ORIGINS

      Our annual weekend reunion. Seven old friends. We had climbed and hillwalked together since we were students. For some reason, of work or domesticity, I forget why exactly, I had missed a few years. I suppose that that was why the changes that has been wrought by the intervening period of time, hit me with increased force. Our chosen venue was a cottage which belonged to one of our number and which he laughingly called a "holiday home" - a ramshackle building of uncertain age and badly in need of renovation.
      There was a shortage of bed-space so I foolishly volunteered to lie on a sagging sofa. And while I lay thus, anxiously aware of the possible effect on my spinal cord and counting the hours of the night, I became aware of a continuous low shuffling noise. This, I realised with a shock, was caused by various members of our party stumbling about in the dark. The sound was punctuated by two others - by loud (but instantly stifled) curses as bare toe met some unyielding object and by frequent flushings of the toilet.
      As I considered this evidence of the degradation of years, that quotation from Alfred Lord Tennyson's Ulysses drifted into my mind - that one about being made weak by time and fate. As I listened to the umteenth flushing of the toilet I at last knew what Tennyson was talking about when he wrote the words "moved earth and heaven". I reflected too, as another muffled curse rang out, that he knew what he was talking about when he spoke of "equal temper". But I was particularly struck by that bit about striving, seeking and not yielding. I was uplifted - metaphorically you understand, for there was precious little uplift in that sofa, and I was inspired. How, I wondered, might I strive, seek etc.? That's when the idea came to me.

Hugh Noble