Another Health Gadget

I suspect at present we are in just as much danger of catching covid as ever. I don’t believe the numbers. People are mixing more. Several in our village have it. They’ve stopped bothering to report it. Many are turning off the app, assuming they had it in the first place. Even our elected leaders are bending the rules. It’s sensible to be sensible.

I read Piers Morgan’s account of catching covid at the Wembley football final. I’m aware he’s an arrogant know-it-all but he has my sympathy in this. Despite being fully vaccinated, he had an awful experience: high fever, aches, coughing; “definitely the roughest I’ve felt from any illness in my adult life” he said. He makes the fair point that without vaccination it is likely he would have been considerably worse. It may even have saved his life.

His respiratory consultant (lucky him!) said to monitor his arterial saturations and to seek help if they fell below 93%. 

Obviously, you can’t monitor your blood oxygen levels if you don’t have a gadget, so, for £16, I got one, just in case any of us at home catch covid. 

And when you’ve got one of these oximeters you can’t resist playing with it. I’m mostly somewhere between 96% and 99%. But what if you take a reading when you’ve been active or exercising (still 96-99%)? What does it show if you clip it on your toe (oh dear, a bit lower, I hope I’ve not got vascular disease)? How low can you make it go?

Did you know that if you stop breathing until you can’t resist any longer, and then push it a bit more by counting slowly to 10 before you breath in, nothing much changes except your pulse rockets up. Thankfully, you then breath in. And about thirty seconds later, when the blood gets to the end of your finger, you might have managed to get it down to 86%. Beat that!

Now, I wonder if it works with cats. Would it go best on Phoebe’s paw or on the end of her tail?

Walking In Iceland 4: Stormy Weather

links to: introduction and index - previous day - next day

Saturday 27th August 1977

Yesterday, the first proper day of our guided walk in Iceland, we arrived at the Sveinstindur hut near the western edge of Vatnajökull, Iceland’s largest ice cap. We are to stay here for two nights. 

Just after arrival at the Sveinstindur Hut

Today’s itinerary directs that we ascend the remaining 1150 feet (350m) to the top of Sveinstindur mountain (3585 feet, 1093m), one of the most magnificent viewpoints in Iceland. It boasts panoramic views of Vatnajökull and five other ice caps, the twelve-mile-long lake Langisjór, winding rivers, hundreds of mountains, volcanoes, and distant horizons in all directions.  

Unfortunately, yesterday’s bitter wind has brought terrible weather. Paul, the walk leader, reluctantly declares the day to be a ‘holiday’. The weather really is awful. We stay inside the hut where it sounds even worse because of rain drumming on the corrugated iron roof. Fortunately, nowadays, I can turn to the internet to pinch pictures of what we missed. 

This is a total surprise to me. I had absolutely no idea what it could be like up there until I saw these. Even if we had made it, visibility would have been nothing like this.  The first picture looks east towards Vatnajökull, the second in the opposite direction.

Views from Sveinstindur

The hut is small for the incarceration of thirteen people, but we have to accept that Paul knows best. At one end, a bridge school has started. Others read books. Some, complaining of a restless night, go back to sleep. One by one, even those who are awake get back in their sleeping bags to keep warm.

I join in card games for a while, and then, for something to do and to escape the state of lethargy into which most have fallen, I go for water, twice. This involves a ten minute walk each way, up a hill, down again and then across a kind of beach beside some flooded mud flats, and then over another promontory to a trickling stream.

Ascending the hill takes no effort, you simply sail up in the wind, but returning is a step by step struggle against flying hailstones. Frequent back-to-the-wind rests are needed. On the final descent down to the hut you have to keep sitting down so as not to be blown away. It is the strongest wind I have ever experienced. At least it makes your hands so cold you cannot feel string of the bucket cutting into your fingers. What a pity we can’t use the gritty water from the nearer mud flats.   

Although Sveinstindur mountain is hidden in cloud, the weather seems slightly better at lunch time, but by tea time it is desperate again. Apart from the business of cooking and washing up we continue to vegetate inside the hut. 

The huts are maintained by parishes for use by shepherds during the October sheep round-up. The remoteness and distances involved make it necessary to do this on horseback, so the huts are both stables and human quarters. 

At Sveinstindur, the single hut doubles up for both purposes, the human area at the rear being raised by three or four feet to form a sleeping platform. I get a spot on the lower floor. It would be a lot warmer if we had a horse, as the Irving Berlin song makes clear:

The snow is snowing and the wind is blowing
But I can weather the storm
What do I care how much it may storm
I’ve got my horse to keep me warm…

The other well-known Irving Berlin song composed during his secret, anonymous and undocumented holiday with Icelandic sheep herders was:

I’m,
putting on my jumper,
putting on my jumper,
putting on my jumper...

Fred Astaire was scripted to sing this in the film Top Hat but refused on the grounds that traditional Icelandic jumpers are inelegant and wearing three made him too hot for dancing. 

There are warming mugs of cocoa at bedtime. Why do those with the weakest bladders bag the spots furthest from the door so they have to pick their way in pitch blackness over the lumps of snoring sleeping bags strewn across the floor? They risk falls, injuries and very abusive language.  

                                                     *                    *                    *

For the orienteers amongst us, here is a 1:250,000 map of the area in 1977 (four miles to the inch or 2.5 km to the centimeter). The blue arrows indicate the positions of the first four huts, with Sveinstindur centrally towards the top. The first picture above looks east towards where ‘Siujökull’ is written on the map, and the second in the opposite direction along the ridge of ‘Graenifjallgardur’. Our trek will later continue to the south of this ridge (click here for a greatly enlarged version of the map).

(next part)
I would be delighted to hear from anyone who was there.