I'm reading Edmund Hillary's autobiography at the moment (and Christ, it is making me impatient for my next mountain trip in October), and decided to look up some youtube clips of the great man. This was mostly from a very nerdy desire to hear whether he had a New Zealand or British accent, but let's overlook that for the moment.

Anyway, when news filtered around the world that he and Tenzing Norgay had got to the top of Everest, there was quite the media furore, which you can see here:

Wasn't that a fantastic furore? Listen to the wonderful brass bands playing and the elegant-sounding gentleman giving a modest description of the events. Love it.

It really is for the best that there are very few 'firsts' left for mankind to conquer. I don't think I could bear the inevitable Celebrity Big Brother appearances, the big-money sponsorships, the 'Edmund Hillary drank Sparkly Mega-Water on his way to the top of the world' advertising campaigns if something like that were to happen nowadays.

That clip has just made me miss a period of time that I wasn't even alive for. It was a simple, straightforward account of the amazing achievements of a team of people, acting solely from a sense of adventure and a desire to push the limits of human achievement, all of them positively embarrassed by the relatively small amount of attention lavished upon them, attention subsequently used by Hillary and others to fund further expeditions and many charitable projects rather than for his own self-aggrandisement.

Oh, I don't even know what I am blabbering on about any more. I think I just want to climb a mountain.