Suffering

My good friend H- has many years of experience in tour and mountain guiding. During this time he has come to recognise that nationalities each have distinct characteristics. The one which defines the British, he says, is a love of Suffering.

I can readily concur with this. Indeed, I confess that my first trip to Iceland was on a trek led by the legendary guide D- P-. Our shelter was the rude sheep-house and our sleep mat was the soft sheep droppings therein; we were nourished by the tinned treacle pudding we brought from home and potent cocoa brewed on a fragrant primus.

I have encountered many seekers after Suffering. Did you realise, for instance, that there are people who fill pitta bread with leftover porridge and eat it cold as a packed lunch? Difficult to believe I know, but I have encountered a number of such cases.

I recall old Mac, our scout leader when we were youths, who would have his morning shave using tea left over from breakfast. We once caught his colleague, P.B., in the act of putting all the elements of breakfast - cereal, eggs, bread, tomatoes, bacon, jam etc, into one pan and heating it on the primus. When challenged, he remarked, 'It all gets mixed up inside you doesn't it?'

The trainer on a winter skills course I once attended produced a plastic tub of Christmas pudding at lunchtime. 'Got all the nourishment you need', he proclaimed as he spooned it in, cold. 'And is a bloody miserable experience', he didn't proclaim.

I think it has something to do with our early years. I have already described our nights in damp sleeping bags under flimsy cotton tents. Also, we spent a good deal of time in clammy institutions called Youth Hostels (See Post Hostels and Huts for more details). Being comfortable can seem like cheating.

In England we have a man who does his hill walking naked. Think about that for a moment. Think about the searching wind, the icy shower of rain, the midges, the harsh rub of webbing straps; twigs and brash. And police. He has been arrested many times for conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace or something, which must be terribly inconvenient, and the consequent imprisonment very distressing to an outdoor man. How frustrating it must be, every time you go into a country pub for your mid-walk pint, to be shouted at and thrown out. In a documentary I saw about him once, he refined his suffering still further by being accompanied for part of the way by a young woman, also naked. His public nakedness meant, of course, that he was the only man present who could not allow himself to become excited by the situation. The only explanation can be this urge to Suffer. He is a fine example of the British love of Suffering. Not one to show the children though.

If you want to know more, and are not about to eat your dinner, here he is:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/naked-rambler-could-face-a-lifetime-of-imprisonments-after-european-court-ruling-9823945.html

But possibly the mightiest seeker after Suffering of all is the marathon walker John Merrill, who comes from the same part of the British Isles as I. Now in his seventies, he continues to walk monumental distances, applying to himself certain painful strictures. At a steady speed of three miles an hour for 10 hours each day, taking no breaks or stops of any kind, he walks thousands of miles. His feats are legion and include going all the way round the British coastline, America coast to coast, Lands End to John o' Groats, the Great Divide, and many many more. He refuses to have companions when walking and takes no fluids.

He is a product of the English boarding school system which probably explains his superior capacity for self-distress.

Here he is:

 http://m.johnmerrillwalkguides.co.uk/ABOUT-JOHN-MERRILL.html