Nothing to write home about

We got up at 3AM and drove through thick fog to Manchester Airport. Right from the start it felt like a dream – any moment I’d wake up and I find I’d imagined the whole crazy idea of flying in to celebrate a wedding of a friend I’d only met once, to a man I’d never met and at times even doubted his existence.

A mere 20 hours later we touched down in Portland and I was struck full in the face by culture shock. It’s hard to put it into words – it was partly to do with the scale of things, like the highrise blocks that came into view as we drove in an enormous taxi over a massive bridge across a wide river to downtown Portland. Everything was so big, so American. Everyone was so nice. It was like every American movie I’ve ever read, every book, every photograph all rolled into one.

And Portland was putting on its autumn best, the streets strewn with fallen leaves in red and yellow. People rushing by, takeout coffee or a bottle of water in one hand, waiting to catch a tram, or jumping into a car.

Then there was the beer – there was a lot of rain that weekend, and many cosy bars to be discovered. Portland ale, I found, is just like my favourite English beer but served colder. We shopped, we checked out the microbrews, we suffered terribly from jetlag.

And there was still a wedding to go to.

Somehow, we’d ended up in the same hotel as the bride and groom, so we met up with them the night before their wedding. They rushed in laden with suit carriers and bags of shoes, pulled up a chair and we talked for hours as if we were old friends. We took Polaroid photos and engaged in conversation with other guests, and the hotel staff. (“Have you see the film Madman”? apparently, I have the same camera.) There is nothing like an old Land camera – or a Blad for that matter – for breaking the ice with strangers. People warm to a Spectra, too. And I’ve even had an admittedly disparaging comment from someone when I whipped out my TwoStep and took a self portrait.

It felt like moments later when the bride announced that it was her wedding day tomorrow and she really ought to get some sleep, and we realised that we’d managed to hold an impromptu stag and hen party.

The wedding was a crazy mayhem. Introductions often took the form of “I’m Ronet on flickr,” as we bumped into people we’d only ever known their their photographs. And others were pointed out: “That’s clumsy bird. There’s ms. teso, and isn’t that Elizabeth Taylor over there?” Not that Elizabeth Taylor, you understand.

I’ve never been to a wedding before where the bride and groom walked down the aisle to The Final Countdown, where their best friend gets himself ordained on the internet and writes vows for them that hit the perfect note of comedy and sweetness. And this was the first time I have clapped and cheered at the end of the service. And I’ve never in my life hi-fived a newly wed bride.

The wedding was all done by 10PM, after singing and dancing and an insanely funny photo presentation. Driving back the cloudy skies had parted enough to reveal the night-time light show of downtown Portland. Wouldn’t it be great to get out one night and take some photos, we thought, but we were running out of town.

And there was the rain.

The next few days were packed with all the things we had to see before we left. We didn’t get out to the Cascades or down to the beach – the weather put a stop to all that. But we browsed the vintage shops in Hawthorne, whiled away a rainy hour at Peet’s tea & coffee, walked silently round the Vietnam memorial, and stood gazing up at the sequoias in Washington park’s arboretum. We had to see the Japanese garden, and on the way met a man who’d just moved to the neighbourhood. We learnt his entire story in the space of five minutes and when he’d waved us goodbye at the entrance I realised we hadn’t given him much in return.

There was time for a last lunch at the Goose Hollow Inn, where I wrote on the chalkboard in the ladies, Best pub in Portland, though I know that part of it was that it had the advantage of being my first in America.

One last dinner at Deschutes, where I swear they serve the best steak in the Universe, and it was time to pack our bags and head home.

Back on the plane, another of those dream-like flights where time rushes by as you fly into the night which shouldn’t fall for another 6 hours or so.

Amsterdam was a rude awakening, not just for the early hour but the waitress at the airport café who yelled at people for not ordering in the way she wanted.

And then home in bright sunshine, which made me blink as if I’d just woken up from a dream.

Regular readers will know that I don’t often post on overtly political topics but I just had to alert you to this moving article on the postal strike.

I have been a trade union organiser and in my time there I never met any union member who took a decision to go on strike lightly. In my experience it’s a desperate measure. So I knew there had to be another story behind the management spin and the old fashioned union rhetoric that surrounds the postal dispute.

And I thought about those oft quoted figures that were down and tried to match them up with the amount of mail that drops through my door on a daily basis. Though I contact my friends by email or skype, I get more post than I ever did. These days I even get my film developed by mail.

Something didn’t add up. And finally I found some sense on the London Review of Books LRB · Roy Mayall: Diary.

So now you know.

I’ve seen mountain rescues that end in tears. Danger is a hazard of being in the mountains – everyone who spends time in the Alps understands this. But often they end with a laugh and a joke. This is one of those tales.

In our guidebook it’s billed as one of the loveliest walks in the Chamonix valley – and given that there is quite some competition, it’s not an idle boast. The views of the Mont Blanc range from the Aiguillette des Possettes are incredible (I’ll show you as soon as I can get rid of the scratches that the lab put on my negatives)  and though it’s a stiff climb up you can take the easy route via cable car on the way up and walk back down.

We decided to earn the views and sweated our way up through the trees and onto the wide grassy ridge path that winds its way through a series of false summits to the top. We’d started late and though it’s only two and a half hours to the top we knew at the outset that we’d be having lunch on one of the lower plateaus instead of by the summit cairn.

The rule in hill and mountain hiking is that the first place you can find to stop for lunch is always 20 to 30 minutes after the moment when you know you need a break, but we were happy enough when we eventually found a dry spot on a wide bluff cushioned by bilberry and heather shoots. The path wound up the hill behind us to another of those false summits and we hardly noticed the group of a dozen or so French hikers who had stopped on the path as we unwrapped our Reblochon and broke off chunks of crusty baguette.

The chatter at our backs continued and we didn’t think anything of it even though those walkers had been blocking the path for a good 10 minutes. We’d lived in a town in France where people would stop on the traffic island and get out of their car to greet a friend crossing the road, so this was nothing special. Not until we overheard a complaint from a couple passing by that  an old man had come out without his mobile phone and got into trouble. We looked up and saw the man sitting in the middle of the path, calling the emergency services on a borrowed phone.

‘Non, non, pas de douleur,’ he laughed. No pain. Only I just can’t move my knee.

While he spoke to the mountain rescue team one of the group of hikers that surrounded him set off down the hill, prodding at the swampy grass and shrugging his shoulders, trying to figure out where the helicopter could land. After a while Jean-Paul found what he judged would be the perfect spot, waving and grinning from ear to ear at his friends who clustered around the old man, before he rummaged in his rucksack and retrieved two carrier bags, one green and one red, which he set down to mark the landing pad.

One of the group ran down to warn us that they had called the mountain rescue. “You need to make sure everything is secure.” She glanced at my boots that I’d taken off to give my feet a rest. ‘L’helicopter vient d’arriver,’ she announced with a proud smile. The helicopter is coming.

We wrapped up the cheese but our boots would probably survive the updraft, we reasoned. Anyway, the helicopter probably wouldn’t land anywhere near us, if at all. The ladies and gentlemen of the walking group that stood on the path scanned the skies. “The helicopter is coming,” they told each other, but the skies remained empty.

“What shall we do when it arrives?” one of them asked.

“How will they know where to land?”

They consulted their guidebooks.

“Fait un ygrec,” someone said. Make a y. But the questions was, where? Should it be Jean-Paul, waiting by the makeshift landing pad or the hikers, standing guard over the injured man. But before they could decide there was a buzzing high in the air – the helicopter was approaching.

“Jean-Paul fait un ygrec. Tout le monde fait un ygrec.” And the group of 10 all raised arms and trekking poles in the air in the shape of a y. Jean-Paul, alone on the hillside below, shrugged and made a waving, beckoning sort of y.

We decided not to join in – that would only confuse matters even more.

In the end the temporary landing pad wasn’t needed. Jean-Paul stood dejected in the swamp while the helicopter circled and dropped off two off their crew without even touching one foot on the mountainside. Jean-Paul sloped off and retrieved his plastic bags and we gathered up our cheese and bread and prepared to move on.

The rescue crew were amazing.

By the time we’d walked up the few feet to where the man was, the doctor had taken a look at his knee and decided to whisk him off to the local hospital. The doctor had something reassuring in the tone of voice and the jokey but kindly way he dealt with the old chap so that when they told him they’d immobilize his leg and winch him up to the helicopter, he smiled as it if was perfectly normal.

I suspect he was just relieved that he’d get down off the mountain with no fuss.

One by one his friends set off down the hill, promising to meet up with him at the hospital. One took his walking poles and stopped us to ask Ron to collapse them so she could carry them down for him.

‘Poor fellow, he’s got a bad knee,’ she told us, and she pointed at my knee support. ‘You have a bad knee too,’ she said. ‘Maybe they could give you a lift to the hospital.’

I began to worry that she would rush to make a ‘y’ and call the helicopter back. ‘No need, I told her. It’s nothing like that.’

But to be honest, it could have been. Every day people get stuck in the mountains and it could just as easily have been me. It’s reassuring to know that whether you’ve fallen hundreds of metres into a crevasse or simply got stuck on the side of a hill they’re just a phone call away. And if it is just a dodgy knee, they’ll treat you with respect and kindness and most important, they’ll get you down to safety.