bacterial infection like bronchitis, and then there's no alternative but to ask the doctor for an antibiotic. This has happened often enough to me that I know the warning signs.
I slept badly on Wednesday night, and woke up knowing that the cold had triggered a bad case of sinusitis. My eyes were inflamed and my whole head felt as though it might burst at any moment. I phoned the doctor's receptionist, who was her usual helpful (not) self. "We're talking about some time next week," she said brightly when I asked for an appointment. I told her that wasn't acceptable and I needed to see someone NOW. At that, she backtracked and said that I could have an emergency appointment that morning. It wasn't with my usual doctor but that didn't matter because it was pretty obvious what the problem was. I came away with a prescription for a course of Doxycycline. Checking on the internet, I find that this antibiotic is most often prescribed for sexually transmitted diseases. But it's said to be good for sinus infections too.
The National Health Service may be chronically slow and underfunded, but at least it's free. Those of us over 60 don't even have to pay for drugs. I came home with my free supply of Doxycycline and took the first dose straight away. It seems to work quite fast, and by yesterday evening I was already feeling much better. Today I was well enough to go into town to do some shopping. Unfortunately, Mary has now caught my cold and is feeling miserable.
That's about all the news for this week. I have processed the photos I took in Scotland last week and put them on the family web site here. (They're not a very inspired collection. Most of the photos seem to be of identical looking flat stony mountain tops. But if you persist as far as the second page you'll see a photo of me. Big deal.)
Monday 22 August
Ten days since the previous journal entry. That's bad. My excuse is (a) I have been slow to recover from that cold that I mentioned last time, (b) I have been immersed in South Africa all that time. Not physically, you understand, but mentally.
Next year, 2006, is going to be a significant one for us in terms of anniversaries. Mary and I both turn 65 (me in January, she in December), and we have our 40th wedding anniversary in April. Also, I shall finally be retiring, after three years of semi-retirement. We decided to celebrate all these things together by taking a major trip abroad. Neither of us has ever set foot in Africa, so that's one good reason for going there. Also, when we were in New Zealand last year and were overwhelmed by the spectacular scenery there, we met a man who told us that South Africa was even more beautiful. Finally, my good friend Allan (that I go walking in Scotland with) comes from South Africa and is always enthusiastic about it. When we were on holiday together earlier this month he gave me some useful ideas about where to go.
It was actually Mary's idea to go to South Africa next year, but I was very happy with the suggestion. We are planning to spend the whole of February there, to catch the southern hemisphere's summer and escape the Leeds winter, which Mary will do anything to avoid. Mary loves travel, and she's always happy once the holiday has actually started. But she hates the preparation and planning. I'm quite different. For me, the planning is almost as enjoyable as the actual trip. So for the past week or more, I have been having a great time reading through the Lonely Planet guide to South Africa, plotting possible itineraries and looking for interesting places to stay. We're keeping to the southern tip of the country, to avoid anywhere where there's malaria. I reckoned on starting with a week in Cape Town followed by a slow trip eastwards along the coast following the Garden Route, a couple of days in a game reserve (expensive, but that's the one real extravagance of the trip), then returning to Cape Town by a more inland route. When I added up the total number of days for my tentative itinerary, it came to exactly 28, just right for occupying the whole of February. On Friday, we went to the Trailfinders branch in Leeds to book the flights, the car rental and the visit to the Kariega game reserve (£562 for two days *gulp*). Since then, I have been busy emailing hotels, B&Bs and self-catering cottages for accommodation. So far, all the replies have been positive and the trip seems to be taking shape nicely. Roll on next February!
In other news, Liz has been home for the weekend. A close friend of hers was getting married on Saturday and we were all invited to the wedding, a sumptuous affair at Newby Hall. The ceremony was followed by a lavish reception, and after the speeches were over an extremely noisy disco got underway. At this point, Mary and I, along with some of the other older folk, made our getaway, arriving home around midnight. Liz stayed until the end, and rolled home some time after 2am.
Among her circle of close friends, Liz is now the only one who is not married. At the age of 34, she doesn't seem concerned by this. We're beginning to wonder if she will ever provide us with grandchildren, but this doesn't appear to figure in her plans at present. However, we did learn at the weekend that she has a new boyfriend. She has been going out with him for a couple of months but has kept very quiet about it. Maybe that's a sign that it's serious. Time will tell.
Sunday 28 August
Note, for grammatical purists: if the second sentence of the second paragraph in the previous entry set your teeth on edge, you might like to see the discussion here.
I never used to think twice about my weight. For twenty years, from the age of 17 to 37, it stayed absolutely constant at 150 pounds (that's 10 stone 10 lbs in English units, or 68 kg in metric). It didn't make any difference how much I ate or drank, or whether I took any exercise. Then in 1978 I went to Philadelphia and lived there for two years. When I came home I was 10 pounds heavier.
I know exactly what caused the trouble. It was the Faculty Club lunches at Penn. The professor I was working with at the University of Pennsylvania used to treat a group of us to the Faculty Club lunches twice a week. They had the most amazing all-you-can-eat buffet salads there and I couldn't resist piling my plate high each time I went there. Normally, I never eat much at lunch time and just have one main meal a day. During this time I had to stop pretending that I had a 32 inch waist , and move up to a 34. That has stayed pretty much constant ever since, although these days I have to remember to call it 85 cm.
I never did manage to lose those ten extra pounds, but I seemed to stabilise at the new weight of 160 pounds for another 25 years or so. But in the past few years it has been inching up again, maybe because I'm less active now that I'm semi-retired. Also, when I'm at home all day there's a constant temptation to drift out to the kitchen for a bite or a drink. Earlier this year I was alarmed to find that I had passed the 12 stone mark on the bathroom scales (that's almost 170 pounds).
I hoped that the two weeks in Scotland would help to bring the weight down a bit. I was certainly taking as much exercise then as during the rest of the year put together. But unfortunately we eat much too well on these holidays. There's nothing like a vigorous day's climbing to give you a huge appetite, and I came back from Scotland weighing as much as I did before.
Since then I have been suffering from a bad cold, from which I have only recently recovered. This has had the effect of suppressing my appetite, and (as some consolation from the misery of coughing and sneezing) I have noticed the scales showing a slow but steady decrease. Yesterday morning I was down to 161 pounds. I'm going to do my best to hit 160 and stay there.
I don't know why I should be so concerned about weight. At 22.5, my body mass index is well within the normal range. In fact I could weigh up to 180 pounds and still have nothing to worry about. Parhaps it's just the mathematician in me that gets obsessive about numbers.
