Iceland 8: Still at Strútslaug

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

Wednesday 31st August 1977

A week since we flew to Iceland. 

The Strútslaug Hut

Strútslaug-14, as someone has renamed it, was built by Dick Phillips for his own tours. It is cold, cramped, and the floor is volcanic gravel. Most of us sleep on the gravel but there is room for three ‘athletes’ on a seven-foot high sleeping platform. Getting on to it involves a stomach-wrenching reverse-somersault technique. Of course, only the Bridge School G.T. boys have strong enough stomach muscles to do it.

Yet, they are the ones most likely to have to go outside in the night. There must be some correlation between the strength of one’s stomach muscles and the need to pee. Perhaps strong stomach muscles exert greater pressure on the bladder. As we continue to drink big mugs of cocoa each night, those on the sleeping platform have to jump down in the dark. It is not a good idea to sleep directly beneath the edge.

In the mornings there is a well established order of getting up. I am told that Ed and Neville are always first. I really don’t know because I am always one of the last. I compete with three others for the Rip van Winkle award.

We are staying at Strútslaug for two nights to allow a day’s walking on the Torfajökull ice cap. It lies on an extensive volcanic cone known the ‘high rhyolite’. However, because of the red-raw state of my heels, it seems fairer to the others if I take the day off, so I stay at the hut. The complaints about the frequent stops to wait for me the previous day have got to me. Ed should really have done the same because his feet are as bad as mine, but he goes off with the others.
 

Geothermal pool at Strútslaug

After they have gone, I go down to the geothermal pools for a long soak. The strong mineral content works wonders on my scabby blisters. Not only does it heal heels, it is also mentally therapeutic. To tell you the truth, I am not very good at spending all day and night, seven days a week, with people I don’t know. It is hard enough with people I do know. I would have been hopeless in the army. Back at the hut I read a book of D. H. Lawrence short stories. I enjoy the day on my own.

Obsidian, a heavy, black, glassy igneous rock, lies all around. I pick up a piece to take home. Gavin has collected about five pounds (2.25 kg) of the stuff. Rather him than me carrying the extra weight. I’m glad I’m not on his Christmas present list.

I still have mine:

Obsidian from Iceland

The others return having had a superb day. Below is Neville’s picture of Paul, the leader, overlooking one of the views I missed. However, I am informed we will be walking part of the same route again tomorrow.  

Even for just a day’s walk, Paul still takes his carrying frame, albeit not as heavily laden as usual. He has a rope and two ice axes for emergencies. I think these must be stored at the Strútslaug hut because I haven’t noticed them before, even though he always carries far more weight than anyone else, including fuel for cooking. The sturdy frame appears to be constructed out of angle irons. I suspect it incorporates scaffolding poles and a couple of rolled steel joists as well. 

This Icelandic saga is turning out to be even longer than anticipated. We are now half way along the route, east to west, north-east of the Mýrdalsjökull glacier, with four more days walking to go:

(next part)
Some names and personal details have been changed. I would be delighted to hear from anyone who was there.

George Orwell: The Road to Wigan Pier

George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair):
The Road to Wigan Pier (4*)

This is very much a book of two halves.

It begins with Orwell’s account of the terrible living conditions in the industrial north of England during the nineteen-thirties. He writes first-hand after staying in lodging-houses, and living with miners and the unemployed in Wigan, Barnsley and Sheffield. I enjoyed this half of the book enormously, mainly because I can relate to it. Parts remind me how things still were in the fifties. Even in the seventies, echoes of the thirties were still around, despite much having improved by then. 

The second half advocates socialism as a means of improving these conditions. “Why aren’t we all socialists?” Orwell asks. It is interesting and clearly-argued, but I struggled to get to the end. It is not what I wanted to read (which has nothing to do with any political leanings I might have). I’ll say little more about this part other than to suggest that gains in living standards after the war were due to socialist policies.

Here are some of the things that struck me (page numbers may be inaccurate as I was using a Kindle).

Orwell writes of the thousands of ‘back to back’ terraces (they had no back doors because other houses adjoined the rear) “… which are all of a condemned type but will remain standing for decades.” (p48). They did. I lived in them in the Brudenell and Royal Park area of Leeds in the nineteen-seventies. Most had by then been modernised with damp courses and bathrooms, but not all. Across the road, we used to see inhabitants walking out in their pyjamas to the communal lavatories in the middle of the row. Those same houses are still there today, although the lavatories have been demolished to leave enclosures for dustbins. 

Older black and white photographs give a better idea of how dreary some of these streets were, such as this one, the communal lavatory with wooden seat in the middle:

My grandma had an earth closet as late as the nineteen-fifties, not a communal one, but it had to be shovelled out and burned.

Obviously, Orwell says a lot about class:

“… the real secret of class distinctions in the West … why [even a bourgeois Communist] cannot think of a working man as his equal. ... The lower classes smell. That was what we were taught… It is queer how seldom this is admitted.” (p119)

Remember the days before it was common to shower and wear clean clothes every day, and rub deodorant on all over? My mother used to say “clean shirt and socks every two days, clean underwear twice a week, and a bath once a week”. Many people were identifiable by their individual smell. Not all were pleasant. There was the man I tried not to sit near on the train who kept his suit in a fusty wardrobe. There was another who dried himself with a dirty towel. You could detect these things. Smokers were unmistakable. Sometimes you knew when women were having their periods. There were lots of smelly feet and armpits, or maybe poorly washed clothing. Goodness knows what their underpants must have been like. This was life in the cities as late as the nineteen-seventies.

Differences between north and south are central to the book. Staying in a dreadful lodging house above a tripe shop, several beds to the room, Orwell shares with a commercial traveller who is more used to hotels.

“He caught my eye and suddenly divined that I was a fellow-Southerner. ‘The filthy bloody bastards!’ he said feelingly. After that he packed his suitcase and… [left]”. (p13)

The unrelenting nature of working-class labour is detailed, and the enormous debt owed by those living cosseted lives to those toiling in the mines and factories:

“In a way it is even humiliating to watch coal-miners working. It raises in you a momentary doubt about your own status as an ‘intellectual’ and a superior person generally. For it is brought home to you that it is only because miners sweat their guts out that superior persons can remain superior. … all of us really owe the comparative decency of our lives to the poor drudges underground…” (p30)

So it still is in principle. We can’t all work at home on computers.

I found the first half of the book fascinating, and could go on about unemployment, the state of working-class teeth, poverty, and so on, but will end with a few more quotations (it’s easy to cut and paste from a Kindle, and the book is out of copyright):

An example of Orwell’s forthright views (it is almost worth reading the book just for these):

“One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist and feminist in England.” (p161) 

He’s nearly as entertaining as Adrian. On Yorkshiremen:

“There exists in England a curious cult of Northern snobbishness. A Yorkshireman in the South will always take care to let you know that he regards you as an inferior.” That the South is inhabited “merely by rentiers and their parasites. The Northerner has ‘grit’ … the Southerner is snobbish, effeminate and lazy…” (p101)

Too true. And one for any Sheffield bloggers that may be out there:

“Sheffield, I suppose, could justly claim to be called the ugliest town in the Old World … it contains fewer decent buildings than the average East Anglian village … And the stench! …” (p98)

 

Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

Previous book reviews