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her nose. As if annoyed to have been disturbed by this scruffy ‘thing’ in her reception, she told me that
Messrs Davis and Langdon were the two people who had founded the firm in the early 1900s, and that therefore my request may be a ‘little difficult’. I stood my ground and insisted, and
eventually arranged for my brochure to go to the ‘current’ Senior Partner, then sauntered out and thought nothing more of it. I had done this a thousand times before, to no avail.
    That weekend I spent at home with my parents in the country. Desperation was beginning to kick in. If something drastic didn’t happen soon, then the expedition, for me, was off. I felt as
if I was on this diddery old tight-rope and it was beginning to wobble.
    ‘Why don’t you pray?’ my mother warbled from the kitchen. It had got way beyond that, I thought. But, in despair, I agreed. So my mother and I knelt in the field, with donkey
droppings all around, and said a short prayer for some help. I was all too aware that if I couldn’t find the remaining funds, I would have to withdraw from the team.
    Forty-eight hours later a phone call came in for me. It was the Senior Partner of Davis, Langdon and Everest (DLE); they’d received my brochure and wondered if I would have a moment to
come in for a meeting.
    ‘Let me think . . . this afternoon you say? Hmm, yep, I think I’m free, but I better just check . . .’ I calmly said, almost unable to even sit on the chair with
excitement.
    I raced up to London, squeezed into my suit once more, swallowed a breath freshener and hoped for my last shot to work.
    The Senior Partner informed me that the founder of their firm had been a descendant of George Everest, the Surveyor General of India in the 1830s. George Everest had been the first man to
properly study the height of this huge mountain in the Himalaya, and 160 years later and with the use of laser technology, scientists showed that he was accurate to within 0.09%. The mountain came
to bear George Everest’s name, and his descendant had founded the company whose coffee I was now drinking.
    The team of people I was chatting with seemed a world apart from the slightly sour fat cats I had been dealing with elsewhere. They were interested, friendly and had a vision for how this
expedition could work for them. Rather than purely wanting the PR from any media coverage, what they saw in it was entirely different.
    They wanted a unifying focus for their company. They recognized that a successful company becomes successful from the inside out, rather than the other way round. What they wanted was a project
to focus and excite all who worked for DLE, something that everyone would feel a part of. It seemed that I was fast going to become that ‘something’. I swallowed nervously. I would have
to start brushing my hair.
    And so, with only fourteen days to go before we were due to leave, DLE came in as my main sponsor. The next day I went into the bank to pay in this huge cheque and the cashier’s eyes lit
up with delight as he asked me what I was going to do with the money.
    ‘Get high,’ I replied grinning, ‘ – literally!’

    The countdown from then on was a blur of organising equipment; getting the correct sized high-altitude boots, sending them back and forth to modify them, and then getting the
most suitable crampons accurately fitted. We had to make sure all the medical kit was in order with large enough quantities of the right pills and creams. Then it would be on to checking and
re-checking the clothing. Outer-garments, thermal inners, windproofs, fleeces, silk inners, ice-axes, slings, harnesses; the list was endless. Sorting them neatly into the correct piles at home was
a delight to our cat, who was convinced the latest in high-altitude goggles was a dead rat. But slowly, and with much help, it all began to take shape.
    At the same time though, the fitness training ceaselessly continued. On one of my training sessions some