John Stonborough F.C.I.P.R.

Qatar Snipe

Qataris Shelve Chelsea Barracks Plan After Prince’s Criticism.  That was headline on June 12th. The fury  (of Lord Rogers, architect of the £1bn Chelsea barracks scheme) over Prince Charles’ interference has taken up rather more space since. But I can’t help wondering if I am not having sand blown in my face. There is no doubting Rogers’ ire or the overwhelming local support for Prince Charles.  But who leaked the private letter from the Prince to the Prime Minister of Qatar. Why did the Qataris take any notice, so late on in the planning process. Surely nothing to do with the oil price dropping from $150 towards $30 a barrel recently? Just a thought. 

Twin Peaks

It was June 1953. Jamie was feeling sick and had to be taken home. The rest of us, Ki-Ora’d and butter-kist’d waited for the main film. It was a cartoon about this girl who got lost in a forest and was rescued by some dwarves. It was OK, bit long. Even the 3/9d seats at the Tivoli cinema, Wimborne were prickly in shorts.
The best bit was the film which came first. It was about these two blokes climbing Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world. One of them was called Sherpa Tenzing. The Queen was pleased because he and this other bloke stuck a Union Jack in the top, to celebrate her Coronation.

From the age of five, I could tell you the route Hillary and Tenzing took. Base camp, Khumbu Ice Fall, Lotse, South Col. And there was all that vocab too: crampons, seracs, crevasses, belays. To a small boy this was beyond exciting.
It wasn’t long before I accepted I would never reach the summit of Everest myself. Vertigo and chubbiness featured in my personal lexicon. But it didn’t stop me reading everything about Nepal, the Hindu Kush, K2, Anapurna and dreaming, as Belloc puts it, about ”peak and field and needle of intense ice, remote from the world, sky beneath them, sky above them, a steadfast legion, they glittered as with the armour of the immovable armies of Heaven.’

Reality was any wet Sunday at Sandroyd prep school, trying to keep up on a compulsory walk to South Lodge and back. A distance of no more than a mile and a half. Mr House was shouting at Nicky and me to catch up or risk having him pick me off the ground by my ear, or worse still, the hair by my ear.
At the front, some seniors were singing their gang song as they marched. Their leader was a lanky twelve year old called Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, who had recently arrived from South Africa. His dad was dead which is why he had the title. He was the only person I knew with a triple barreled name.
I wanted to be in his gang. Quite why Fiennes would have an eight year old squirt in his gang never occurred to me. So I took the precaution of learning that song, just in case. I can still remember the refrain. It probably has its roots in Zulu or Xhosa.
Since then I have followed events on Everest and the adventures of our greatest living explorer. A friend of mine actually met Sherpa Tenzing. I heard Sir Edmond Hillary talk at the RGS. I nearly blew a gasket when someone claimed Sherpa Tenzing had carried Sir Edmond’s bags to the top.
I still dream of ascending Everest, but new words have slithered in. With vertigo and chubbiness come bad heart and senior citizen.
Finally, last month I did get to the top, not literally but vicariously, in my head and my imagination. Fiennes finally made it. Base camp, Khumbu Ice Fall, Lotse, South Col. Aged 65, with double by-pass surgery and missing most of his fingers and toes. 
56 years to the month after seeing Snow White and Sherpa Tenzing at ‘the Tiv’, I still want to be in his gang.