THE SUMMIT
Christmas Day – the blackest day of my life though not entirely unanticipated: this has been a doomed quest. Just before noon, heart pounding, I dragged myself over the final rim. I stood erect. I unrolled my Union Jack. And then, emotion having fogged my goggles from my rendition of “While Sherpas watched their flocks by night,” I whipped them off, the better to place my flag.
I found myself looking at a small brass plaque testifying to the fact that the Sattu had been scaled a month before by eighty-seven directors of the Satsubishi Electronics Corporation.
So there will be no knighthood, now.
Boadicea's Chariot 
All previous instalments should now be inaccessible, having been converted to “Private”.
If this has been accomplished satisfactorily, I can post the quiz….
Tee hee, CWJ, I can read private posts! 👿
But I promise I won’t.
Nice carol, CWJ! 🙂
I will own to having just read the instalments from five onwards – I have been absent for a few days… but I promise not to look up answers for the quiz. 🙂
Dodgy time to be mountaineering in the Himalayas. Normally takes place around April/May. But I sense there was nothing normal about this particular expedition.
Hi cwj
I missed it from Part 7 so gonnae de-privatise them again after the quiz?
Belated congratulations on the entire series. They were brilliant and the late and great Alan Coren would have been proud to have written them himself, in my opinion.
Boa – I am sure Bearsy can be trusted to let you read the first, which incorporates all installments but the last…
John – I will certainly make it all available in a oner, after the quiz.
The main hunt is going to be for the name of the author. For these few gems were all I have – pages 127 -131 from a book, which I do not possess. I am desperately curious to know who wrote such wonderful stuff, but haven’t been able to track it down, despite the wonders of the Internet and Google. Some of you may have better luck. Good hunting!
Janus – I have to confess I inserted both “Christmas Day” and “While Sherpas watched their flocks by night” – I simply couldn’t resist it 🙂
Now, to test your powers of retention and memory:
Quiz:
1
How many businessmen planned to conquer Sattu, and what height was it?Ans by Sipu : 8 and 20,000ft.
2 Name seven of them.
3 Whose personal assistant had outstanding attributes?
4 What was the wine being consumed at Base Camp One, Day Four, and what vintage?
5 Who was the cigar smoker?
6 How many porters were lost with the departure of the founder of the Himalayas Finance Company?
7
Who felt out of pocket not being able to claim their daily expense allowance and how much was it?Ans by Sipu: Murchison and the sum he wanted to claim was £847.30 (In fact his daily allowance was £100 p.d.)
8 What restaurants had he expected to find on the slopes of the Attu?
9 Who was suffering terribly from lust?
10
With whom did he venture outside, to solve his problems, and whose assistant was she?Ans by John: Mis Belwether and she was the writer’s PA
11 Which two bought the land at Base Camp Two, and what business venture were they planning for it?
12
The Jumbo heliport was marked out in………..?Ans by Janus brandy bottles
13 Who formed the giant, eight-pointed, pale pink snowflake?
1) 8 and 20,000.
12. Empty cognac bottles. Hic.
Close enough to “brandy”, Janus to give you a point, and we have to assume they were empty!
I fear we may have more Alzheimer’s cases on the team, Ackroyd, than we thought at first….
10. Mis Belwether and she was the writer’s PA, but I can’t remember his name.
7 Could that be Murchison and the sum he wanted to claim was £847.30?
John – correct and we don’t know the author’s name frustratingly!
Sipu. Yes – his allowance was actually £100 p.d. against receipts, but he attempted to have £847.30 signed off as you mentioned.
I had been under the misapprelusion that you were the author, CWJ. It is disappointing to discover at this stage that you are not. 😦
I’m actually impressed that anyone could answer the questions, CWJ. I read each episode, enjoyed them enormously and promptly wiped them from my memory banks.
I’m afraid that most things I read on line goes in one ear and out the other, if you see what I mean. I’m a Luddite, and if I want to remember them, I have to print them out and re-read.
I felt this would have been cheating though!
Hullo Minty MBE,
I now know what your signature doesn’t look like. Those stylus thing-a-ma-jigs th epostie has are crap aren’t they?
Don’t keep me in suspenders, what did you think?
Just waxed lyrical by email, Furry.
I’m just sooo impressed by your skill!
Apologies, CWJ, but Furry, I shall write you an official and excellent testimonial for you to add to your site.
I’m very impressed. I honestly didn’t know what to expect; something good, obviously, but I’m absolutely delighted.
Bearsy,My first question prior to the quiz, (See #7) was to ask anyone reading this site to try and figure out who the author was. As I said, it is the content of pages 127-131 of a book, whose title and author I do not have. I am flattered if you were misapprelusioned!
Good evening, cwj.
I’m almost certain that it was Alan Coren who wrote it. I had a vague memory of a similar article by him, possibly in ‘Punch’, when I first saw your post. I have been a total fan of his work from the age of about 15 when I first started reading him in ‘Punch’. It is not in any of my anthologies but it is definitely in his style and ‘Ackroyd’ was a favoured names which he used more than once for a character’s name. He also often wrote stories based on a headline from a current newspaper.
Like you, I have googled but can find no confirmation so all I can rely on is that vague memory.
I think you could be right, John. It has something of his style about it, but I am so annoyed I can’t find out, as I would love to read the rest of it. All I can tell is that it was a book rather than a magazine article, as it still has the page numbers at the bottom of those which covered these installments. Of course it could have been an anthology of short stories, and I’d be back where we started. I wonder if he used the same publisher for all his work… I have just sent a note to his daughter Vicky asking her if she can ID it as his work. Let’s see what comes back.
I have now had a note back from Alan Coren’s family:
Victoria had a look at the piece but is afraid she can’t identify it as a specific article of her father’s, but it does read very very much like his work. She also checked with her brother who didn’t recognise the piece either but said “yes it is probably him”. She apologises for not being able to say more definitely but if she had to bet on it then she’d bet yes.
For John Mackie – I have switched back the full version from “private” to “public” for you.
Further to Coren’s daughter’s comments, someone else has suggested to me that it reads very like a parody of W.E. Bowman’s “The Ascent of Rumdoodle”, written about 1956, and described as “Sir Edmund hillary meets Monty Python”! Has anyone read that?
Gaun yer own, cwj. Lucky man to have communicated with Giles and Victoria.
It’s a shame that so many of AC’s works seem to have been lost to posterity. He used to write about the two of them quite often in his ‘Punch’ articles. I hope they still have those articles.
Never realised that ‘The Ascent of Rum Doodle’ was written as early as 1956. A fine book which I have read. I do have it somewhere as it was a major paperback stocking filler at some point in the mid-1980’s. If I find it, I will publish attributed extracts hereon, if nobody objects.