I am an awful wimp about heights. I used to think it was a severe case of vertigo. But now I think it is probably acrophobia ; a state of great anxiety on tall buildings, mountain roads, cliffs and big bridges. A Christian psychotherapist once told me it was almost certainly related to child abuse. But whether as a victim or a perpetrator he was unwilling to say. I have never wanted to go up the Eiffel Tower.
As for mountain roads, when I was much younger I hitched over the Simplon Pass. But two decades ago I had to have my hands prised off the wheel after driving from Bourg-en-Bresse to Geneva, with its longish elevated motorway section. And more recently on the bus from Interlaken Station up to Beatenberg, and again on the coach from Grand Junction up to Silverton, Colorado, I have had to travel with a covering over my head like an over-stimulated parrot.
So it is odd that I quite enjoy looking at mountains. From a safe distance. And perhaps more odd that I quite enjoy reading books by mountaineers and looking at the illustrations. Even when they make my toes curl. As in other areas of life, my choice of reading seems to be out of date. A bit retro. Which I have again been looking through on wet December afternoons. Shipton was an interesting character. His mother was restless, and as a small child he moved around a lot between Ceylon, India, England, and France; guarding for the rest of his life valued memories of cross-Channel boats and Continental sleeper trains.
After failing his Common Entrance Shipton was sent to Pyt House, an eccentric, minor public school in south Wiltshire. In later life Shipton considered that the two luckiest influences that shaped his life were, first, being a complete failure at school, which precluded the choice of a professional career in England; and secondly the Great Slump of the s which ruined his prospects as a farmer in Kenya.
It was his last visit to the Alps for three decades. In he arrived in Kenya to work as an apprentice on a coffee farm a hundred miles north of Nairobi. From his bungalow window Shipton looked out at the twin volcanic peaks of Mount Kenya.
