Home help

 

I've spent the weekend with a lovely lot of children's authors - at a conference in Reading University. We talked of books and writing and entertained each other. Our poor beleaguered publishers are having to be more and more careful about money, and can't spend huge sums on so-called mid-list authors. The consensus was that we writers must make more of an effort to engage with our readers. With that in mind - and with the help of my techie son - we've filmed a snippet read from my about-to-be-launched travel memoir; this extract is about the challenges of finding home help. If you like it you'll find two more readings from A Glimpse of Eternal Snows on YouTube.

F-f-f-freezing

We’d stopped rowing after a tough, one-kilometre ‘piece’. My mop of unruly hair was annoying; it tickled my face and was in my eyes and mouth. Finally I had a chance to show it who was boss – tame it with a bungee. I took off my glasses to polish off the steam. They caught awkwardly in my wild hair and I saw them catapult into the river. I lunged for them but all I achieved was to rock the boat. ‘My glasses!’ I shrieked. C at stroke tried to grab them too but they sank amongst ribbons of long green weed. ‘I’ll go in!’ C said, but cox forbade her. I considered disobedience. I could feign a swoon and tumble into the river. Or stand and dive in. While I was dithering, they disappeared into the murk.

Cox sympathised but said, ‘It’s really deep here. There’s no chance of finding them.’

That was a challenge I couldn’t resist. I was a SCUBA diver. I was a cave-diver. I’d swum across a fjord. I’d find them, even if sometimes I’d temporarily lose them when I put them down on the bed at home.

We stacked the blades and eight in the boathouse and while still steamy from the row, C & I returned to the site of the sinking. We knew where my glasses were, but they were light, and could have floated away from where I’d dropped them. The river on the Stourbridge Meadow side was thigh deep where I slipped into the water. I’d kept my trainers on for fear of broken glass and hypodermic but could still that the bottom was squidgy. The water was colder than I expected. Much colder. This was summer, for heaven’s sake. Why was it so cold?

I allowed myself to fall forward. Sheesh, it was f-f-freezing. The cold made me gasp and pant however hard I tried to slow my breathing. How was I going to be able to hold my breath and search the river bottom while I was gasping and spluttering? Then there was the issue of brain freeze. I tried to get all the pain over in one go and dipped right under the water. I was assaulted by pain in my scalp. This was daft. C was shouting encouragement from the bank. I had to do a few dives at least.

‘Two-thirds of the way across. There! You’re in the right place, Jane! Try there!’

I did. Head down, legs in the air to take me down. It was deep. Brain freeze. I grabbed my nose to clear my ears. Further down. It was about three metres deep here. Who’d have guessed the sleepy old River Cam at Cambridge is three metres deep? I couldn’t see much. I reached the silty bottom. Quick feel around. My hand closed around a shell.  Out of breath. Swam for the surface. More gasping and panting. Breath back. ‘Anything?’ C asked.

‘A freshwater mussel shell!

‘Can you see anything?’

‘Yes. More than I was expecting – even without my glasses on.’

‘You’re opening your eyes?’

‘Yes... but it’s sooo cold.’

Brain aching, I surface-dived again. Managed to feel around on the bottom for a second or two. Found a lager can. Saw the red of a Coke can. A silt-covered wine bottle. A hunk of wood. Searching raised the sediment and made it more difficult to see. Need air. Up to air. I surfaced, spluttering and disorientated, in the middle of the river. I swam back to the place of sinking. Dived down. Gulping. Anxious not to swallow any Weil’s-laced water. Cleared my ears. Not much time searching.

‘I’m coming in!’ C shouted from the bank.

‘Wow! Really? You don’t have to.’ And she was in, gasping. Fighting the cold.

A few dives later, with C trying to convince herself the water temperature was ‘refreshing’, we concluded we needed masks.  C had a wetsuit too. ‘Yeh but I’ll do a few more dives. I’m getting used to it. A bit.’ My scalp wasn’t aching any more and I had better breath-control. And I’d found a bit of river with long ribbons of weed just like where my glasses had sunk. I dived down, swimming between the clingy Carlsberg-green strands, searching. The glasses could be caught amongst the weed. I found a traffic cone, a bit of fence, a fishing weight, and various unidentifiable items. I needed a mask. Up for a breath.

Down again, I reached a patch of cabbagey plants, and a big block of concrete.

A different kind of cold was getting to me now and I needed to get out. I was grateful to C for helping me out of the water. My muscles were seizing and it was hard to clamber onto the lovely soft grass of the meadow.

Next day, Sunday morning, I’d unearthed some past-their-sell-by-date contact lenses and was back with mask snorkel and fins, with A this time. I thought of David Walliams and others who promote ‘wild swimming’. They’re clearly tougher than me – although lots wear wetsuits, I guess. After my fjord swim this summer I’d even thought of trying a long swim in the Cam, but now I knew this was utter madness. I’d wondered about the temperature. If the river was mostly ground water unheated by the sun, it would be not much more than ground temperature which at this latitude in England must be around 12◦C. It felt that cold. I was surprised to discover that the Olympics pool is kept as cold as 25 but most of us swim in indoor pools kept around 29◦C. Wild swimming info implies that 15◦C is likely in English rivers. Does anyone know?

I slipped in watched, without interest, by several well-fed fishermen. It wasn’t any warmer. There hadn’t been much sun all summer. While I was standing unenthusiastically in the thigh-deep water before that first unappetising plunge, a cruiser came by. The engines were quiet, but I was surprised just how much it unsteadied me. It – and others – would churn up the water and my lightweight glasses could have floated anywhere.

I had to get in. I felt like I was drawing attention to myself. I swam two-thirds of the way across the river and made my first brain-freezing dive into murky greenish water. Even with the fins on, it was a long way down. I’d dropped my glasses into the very deepest part of the river. My antics made scullers uneasy. Disapproving oarsmen were perhaps thinking of anarchists in the water. A joined me in the river for a short while. Our attempts to search were interrupted by passing boats. I chatted briefly to people from my rowing club.

A quad approached. The cox asked ‘Lost something?’

‘My glasses!’

‘They’re on your head!’ His whole boat liked that quip.

One of the oarswomen asked, ‘Why’s your son on the bank while you’re doing the searching?’

‘He’s needs more subcutaneous fat,’ I said pompously.

A heard the cox translate, ‘He’s too skinny!’

I continued diving until I started recognising the jetsam I encountered – the same drinks cans, that concrete block, pieces of water-logged tree... I was ready to quit, but A suggested searching downstream.

The cold was starting to get to me again. ‘Three more dives.’ I spluttered.

My left calf started to cramp. Time to get out. Not so easy. Limbs not working any more.

A – now warmed again by the sun – took photos. He didn’t help as I thrashed around trying to get out of the water. I thought of the Ulster dialect word – to sprockle. My Belfast-raised Dad used the word to mean floundering about in an ungainly and ineffectual manner; often people are laughing at you as you get up and try to regain your dignity. That was me on the bank – sprockling. A took more photos to prove it. And I hadn’t even recovered my glasses.

Fjord swimming

It had started by mistake, almost. I’d rowed the three of us across from Aga and when S mentioned he’d packed our swimming togs, I was tempted to cool off in the clear inviting Sørfjorden. Getting in wasn’t easy. A muddle of landslide boulders were covered in bladder wrack and coralline seaweed so it was hard to see where to put my feet: I’m a bit of a dweeb about walking on stony beaches too. And it was cold. Really cold. I splashed water on my arms so the plunge in wouldn’t feel so bad – but it was: cold enough to take my breath away. I kicked frantically to fight the spasms. S & Ʃ were sitting under the trees on the bank laughing.

S said, ‘Keep swimming – I’ve got to get a photo with the snow in the distance!’

I was soon breathing normally again, and even almost started to enjoy it. The fjord was so still I could see the Folgefonna glacier reflected in the glinting green water: this was real wild swimming. Then from Ʃ, ‘Why don’t you swim out into the really deep water. We’ll follow in the boat and you can get in when you tire.’

‘You... must... be.. joking!’ I spluttered. But then I thought about it. Our intended lunch-spot wasn’t anything special. Kicking out in my relaxed breaststroke felt good. Easy. The ripples I made with each stroke scrumpled reflections of snowy patches on the mountaintops.

‘OK – I will then!’ I struck out back across the fjord. The houses on the other side were tiny. Trucks driving along the main road between Utne and Odda were minuscule, but it would be fun swimming out and completely clear of the shore.

I was a couple of hundred metres out by the time S & Ʃ had launched the boat and rowed out to me. I enjoyed my breaststroke – kick glide pull... kick gli––ide pull, and the water didn’t feel that cold any more. I’d swim into pockets that felt almost like a warm bath, but then it would be out again into iciness. Kick gli–––ide pull... kick...

I was going strongly, though I didn’t want to put my face in the water. I was still wearing my glasses and it felt too cold to put my head in at all, so I didn’t rise to Ʃ’s challenge to swim right under the boat. I headed towards a red two-storey weatherboard house. I swam. It came no closer. Even so I began to think I might swim right across. That started a debate amongst the three of us. S thought it was a kilometre across. Ʃ said, ‘No – look how small the cars are. It’s much more.’

I was swimming steadily. I felt strong. I could keep this pace up for hours. I turned and looked back. It was good to change position, but I still didn’t want to put my head back in the water.

‘How far... d’you reckon... I’ve done?’ I asked. ‘A third?’

S was humouring me when he said, ‘Mmm. Maybe. Yes, a third.’

The rowan trees at my starting point on the east side of the fjord still looked large. I hadn’t made much progress. But I wasn’t at all tired and I still felt I could swim across. Then I hit a muscle-seizing cold patch. Maybe this was what the rest of the swim was going to be like. I was gasping again. It must be icy water welling up from the deep. I wouldn’t go on if it stayed like this. I spluttered as much to S & Ʃ. They didn’t hear.

It wasn’t long though before I entered another bath-warm patch, and even the next cold bit wasn’t that cold.

I turned on my back. The eastern side was still close. The red house seemed no closer, no bigger. The water had turned the colour of gun metal. I’d swim a bit further. To the middle at least. I looked up to the glacier and the snow and the mountaintops. I scanned down to the tree line and the pretty houses along the shore. Earlier that same day S & I had climbed high above the fjord, 500m or so up the steep valley wall amongst pine and then birch forest. We looked down not on a single expanse of water but on a varied and varying surface – a map as intricate as any landscape. In places there were tiny waves whipped up by undercurrents, rips and eddies. There were places where the water looked deep dark and menacing, others where the water surface was rippled from a slight breeze. Sometimes the water looked leaf green, sometimes it was almost black.

From the boat Ʃ shouted, ‘What if a whale came alongside!’ His imagination had been captured by discovering that many fjords are 1000m deep; he was sure there were big creatures living down there. He talked of humpbacked whales and monsters.

‘A big whale... wouldn’t come... into a fjord.’

‘What if a giant squid came up from the deep?’

‘You’d... photograph it!’

‘But it might eat you!’

‘Still got both my legs – so far...’ He wasn’t going to spook me, although thinking of that huge body of water below me was awe-inspiring. Being run down by a boat was a more realistic worry.

Something disturbed the surface. I took a mouthful. It was – surprisingly – hardly salty at all. Maybe that explained the lack of seabirds. There weren’t many wildfowl either though: just an occasional mallard or gull. Norwegians seem to like shooting their wildlife.

Time moved on, and so did I, slowly; Ʃ – who’d come up with the idea of this expedition – was starting to get a little bored. He taunted me. ‘Hurry up or we’ll leave you behind.’ S was no lying in the boat pretending – I think – to take a nap.

‘Don’t... make me... laugh... That’ll... slow me down... even more.’ I rolled over to swim backstroke for a while but got a rain-freeze when I immersed my scalp, and I couldn’t see where I was going. Back on my front, I realised my hands were numb. I wanted to make fists but how can you swim breaststroke with fists? I recalled one of my Dad’s stories. He must have been pretty hard. He enjoyed all sports but swimming was his greatest love – a family passion in fact. Above all he loved water polo. He played in Belfast Lough – that wide estuary which opens into the Irish Sea. He described how sometimes he would catch the ball then have to look to see if it was still in his hand. It was so cold he couldn’t feel whether he was still holding it or not. My blue wrinkled hands were that cold now.

I’d set out thinking I’d swim diagonally across the fjord – retracing the path I’d rowed. I realised now though that, although the water felt still and although we were a long way from the sea, there was a significant current. The boat owner later mentioned a tide of 1.5 metres. I changed my plan and told S & Ʃ I was aiming for a rocky spur that jutted out from the western shore of the fjord. I swam towards a warning sign for boats. I wasn’t sure whether this was okay for our little boat but I just wanted to finish this now. I just needed to keep the rhythm going.

There was more flotsam: bladder wrack, leaves and a few larger pieces of tree. The channel was getting shallow. S & Ʃ were suddenly animated, looking out for rocks now. The current increased a lot. I needed to swim much more strongly to make headway against the tide but I didn’t want to kick out against jagged granite. It’s hard to see anything from the water surface. S & Ʃ in the boat said they could see the bottom now. They were worried about running aground. They suggested I climb into the boat but I wanted to touch the western shore – so I could say I’d swum right across, the entire two-plus kilometres.

Just a few more strokes. I checked before I put my feet down. I saw clean rippled sand but that’s not what it felt like. It was sticky, like mud. But my feet were down and I could stop swimming. How good it felt to have my feet on the bottom at last. S & Ʃ again suggested I scramble into the boat then they’d row me back to the jetty we’d launched from. I was standing in chest deep water. I didn’t have the strength to get myself into the boat. I waded in to where it was shallower but had the oddest sensation. Standing now waist-deep I felt as if I was being pushed forward – back into my horizontal swimming position. After an hour and a half of swimming (S reckoned it was an hour and a quarter) my body had decided I shouldn’t be upright ever again.

The sensation soon passed, though my rubber-legs took a while to return to normal function. The pay-off was the long luxurious shower when we got back to the cottage. It was delicious.

Travel or travail?

I wish I was a more relaxed traveller. I usually arrive too early, and this time is no different. I should be able to enjoy a lull in a frenetic schedule but airports are such attention-deficit-inducing environments that I don’t settle. I just want to get on the plane. I’m tired after a lot of driving, in an unfamiliar hire car, on the wrong side of the road with unintelligible road signs, feeling sweat-sticky, tired throbbing hot feet. This is the part of travel that starts me wondering – for a while, at least – why I travel. This is the travail of travel. I should be able to people-watch. I should continue to take delight in the slightly odd things foreigners do, but I’m fatigued by it all now and I want to do home.

They’re late boarding us. We’re in a holding-pen with insufficient seating, and tired fractious toddlers. I sympathise but doubt that throwing a tantrum would get us on board any quicker. I smile as I imagine throwing myself on the floor and thrashing and screaming and shouting.

But the announcement finally comes. There are friendly welcomes from the groundstaff and the air stewards. Soon we are taxiing, there’s that pull on the stomach and we’re airborne. The ground falls away. Real people diminish to the size of ants. Cars shrink to tiny matchbox-toys. Other peoples’ lives become insignificant, just like that. I marvel at Bergen from the air; it’s a splattering of islands connected by little bridges, all populated by people, but what do they do all with their lives?

Then it’s up through the clouds into the sunshine above a white wonderland as pristine as any glacier. We’re homeward bound, home to the right coffee, my favourite muesli, marmalade and a comfortable bed. I let my mind drift as we float above the clouds, then after a while I get glimpses of ships on a still, still sea. Which part of Britain would we fly over first? I guessed it would be The Wash. The landfall isn’t right for Norfolk though. Where are we? Everything is so difficult to place from up here, but who cares. We’ll soon be home – to the right coffee, muesli, marmalade, comfortable bed and 137 emails (not counting a similar number in wait for me at work).

Loo signs at Bergen airport

How to use a squat toilet

How lovely to discover that I am apparentlythe Buddha of Bowel Motions according to this http://boingboing.net/2012/06/25/how-to-use-a-squat-toilet.html; an old e-interview was picked up again....and again here too http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/tag/jane-wilson-howarth/

What interest and excitinment talking poo creates!

Some of the on-line comments and responses to these posts made me smile so I should mention that various of the quotes have been taken out of their Asian / resource-poor context. The idea is to use loads of water.... there is no scooping involved.....

If unsure of the correct technique take advice straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak, through consulting http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Shit-Around-World-ebook/dp/B0050IGW9U

Ladies' loo sign in Budapest

Friendship or elitism?

I was chatting this week with a lass who had returned to England after a stint in California. She described her excellent interesting well-paid job and her superb huge house opening onto the beach, but something was missing. She described the superficiality of her relationships – like she inhabited the embodiment of Facebook... she had lots of ‘friends’ but no real relationships or deep warmth and commitment. No-one was there for her.

That got me thinking about friends. I am not as sociable as I used to be, but I guess that is a side effect of working as a General Practitioner. My job is a privilege but my weeks are full of others’ crises so it can be a real luxury to have alone time. But I do need my friends, even if I don’t spend hours together every week. Every so often, I look forward to evenings with the right people. Those I feel most affinity to are friends I’ve ‘done stuff’ with. As an undergraduate I spent much of my leisure time caving or in various watery activities including white-water canoeing. Then with a change of location I tried rowing and hill walking. These outdoor activities can have you feeling quite miserable and you wonder why you choose put yourself into such situations. But they also stretch you – show what you’re made of.

Completing some journey under challenging conditions induces a good feeling, and if the weather is foul or I end up cold, wet and hungry, the cleaning up and the first hot chocolate tastes so unbelievably luxurious. How can anyone appreciate luxury except through the contrast of not having it?

The real jewel to treasure from working or exploring together in difficult circumstances is that you really get to know people. Particularly if you’ve shared miserable times, you discover what they’re made of, whether they’re really there for you, whether they still care for you when the cold, cold rain is dribbling down to soak the underwear. And you know who has the psychological strength to keep on going when the physical strength is spent. If that's elitism, then it gets my vote.

 

 

When George Mallory considered who would accompany him on his attempt on the summit of Everest in 1924, one of Sandy Irvine’s qualifications for the honour was his rowing prowess: he rowed for Oxford in the Boat Races of 1922 and 1923. Mallory knew that an oarsman of this calibre would have the unstinting determination to succeed.

 

 

Last night I spent the evening with the squad of women I’ve been rowing with for the last few years. We've learned that when the boat's unbalanced we each take our share of the blame. We’ve worked hard, got fit, been beaten often but each month we improve just a little. Most importantly though we are there for each other. We’ve rowed together, timed our strokes so we move the water together, our quads have burned together and we’ve struggled for breath together. This is true camaraderie and friendship. Thanks girls.

Scope for Improvement

The trouble with any writing project is that there's always scope for improvements. I shouldn't look at my work any more because every time I go back to it I come up with more requests for changes. I'm probably driving various people mad at Bradt, making suggestions to avoid word repetitions or adding the odd extra word to explain some exotic concept. And this is as we strive to get the book ready to go off to the printer this month, well next week actually. It is almost ready to go, although I'm not sure the back cover blurb is settled quite yet.

The new cover is vibrant and I feel it will attract quite a different readership to the towering mountains on the Australian edition, and my lovely editor, Caroline Taggart who is an author herself, has done a brilliant job of tightening up the prose. This has allowed me to sneak in new material, and even so end up with a book of a mere 390 pages, compared to the orginal 432. The colour section and new maps also add to what promises to be a really pleasing memoir. launch date is mid October.