EQUIPMENT 1

I don’t what people to think that my preparations for the hike are limited only to honing my body to a peak of Olympian fitness. I have also been getting my gear into best order and near the top of my list is the pressing need to upgrade my mobile phone. This will be a vital piece of equipment as I will need it to text blog updates, take photos, and call the Samaritans.

My current mobile phone is rather old, it has a real keyboard and is missing only a small carriage return lever and a satisfying “ching” sound as you type near the end of a line of text. It has a camera but the photos it produces are all like badly varnished water colours – just one step up from the sonogram images of foetuses beloved of prospective mothers. (And much as parents-to-be have to talk people through their sonogram I also find myself having to explain my photos i.e. “There! See, that’s Fern’s arm and that’s my Mum’s head.. No. THERE. She’s looking upwards… No she isn’t naked she just has her arm’s folded! What dwarf? There’s no dwarf in the photo. Where… Oh I see what you mean, actually that might be a dwarf.” If a picture is worth a thousand words then my photos are saying “Where?” 950 times). The other problem is that the phone doesn’t have a forward facing lens so when attempting selfies I have to estimate where the lens might be pointing, consequently I usually look like I’m unsuccessfully attempting to photo-bomb my own photographs.

The other pressing issue is optimising signal coverage. For some people the Northern Ireland border does not exist, for others its a barrier involving a defined “no mans’ land” zone between Miles and Kilometres, Pounds and Euros, Health Service and Undertaker supply chain. However, for all mobile phone service providers the boarder is a zone never less than 30 miles wide within which your phone will always default to “Roaming” and your phone bill will consequently look like the Greek national debt.

So I have upgraded my phone, it turns out the purchase decision was clinched on the basis that the new phone is waterproof.

Next up, spare hiking boots. I have just purchased a pair of leather boots which look identical to the sort of footwear previously issued on prescription to those with club foot deformities before the paralympics made tungsten steel prosthetics fashionable (not with South African fashion models of course). My present boots are sexier but increasingly less waterproof and its actually very hard to carry off attractive when each footstep generates a flatulent squelching noise. In addition, in very wet conditions walking socks act as a sort of water reservoir of bog-water and each step can squirt a jet of this up the inside of your trouser leg; at a normal pace these spurts reach about knee level but if I’m carrying a heavy pack or trying to outpace an angry bull the squirts become geysers and easily reach up as far as my groin. In their favour the new boots will accommodate both my foot and my orthotic insole. Marie, my physio, thinks that without my orthotics I have the gait of an orang-utan, with them I am as nimble as a gazelle – I assume she means a gazelle walking upright on its hind legs and carrying a 12kg pack.

Thank you to all those people who have already supported HDANI by sponsoring wear and tear on my new boots. Donations to HDANI at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/BrendanMajor will not actually fund my boots but will help support improved care for a Huntington’s sufferer or their family.