It’s Becca, the head trainer. She walks towards me with a dog: Harmony. I smile. She takes Foster indoors. Harmony races over, making a sound I later learn to associate with happiness, a mix of a purr and a growl. She places her paws on my lap. Can she really be that pleased to see me? I’m flattered. Vicky, another trainer, lets me get on with it but I feel reassured by the knowledge that she’s still there and ready to step in, if I need her.
I know what I’m expected to do … I throw the ball.
Harmony brings it back.
Then she runs off without the ball and I watch her sniffing the hedgerows and chasing her shadow. I love her curiosity. As I observe her, unnoticed, I feel strangely peaceful. Something in me clicks: I might have been wrong about Harmony. Then she sneezes. Startled by the sound of her own sneeze, she bolts across the field. Her excitement is infectious; I start laughing and can’t stop. I drive the disability scooter as fast as I can all over the field. It goes much faster than the one at home and Harmony tears after me; we weave in and out of each other. I feel the wind on my face and in my hair; I’ve smiled so much my teeth have gone dry.
I’ve remembered what it was to want to be outdoors in the fresh air, trudging through muddy fields, hill walking, climbing mountains and reaching North Everest Base Camp.
Oh, do we have to stop?
Then Harmony decides to let me know she’s there and comes bounding over. I lift her face to reach mine. She nuzzles into my neck and I see the brown streaks behind her ears: it’s as if she’s tried to apply self-tanning lotion and made a mess of it. She’s tried to smooth it on but it’s trickled down her body and legs, and then dried. On her forehead she has a ‘fingerprint’ – a spot just perfect for kissing. Her tail curves backwards and wags furiously; I feel my heart reach out to her. She’s slow to respond to commands, she’s going to need lots of encouragement but there’s something special in there, I think to myself.
I’ve taken to this little soul.
As you approach it, Everest gets bigger: you don’t appreciate the scale of it until you leave the last of the Tibetan villages clinging to the mountainside, the prayer flags fluttering in the breeze. Gleaming white against a big blue sky she is majestic – no wonder the Tibetans call her Qomolungma (Goddess Mother of the World).
Our journey to Everest began before we reached Tibet: it started when Andrew, my then boyfriend of six years, decided he wanted to celebrate passing his BSc in Estate Management at Reading University by going on a big trip.
‘Let’s take three months off before I start work,’ he suggested, one night after supper. ‘Let’s do a proper trip. Wouldn’t you love to see China? How about Tibet?’
Andrew and I have been together since he was 18 and I was 20. None of this would have happened without him. He’s a very private person, but it would be unfair to go on without acknowledging this is our story: we’ve always been a team.
We met in Edinburgh in 1979, when I was 17 while I was studying drama. One bleak Sunday morning in January, a year into my course, I heard singing coming from a local neighbourhood church and went in. Raised by, then, agnostic parents, I had no experience of going to church other than attending the local youth club, which was run by the Baptist church in the village in Fife where I grew up. There, the emphasis was on fun, not God. But I’m a very emotional person with a love of choral music: I went in, sat down and by the end of the service, I was elated.
Through the church I met a wonderful group of people who welcomed me into their congregation. The first person I met was Reg, an elderly man who took the time to make sure that I was sitting with people of my own age. Also, there were families who would invite me to join them for Sunday lunch and gave me lifts to and from church.
A few months later, I met Andrew. He was taking part in a playlet: a dialogue between God (a girl in the pulpit) and Man (Andrew at the prayer lectern). My first thought was, I haven’t seen you before. This was quickly followed by: I want to get to know you. When we finally spoke, he came across as a real gentleman. He has a lovely smile and the biggest brown eyes you’ve ever seen; he also has incredibly long eyelashes. Women die for them! He’s dark and handsome with, I found out much later, an Indian great-grandfather. Andrew was mature for his age with an articulacy that meant he could express things in a word, usually yes, whereas I’d use about twenty. I felt able to express myself freely and be understood. It was something I’d been searching for, I realised. He was nonjudgemental and a great listener.
We soon discovered a shared belief in working hard, enjoying life and giving back to society by looking after folk less fortunate than ourselves. After three years at drama school, studying works such as George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man and Shakespeare’s Macbeth; also putting on productions of J. M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World and Federico Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding, I decided acting wasn’t for me. I wasn’t enough of a performer to pursue it as a profession and so toyed with the idea of studying drama therapy but needed a psychiatric nurse qualification first. So my thoughts turned to nursing. At drama school I’d learned the art of public speaking and appearing self-confident. So, in November 1983 I joined the RMN course at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh which, at the time was based in a collection of old buildings with turrets and spiral staircases in the heart of the city. I did a placement on a medical ward (oncology) and I loved it. Once there, I made great friends and immediately knew it was for me although I had to work hard to convince the tutors this was a genuine decision, that I really wanted to care for cancer sufferers. I qualified as a general nurse in February 1987.
For Andrew and myself commitment and loyalty to each other and the things we did, our jobs and now of course our family feature high on our list of priorities. We are also very different: to this day, for example, I still don’t know which party Andrew votes for – a long time ago we agreed not to discuss politics. Some things remain a mystery: how can anyone take or leave chocolate, for example? I once found an eight-year-old Mars Bar in his rucksack that had formed part of his emergency rations. Personally, I can’t be within a 100-yard radius of chocolate without having to eat it all. I am impulsive whereas Andrew thinks things through very carefully; I’m noisy and a chatterbox while he is quiet and deep yet we both love books, good food and climbing mountains.
Now, by climbing I’m not talking about ropes and crampons (attachments to outdoor footwear). I briefly joined the Edinburgh University mountaineering club only to discover that I loved abseiling down, but hated going up! No, I’m talking about hill walking. My childhood in Fife instilled a passion for walking. ‘Munro-bagging’, they call it in Scotland: a term used to describe going up the 283 Munro Mountains (Ben Nevis being the most famous) that Mr Munro mapped in the nineteenth century.
As a child of the Sixties, Munro-bagging was a regular weekend pursuit. I rarely watched TV although I’ll never forget being woken up to witness Neil Armstrong take one giant leap for mankind.
‘This is important and you need to remember it,’ insisted Dad, bundling me downstairs.
On Saturdays, my father worked an extra job selling carpets and would come home with sweets, stories of difficult customers and newly hatched sales pitches. Meanwhile, I spent many a happy afternoon in the local farmers’ fields ‘tatty scouring’. All the kids did it: clearing the fields after the tractor had pulled up the potatoes, proudly bringing home bags of spuds for our mums. Sundays, however, were reserved for walking. After breakfast, Mum, Dad and I would set off, with Dad in socks and boots, whatever the weather. ‘No good comes of baring your feet,’ he used to say, me in my Dunlop Green Flash. I have photos of us in hand-crocheted multi-coloured waistcoats and memories of trudging up hills in orange bell-bottoms, with embroidered flowers swinging round my ankles. Real seventies’ flair! Days were filled with the sound of our breath, the crunch of footsteps, rucksacks loaded with Marmite and cottage cheese sandwiches plus flasks of sweet tea. Although I didn’t think about it at the time