Schooldays

Note: I normally leave historical subjects to my young protege WhysWhys. I beg him to forgive me this once for venturing onto his territory to describe some fascinating material I have recently come across.


I was very interested to read, recently, a book about a school called 'Hogwarts'. Although I found the information in it fascinating and thought provoking, I do wish the author had been more rigorous about sources because, unfortunately, he does not tell us where his information comes from. We have to take his research on trust and take his word for it that what he describes is actually the case. 

I can at least offer a little help here: I have also been reading a series of books recording the day to day life of boys at a school. The school was called Greyfriars and it existed in the early part of the last century. The similarities are remarkable. The boys were not allowed home during term time despite having committed no crime; they were constantly having 'adventures'; eccentricity seems to have been a requirement for being on the staff, and there was a dignified headmaster. 

Even more interestingly, there is strong evidence that, by 1950, they were playing 'Quidditch' at Greyfriars. Here is a contemporary illustration of a game in progress during that year. As you would expect, the technology involved is less sophisticated than that at Hogwarts; even so, it's quite similar to the drones so commonly in use now.

 










It is clear from these books that phenomena and problems we regard as modern were around in the past too. This illustration dating from 1931 shows that schoolchildren were, even in those days, taking mobile phones to school despite, I'll be bound, rules banning them. Sadly, we can see also that, then as now, they were used for the purposes of 'cyber-bullying'.










Greyfriars does, however, seem more humane than Hogwarts. There, punishment for misdemeanours went no further than savage beatings with sticks, whereas at Hogwarts the pupils are constantly in danger of being consigned to hideous nether worlds of non-existence with no chance of remission.



Note: the illustrations and quoted text are from The Greyfriars Holiday Annual 1931 by Mr Frank Richards.

Sleeping Bags

Sleeping bags are diuretic. This effect is triggered by the long ritual of securing the fastenings. As a young chap I thought the problem trivial, easily solved by emptying the bladder thoroughly before getting in. I soon found this has no noticeable effect. As the last zip is zipped and the innermost baffle secured, the urgency cries out from the bladder.

Nor can they be ‘fooled’. Or at least it is dangerous to try. One winter night long ago I pretended to fasten my bag, merely wrapping it around myself. I fell instantly asleep. Tossing about, I came unwrapped. Had I not been awakened by extreme urgency of the bladder some time later, I would undoubtedly have died of the hypothermia which, even by that time, was beginning to take hold of me.

But a good sleeping bag can be a fine friend. I was given a Black’s Icelandic for my eighteenth birthday and it kept me snug for decades. As time went by it developed an atmosphere all its own which I grew to love. In due course though, inevitably and sadly, it became so old as to become noisome. Then I left my tent one morning for a few minutes to answer a call of nature and returned to see it attempting to mate with a sheep. On that occasion I was able to get it back but the writing was on the wall. A few weeks later it spontaneously self-composted.

My Life in Bags. In the very beginning we used two or three blankets folded in a special way (described in Scouting for Boys, a book written by Robert Baden Powell before double entendres were invented) and secured with blanket pins.

My first sleeping bag was an ex-army bag filled with feathers. It was white for some reason - maybe to provide sergeants with a pretext for shouting at privates about specks of dirt. Having a cotton shell it had, of course, no resistance to moisture. In an era when tents were cotton ('Don't touch the sides when it's raining!'), with non-fitted groundsheets made by putting an ex-army cape on the floor, the bag would absorb damp as the days went by. This meant, on the one hand, its packed size got smaller, but on the other, its warming power diminished. By about the fourth night it was useless. Nevertheless I had happy times with it. To this day I get a pleasurable buzz of nostalgia when I smell the slightly mouldy smell of damp linen. Barmaid Lil shouted something at me about that when she walked out on me.

A year or two later a new kind of bag came on the market. This had a waterproof groundsheet  attached to the underside, a quilted upper side and a pillow pocket. It also had a side zip. So it was smart and modern compared with our lumpy army jobs. Pity it didn't keep one warm. It was filled with something called kapok, which didn't fluff up, just lying there all slabby. If one rolled over in the night, the groundsheet went on the top. It was only 5 feet 6 inches (165cm) long. It was never easy, when trying to sleep, to avoid the products of one's enthusiastic self-abuse, but in a bag this small, it was nigh impossible. The bag was not a design triumph.

We never knew what kapok was, assuming it to be industrial waste of some sort. Now, in the age of Google, I have been able to find out. It is 'a soft natural fiber from the Kapok tree which is found in Thailand and Indonesia.' I quote here from the website of Dharma Craft, the catalogue of meditation supplies. It's good for stuffing the cushions of those who meditate in the seiza position apparently. So as innocent youngsters we were sleeping in hippy sleeping bags. Bah!

Then I had the above-mentioned Black's Icelandic. Later, and running concurrently with it for a number of years, I had a Black's Tromso. This was quite nice: down, very light, and protected to some extent by a kind of early pertex fabric. I accidentally burnt it down.

Now, to my relief, we live in the modern era of high spec bags, which are also, in real terms, much cheaper than the olden days ones. I favour the ones made of artificial fibres because they are easy to wash - essential given the heavy use I give them. So no nostalgically fusty miasma in my bag now, just the fresh smell of fabric conditioner.

With such bags it is even possible to experience a phenomenon unheard of in my early days: that of being too hot!  This is certainly the case in Iceland sometimes. At 3 or 4 in the morning, one feels the frosty chill creeping in and draws all the fastenings snugly tight. 2 hours later, the sun is high in the sky and the tent has become an oven. A few weeks in these conditions converted my good friend 'Chunky' Babcock into my good friend 'Hells Bells You've Lost a Lot of Weight Are You Ill Or Something' Babcock.

Inner bags. These are a facility much enjoyed by bondage aficionados. The technique is simple. One gets into the inner bag, then into one’s sleeping bag. As one rolls and turns, the inner bag twists, binding one with increasing tightness, leading eventually to helpless, submissive immobility, and a satisfying conclusion. I imagine.  

Coitus Interruptus: A Warning From History: Many years ago, as a lusty young chap with a lusty young girlfriend, I attempted this traditional procedure while we were both squeezed into the Blacks Icelandic. Needless to say coitus could not be interruptus, there being nowhere to interruptus to in such a confined space. Happily, on this occasion, what followed was limited to no more than a spell of anxious waiting. So you have been warned - don't attempt it!

Having said that, of course modern bags have full length zips enabling two bags to be joined by those wishing for intimacy. You young 'uns have it so easy these days.

Pylons and Poles

Pylons

You have almost certainly seen, on your travels, individuals struggling up the hill carrying elaborate metal contraptions. These structures, known as ‘mountainbikes’, are the modular components of pylons, especially designed for when a communications mast or cable carrying pylon has to be erected in an inaccessible place. Each operative collects a ‘mountainbike’ from a depot at ground level and is responsible for delivering it to the point required for the mast’s erection, where it will be assembled along with others to make the mast. It is demanding work, the only respite being the occasional downhill stretch where the ‘mountainbiker’ can climb upon his burden for a few seconds and allow it to carry him as it rolls down the slope.

Owing to the extreme difficulty of the work, success rates are low. Many a time, a ‘mountainbiker’, weary and mud-spattered, can be seen in the car park lashing his component to the back of his vehicle, to return it to the depot of his employer. Penalties for failure are harsh. Punishment consists of having one’s clothes daubed with lurid graffiti and being made to wear a ridiculous hat to advertise one’s shame to the world.

Walking Poles

These sharp pointed accessories were being widely yet secretly used by popular outdoor writers throughout the 20^th century. Then, in the early 1990’s, at a pre-arranged signal, they all ‘came out’ simultaneously, declaring themselves, through the columns of the outdoor press, to be users. They were photographed with up to two of these things and, free now from guilty secrecy, unburdened themselves, describing the joy they derived from them.

Following this other walkers started experimenting with them, believing they could ‘handle it’, using just the occasional pole for descents with heavy loads or for river crossings. Since then poles have become endemic. It is a sad sight to see users, clad in their Gore-Tex hoodies, lurching along canal towpaths or stumbling round the local park. The waste of resources is huge: experts have estimated that the average user could, for the money spent on poles, afford 25 pints of beer or 10 packets of cigarettes instead.

About 12 years ago I got in with a bad crowd and was persuaded to try a pole. 'Just one', they said, 'It'll give you a really good time, won't harm you and you can control it'. Well I couldn't. The first time I 'used' I had a bad trip. Luckily the grazes and contusions eventually healed and I suffered no lasting harm.

Activists are now campaigning for walking poles to be available only on prescription.

Suffering

My good friend H- has many years of experience in tour and mountain guiding. During this time he has come to recognise that nationalities each have distinct characteristics. The one which defines the British, he says, is a love of Suffering.

I can readily concur with this. Indeed, I confess that my first trip to Iceland was on a trek led by the legendary guide D- P-. Our shelter was the rude sheep-house and our sleep mat was the soft sheep droppings therein; we were nourished by the tinned treacle pudding we brought from home and potent cocoa brewed on a fragrant primus.

I have encountered many seekers after Suffering. Did you realise, for instance, that there are people who fill pitta bread with leftover porridge and eat it cold as a packed lunch? Difficult to believe I know, but I have encountered a number of such cases.

I recall old Mac, our scout leader when we were youths, who would have his morning shave using tea left over from breakfast. We once caught his colleague, P.B., in the act of putting all the elements of breakfast - cereal, eggs, bread, tomatoes, bacon, jam etc, into one pan and heating it on the primus. When challenged, he remarked, 'It all gets mixed up inside you doesn't it?'

The trainer on a winter skills course I once attended produced a plastic tub of Christmas pudding at lunchtime. 'Got all the nourishment you need', he proclaimed as he spooned it in, cold. 'And is a bloody miserable experience', he didn't proclaim.

I think it has something to do with our early years. I have already described our nights in damp sleeping bags under flimsy cotton tents. Also, we spent a good deal of time in clammy institutions called Youth Hostels (See Post Hostels and Huts for more details). Being comfortable can seem like cheating.

In England we have a man who does his hill walking naked. Think about that for a moment. Think about the searching wind, the icy shower of rain, the midges, the harsh rub of webbing straps; twigs and brash. And police. He has been arrested many times for conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace or something, which must be terribly inconvenient, and the consequent imprisonment very distressing to an outdoor man. How frustrating it must be, every time you go into a country pub for your mid-walk pint, to be shouted at and thrown out. In a documentary I saw about him once, he refined his suffering still further by being accompanied for part of the way by a young woman, also naked. His public nakedness meant, of course, that he was the only man present who could not allow himself to become excited by the situation. The only explanation can be this urge to Suffer. He is a fine example of the British love of Suffering. Not one to show the children though.

If you want to know more, and are not about to eat your dinner, here he is:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/naked-rambler-could-face-a-lifetime-of-imprisonments-after-european-court-ruling-9823945.html

But possibly the mightiest seeker after Suffering of all is the marathon walker John Merrill, who comes from the same part of the British Isles as I. Now in his seventies, he continues to walk monumental distances, applying to himself certain painful strictures. At a steady speed of three miles an hour for 10 hours each day, taking no breaks or stops of any kind, he walks thousands of miles. His feats are legion and include going all the way round the British coastline, America coast to coast, Lands End to John o' Groats, the Great Divide, and many many more. He refuses to have companions when walking and takes no fluids.

He is a product of the English boarding school system which probably explains his superior capacity for self-distress.

Here he is:

 http://m.johnmerrillwalkguides.co.uk/ABOUT-JOHN-MERRILL.html

8. The Food Chain Again: Midges

Previously on the subject of the food chain I took it as far as carnivorous animals. Some would say that that leaves only the addition of Man, the topmost predator of all, to complete the  chain. Not true: somewhere above us in the food chain are those buzzy bitey things of various sorts, commonly referred to as midges.

Have you ever sat of an evening by a babbling brook, and thought, 'What do these things eat when I'm not here?' Well, we humans are just the gourmet end of the midge diet spectrum. We are plucked and ready to eat compared with, say, sheep, or owls; in summer many of us are ready cooked. We must be a considerable delicacy.

We are also far more plentiful now than we were in earlier evolutionary times. The implications of this are serious. In mankind midges have an increasing supply of high energy food; we will form a growing proportion of their diet and they will evolve accordingly.

The midges of the English wild places are tame stuff compared with those of Scotland and elsewhere. Nevertheless, they can deliver a serious chomp when in the mood. Often I have returned from a bivvying expedition with a face resembling that of an elderly pugilist. But this pales into insignificance compared with the midges of Greenland which are capable of biting a hole in your boat.

  

I spend a lot of time in the vicinity of Mývatn, a large lake in northern Iceland. Literally translated, its name means 'midge lake'. For a week or two in June each year, billions of the things clamber out of the water and go buzzing around. They like nothing more than to get into a nook, cranny or hole.

Now, my head, and yours too I expect, has several holes in it. And the midges don't know the rules. No-one has told them that the holes in my head are off limits. I am not a cliff. Consequently I am forever batting the things out the holes in my head – evicting them from my ears or snorting them from my nose. They don't actually bite much: I have had worse damage in England. The female of one species does use us as a dietary supplement when pregnant though, so when in Mývatn watch out for the ones with a lump in front. Rather, their speciality lies in being a nuisance, swirling round one's head and, as their navigational skills are execrable, forever blundering into one. A mosquito net is an essential piece of equipment when working or travelling in that area during the midge season.

You will though, however carefully you plan, find yourself without a mosquito net from time to time. Do not panic: relief is still possible if you adopt the method I call the Fifty Yard Blurt. First, affect an exaggerated air of insouciance, sauntering along for 50 yards or so. While you are doing this, and being careful to avoid any outward show, gather your energy in the manner of a coiled spring. Finally, explode abruptly into a high speed 50 yard dash. Midges are not sharp witted; they will not register your departure until it is too late to discover where you are. (Their 5 second memory span helps here). Now you can saunter a while until a new posse of midges builds up around your head. Then repeat the procedure as before. (Note: if preferred, metres can be adopted in place of yards without affecting the ploy.)

One must remember as one curses them, that, around Mývatn, the midges' poo and dead bodies nourish the region, making it a green and pleasant place, supporting huge numbers of birds and fish which feed off the larvae. Damn.

7. Monuments

Monuments

As we walk our northern hills we cannot fail to be impressed by the monuments which grace many of our summits. Whether folly or memorial, they are the result of inspiration and great effort on the part of our forebears. Some are widely known and visited: Stoodley Pike for instance, above Mankinholes*, or the Wellington Monument and Crich Stand in Derbyshire.

Fig. 1

My pleasure though, is to seek out the lesser known ones, quietly awaiting us in less spectacular locations and often with endearing eccentricities all their own.

Just such a one is the modest yet finely executed monument atop Cackstone Nab in a quiet corner of Derbyshire. About twice life size, it depicts a workman, clad in the workman’s garments of a century ago (fig.1). Set on a shallow plinth it bears the touchingly simple legend, ‘Arnold Tweddle, Fettler’. The inarticulate decency of the piece demands our respect. Despite its modest size, it has been well positioned so that fine views of it are to be had from the southern and western approaches (figs 2,3) and it is well worth making a detour in your walk to take it in.

Fig. 2 View from the South

On asking locally I was unable to get information as to its origins and the significance of Tweddle. Sadly he has faded from memory. All the more important then that his monument remains, mutely insisting, ‘He lived. He fettled.’

Fig. 3 View from the West

There is a postscript. Earlier this year I was able to track down the person who is probably Tweddle’s last remaining descendant, Mrs Tracey Crippen of Cleethorpes. I visited her in her neat bungalow in a respectable street just off the seafront. She told me: ‘It were in t’road in t’garden.’

Fig. 4  Showing North  aspect

*Note: The small industrial town of Mankinholes was founded by the Victorian industrialist, Jedediah Knowles, always known, because of his imperfect personal hygiene, as ‘Manky’ Knowles.

6. The Food Chain and Greetings

The Food Chain

Producer                             Herbivore                                      Carnivore

No serious expedition can consider itself properly prepared for emergencies until it has included a herbivore (vegetarian) among its number. The graphic above, which I am sure is familiar to most of you already, makes it clear why. But do remember, it is not a light thing to eat your vegetarian; it should only be resorted to in the most extreme situation.

Greetings

To greet or not to greet? You need to make a judgement based on who's involved and where you are:

Close to car parks and other public facilities: greeting is impractical here: there are too many people around, and they neither deserve nor expect acknowledgement, being, after all, mostly picnickers.

Look out though, for the couple with a child in a backpack. These are real mountain types, grounded the while by having recently received an infant. They can only dart out for a brief moment of low altitude pleasure until the child lustily complains, needs feeding or has a poo-plosion. See the longing in their eyes as you bound along, and give them a supportive smile.

Big groups - What does one do about big groups? One cannot greet each member - one would sound like a dementing police constable. The best plan is to greet the first few in a generalised sort of way and then adopt an amiable leer for the rest of them. This can be replaced by a look of humorous resignation on rainy days.

An individual hunkered down over a hole in the ground - avert the eyes and walk on. I don't want to talk to you.