Graham Hoyland - Yeti

The Rum Doodle team continue upwards, and the most desirous to see the Atrocious Snowman is the scientist Wish:

… who may have nourished secret dreams of adding Eoanthropus wishi to mankind’s family tree. Wish spent much time examining any mark which might prove to be a footprint; but although he heard grunts, whistles, sighs and gurgles, and even, on one occasion, muttering, he found no direct evidence. His enthusiasm weakened appreciably after he had spent a whole rest day tracking footprints for miles across a treacherous mountain-side, only to find that he was following a trail laid for him by a porter at Burley’s instigation.

This was a fairly accurate assessment of the evidence gathered so far for the Abominable Snowman/yeti.

In the end, surmounting a South Col (in Hunt’s book, not Mount Everest, 1938 ), our narrator finds that the members have climbed the wrong mountain, North Rum Doodle, only 35,000 feet, and the author Bowman finally parodies all those overblown descriptions of Mount Everest. ‘I looked up at the summit of Rum Doodle, so serene in its inviolate purity, and I had a fancy that the goddess of the mountain was looking down with scorn upon her slopes, daring them to do their utmost, daring the whole world …’

However, they soon see that their porters have climbed the correct mountain by mistake.

There is a last, serious, point to make about the prevailing English tight-lipped manner, so brilliantly captured later by the actor, John Cleese. It seems to contain a deeply suppressed rage at the universe which may have come partly from Victorian repression, partly from the horror of seeing your friends blown into bits in front of you during the war. Ways to feel better might be to conquer virgin mountains or capture mystery beasts; or, in Bowman’s case, just to rip the piss out of it all.

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