In the middle of the room was a bed surrounded by nurses in starched white uniforms, their smiles dazzling. White. Bright. Warm.
I walked over to the bed. Marina’s blonde hair spilt over the pillow, her face was drained of colour. Everything was white. Clinical, but calm and soothing.
I held her hand and she opened her eyes. She smiled. I love her smile, it’s so beautiful. It’s infectious. Tears rolled down my cheeks. She looked at me and squeezed my hand.
‘Do you want to meet him?’
Him. My baby was a boy. We had deliberately not found out his sex. Marina wanted to have a surprise, something to look forward to at the end of labour. A boy, another little boy. A son.
Wait. What does she mean, meet him? I knew he had been stillborn.
‘I think we should meet him to say goodbye.’
I like to think of myself as a pretty stable, well-prepared individual, little surprises me and I am rarely flummoxed. ‘Expect the unexpected’ has always been my mantra; but now, here, in this faraway hospital in a strange land, I was being invited to meet and to hold my dead son.
One of the nurses appeared with a baby blanket. She held it in her arms gently and walked through the shafts of sunlight. My heart raced. Nothing, I mean nothing in my life had prepared me for this.
She handed me the little bundle. I cupped him in my arms and peered at his little face. He was so beautiful. He looked like he was asleep.
‘What shall we call him?’ Marina smiled.
‘I think we should call him Willem.’ Tears splashed onto his little cheeks.
Here was a little boy I had longed to meet but would never get to know. For eight months, I had imagined a complete family of five. Suddenly, those dreams had been shattered.
It can be difficult for those who haven’t experienced this unique form of bereavement to understand how painful it can be, to lose someone you never knew, but I felt like I was suffocating.
I stared at little Willem and made a resolution there and then that I would live the rest of my life for the two of us, that I would relish every day. I would always smile. I would live it to its full. For little Willem, I would live my life even more brightly, seizing the moments and the opportunities and pursuing my dreams.
Little did I know it, but in that dreadful moment of tragedy and disappointment was the germ of a journey that would turn my life around and lead me up to the top of the world.
Up.
‘Always look Up,’ my late grandmother used to say. It was good advice. It is too easy to go through life looking down.
It is almost a symptom of modern society, to look down, both physically and metaphorically. Travel on the commuter train, bus or tube each morning and they are full of people looking down. Down at their phones, their newspapers, their feet, anywhere but up, for fear of making eye contact. Walk along most streets and they are full of people looking down at their phones, their feet, the pavement.
It is like we have evolved into a downward-looking species.
I remember once on a visit to New York, a taxi driver pointed out that he could always spot a tourist because they were the ones looking up. That observation is so symbolic. You see, to New Yorkers, those magnificent vertiginous skyscrapers were just another part of their landscape. Complacency meant they never looked up and admired the city that others flocked to.
Can you imagine how much we miss out on by looking down? Those chance encounters, opportunities and sights. To my mind, we have become an increasingly pessimistic, negative and angry society. We have become suspicious of success. Social media and the press will often pick on the negative, downward-facing stories and opinions.
Where is the Up? The positivity, the optimism and the celebration? I’m sure if more people looked up and smiled, we would be in a happier world.
If there is one thing I encourage my children to do, it is to smile. Not in a needless, fake kind of way, but in a positive karma kind of way. A smile has a natural way of lightening and lifting the head.
Take a look around you. Downward-facing frowns? Lift your head and smile.
It was a hot summer’s afternoon in 2016 and I was in a crowded tent at Goodwood House in Sussex. My wife Marina and I had been invited by Cartier to join them for lunch at the Festival of Speed. I made my way to our table and peered at the name card next to me.
Victoria Gardner.
I’d never heard of her, which was just as well, as she wasn’t there.
Thirty minutes passed and, after I’d finished my starter, a young girl appeared, apologised profusely for her lateness and sat in the chair next to me.
I recognised her instantly: Victoria Pendleton, the heroine of British cycling. Two-time Olympic gold medallist and umpteen-time world champion. I was dizzy with excitement. I had followed her career closely and admired her ability to excel at sport while not becoming a slave to it. I had always liked the way she spoke her mind and appeared to ruffle feathers by breaking convention. I admired her individuality in a sport with a reputation for unquestioning conformity.
I had long thought that Victoria would make a great adventuring companion if ever I met her. For several hours, we chatted. I told her that if ever she wanted to embark on an expedition or an adventure, I would love to explore some ideas. Without hesitation, she accepted, and in the inauspicious and unlikely surroundings of that marquee, we hatched a plan that would take us to one of the wildest, most dangerous places on earth, on a journey that would change our lives forever.
For several years, I had been travelling the world to spend time with people who had abandoned the conformity of society and followed their dreams into the wilderness. Each one had inspired me to do more with my own life, but each time I found myself returning home and plugging back into our ‘vanilla’ society. Safe. Risk averse. Conforming. Restricting. Angry.
I have always wanted more. I have always wanted to shake the manacles of expectation. Over the years, I have dipped in and out of it, but I have always returned to the safety of home and complacency.
I had been looking for something to shake my foundations and reconnect me with the wilderness.
The modern world is a complex one. Aged 44, I sometimes worry I can’t keep up with it. Technology and communication have advanced at breakneck speed. Never have we been bombarded with so much information. Never has society been held up to such scrutiny.
What’s more, we have become increasingly polarised. World politics is the manifestation of our fractured society. You are either in or out. For or against. Yes or no. Up or down.
Negativity is a blight on society. It might just be the rose-tinted retrospective reflection of my childhood, but I’m sure when I was younger everything was more positive. Negativity was the realm of Eeyore, the donkey from Winnie-the-Pooh. Eeyore was in the minority with his pessimism and gloom.
Today, there seems to be a bubbling undertone of resentment and anger that is contagious. It seems to manifest itself in this fast-paced, downward-looking burden. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
You can live your life Up.
I have always tried to look Up. That doesn’t mean I haven’t looked back, far from it, we can all learn a great deal from our past. From the highs and lows, the good decisions and the bad. The successes and the mistakes.
You see, looking Up has become something bordering on the spiritual. I am not religious, but that doesn’t mean I don’t look up.
‘Do