Stumbling half-inebriated in the foggy darkness back to my one-man tent, I had to chuckle to myself. It had been hastily, and probably illegally erected out of sight behind the Eisgrat cable-car station in Stubaital, ready for a quick getaway on the first cable-car up the next morning.
The reason for the chuckle was that trailing rather woodenly behind me was a 65 year old man, about to share one cramped half of it with me. Why "woodenly"? Well, not because he was drunker than I. No instead, "woodenly" because said 65 year-old man was a double amputee with no flesh to speak of below both knee joints.
Norman had lost his legs in a railway accident at the age of 18 and (in case you are not au fait with climbing personalities in the UK) went on to become an accomplished high-altitude mountaineer, with many important scalps to his name, most notably Cho Oyu, 8200 metres high, the sixth highest eminence on our planet.
I thought to myself, how many other men of pensionable age could I envisage with me now in this cold, damp, spartan closet?
I couldn`t think of one. At least none I knew in the UK. Precious memories are made of little events like this. The climbing itself went unremarkably, although it was reported in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung by Gaby Funk, who joined us a day later.
Norman was here to lend me moral support a year after I broke my neck and languished in the Swiss Paraplegic Centre for a few months. His instinctive empathy for the underdog had drawn him across the English Channel for yet another Alps trip. And also to raise some money for a children`s hospice in Devon, UK, by doing a few easy climbs with me.