Alistair Sutcliffe - The Hardest Climb

Our lives are measured by the footprints we leave behind, the courses we chart and the examples that we leave for others to follow.

I was eleven years old in 1975, the year that I met Chris Bonington. Chris was one of the worlds foremost mountaineers and hed just returned from leading the first successful British expedition to summit Mount Everest. Chris was visiting my best friends father, Eric Major, himself a climber as well as a publisher. Paul and I had just come in from playing football on the local fields. On entering the familiar surroundings of Pauls house, I was greeted by an unfamiliar yet welcoming and friendly giant of a man. Standing tall in the kitchen, this strange man had a cracked, weather-beaten face covered by an uneven tan, with a thick untended beard, experienced eyes and a warm smile. This was Chris Bonington, and from the minute he started talking to me I was interested quite something, for me. He recounted several stories of his trip, good and bad and that was me hooked. What does it really feel like to stand on top of the world? What would the air smell like up there? How can people get so high without being in a plane? What does it take to get up there, to the places where so few have been? One day, I thought to myself, I want to answer these questions.

Life before secondary school had presented me with some indication of where my future might go. My father and I are similar in many ways, both sharing a love for animals and humans alike, though occasionally more for the former. In the late 1960s, before I was old enough to be trusted on my own at home in the school holidays, dad used to take me along to his surgery where I used to sit and play with my toys as he consulted with both ill and well patients. It was on one of his house visits, to an elderly patient who ran the local slaughter house, that I acquired my first real pet. As we stepped out of my fathers old mini traveller, a lorry pulled up laden with chickens ready to be dressed for the consumer. As the lorry driver threw the birds in through the slaughter-house door, I heard a loud crack, and the bird that he had just thrown began squawking in obvious pain. The poor chicken had suffered a badly broken leg in the throwing process, and now lay shaking in distress on the stone floor. I must have been visibly upset at witnessing this cruelty, as dad stepped in without hesitation, and offered the slaughter-mans son three shillings and sixpence for the injured chicken. The offer was accepted, father went in to attend to his patient, and I attended to the stricken bird. That afternoon we got the chicken home and splinted its broken leg with two lollipop sticks and some bandage from the surgery. We named the pet Lazarus, as we felt that it had risen from its grave, and the chicken and I embarked on a nine year relationship together. I truly loved my pet, and doted on it to the extreme, regularly encouraging it in from the garden with pieces of chocolate and cream cracker, only to be shouted at by mother several hours later as she cleaned up the poo left behind by my new best friend. Lazzy never laid a single egg in her entire time with us, but she lived a very long and happy life in the Sutcliffe household, finally passing away after many pampered years. Her death was by no means predictable. When poor Lazzy finally went off her legs, my father couldnt bear to put her down by the accepted route of breaking her neck, and gave her sufficient sedative to put an elephant to sleep. Lazzy consequently fell into a deep slumber, nursed in my bedroom, and woke up three days later. My father then called in Mike, our vet and good friend, who put Lazzy to rest, finally, in a peaceful, predictable and certain way.

My school years were not exactly a tale of academic success. My brother Andy and I both attended the same school for most of our youth. Neither of us really excelled in any department, though Andy did learn how to smoke a cigarette successfully, and kindly tutored me for a few years until I too had learnt the skill. Fortunately the finances involved in continuing this hobby soon curtailed it, though my brother still flies the flag. Our secondary school, Westcliff High, was close to our home in Leigh-on-Sea. The school was an all boys affair, though fortunately right next door to the girls school. Andy formed a small punk rock band, and naturally most of my interests followed on from what my big brother was involved in. In my eyes he was the coolest guy on the block.

School was all about learning sport and acquiring a passion for motorcycles, as far as I was concerned. The first motorcycle arrived six weeks before my sixteenth birthday, much to the disappointment of mum and dad. I had saved for months from the money that I had earned from my paper round, and had taken this money in monthly instalments to one of the local motorcycle shops. Here, they had kindly kept a record of the payments until I had given them enough for my dream bike, a seven-year-old Fantic Caballero moped. I was absolutely thrilled at the prospect of no longer relying on pedal-power to get to school and back. Suddenly, I was going to be free. I knew that my parents would not welcome the motorcycle, but fortunately Andy had already taken the heat from the situation by getting one himself. Most of the arguments about how dangerous they are, how noisy and antisocial they are, and how impractical they are, had already taken place. On the day of pick-up, I was not old enough to ride the moped home. I arrived at the shop with my satchel from school, paid my last instalment and then proudly left. I pushed my prize home on the pavement, all five miles, working out how I could conceal it from my parents. I arrived at our house and pushed it through the side gate and into the back garden, and hid it behind one of the sheds. This was to be my mopeds home, at least until I had worked out how to break the news to my parents. The plan failed miserably. It was discovered the following day when my father fell over one of its pedals while trying to smoke a cigarette behind the shed in his dressing gown and slippers. For months mother had been harassing him to give up smoking, and hed informed her that he was well into the process of cleansing his system of the dreaded weed. Clearly, this was not quite true, and as he came in with dirty knees from his tumble, mother remarked that it had been divine justice for telling her fibs. This distracted them both from the fact that their second son was now a motorcycle owner.