touching the void

Over on his jolly-entertaining-but-I-only-rarely-get-round-to-reading-it blog, Warming Up, Richard Herring details how he has been using the remarkable feats on display in mountaineer climbs down mountain with broken leg film 'Touching The Void' to inspire him onwards in times of trouble. For instance, he buoys himself along while swimming 20 laps in his local swimming pool by telling himself

"No, if old Touching-the-Void can crawl down a mountain with a broken leg, then you can swim five more lengths of a not even full-size swimming pool." And my body said, "But I am too hungry to do it," but I told my body, "Listen old Touching-the-Void-o didn't have any food for about three days and only snow to drink."

Driven by this, Herring is justifiably proud of his achievement.

It was an amazing story of what the human body can achieve under duress and I expect that Channel 4 will make a film about this too. With an actor playing me recreating the swim, whilst I talk about what was going through my head at length 18 and so on. "Yes, by this point I was too tired to do front crawl, so was attempting more a doggy paddle, mixed with a bit of breast stroke. I really thought I would never see my family again, but something pushed me onwards." Maybe they could also have a talking head from the old woman who was walking up and down in the slow lane and what she remembers about the event, "Well, I'm not really sure I recall anything about it. Was it a fat bloke who can't really swim very well?"

Good stuff.