Ant Middleton - The Fear Bubble - Harness Fear and Live Without Limits

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2019

FIRST EDITION

© Anthony Middleton 2019

Cover design by Clare Ward © HarperCollins Publishers 2019

Cover photograph © Andrew Brown

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Anthony Middleton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at

www.harpercollins.co.uk/green

Source ISBN: 9780008194666

Ebook Edition © September 2019 ISBN: 9780008194697

Version: 2019-07-29

For my wife and children, who have been there for me without fail: Emilie, Oakley, Shyla, Gabriel, Priseïs and Bligh. You give me the driving force to become the best version of myself and to want to succeed at everything I do. You really are my everything. Never forget that.

1 Cover

2 Title Page

3 Copyright

4 Dedication

5 Contents

6 PROLOGUE

7 CHAPTER 1: TAMING THE GHOST OF ME

8 CHAPTER 2: HOW TO HARNESS FEAR

9 CHAPTER 3: THE ROAD TO CHOMOLUNGMA

10 CHAPTER 4: THE MAGIC SHRINKING POTION

11 CHAPTER 5: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE LANKY BEEKEEPER

12 CHAPTER 6: THE FEAR OF SUFFERING

13 CHAPTER 7: THE ICEFALL

14 CHAPTER 8: THE FEAR OF FAILURE

15 CHAPTER 9: DEATH IS OTHER PEOPLE

16 CHAPTER 10: THE FEAR OF CONFLICT

17 CHAPTER 11: CONQUERING THE KING OF THE ROCKS

18 CHAPTER 12: EVERYONE’S SECRET FEAR

19 CHAPTER 13: REVENGE OF THE KING

20 CHAPTER 14: THE OPPOSITE OF FEAR

21 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

22 By the Same Author

23 About the Publisher

Landmarks CoverFrontmatterStart of ContentBackmatter

List of Pages iii iv v 1 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 61 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 99 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 193 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 215 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 239 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 259 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 ii

There were ten of us up there, single file up a narrow track of rock and ice. The going was hard, the incline steep. We’d been up and out of our sleeping bags since dawn, with heavy daypacks strapped to our backs, and were hungry and thirsty and tired. Toes were sore and fingers were numb. The freezing air dried our mouths. I’d never been so high off the ground. The climb was such that we were half-crawling, ankles bent, hands grabbing at anything that looked as if it might take our weight. There wasn’t much time to look around and take in the view, but with every glimpse upwards I took I could sense the world getting bluer and bigger around us as the sky swelled into a high dome. With every movement of arm, leg and lung, we were leaving our everyday lives further behind and inching higher into the heavens. It felt rare and unsettling.

The further we climbed, up towards the mountain’s famous pyramidal peak, the thinner the track became and the slower the going. Nobody was talking any more. There was no laddy banter or gruff words of encouragement among the men, only grunting and panting and the silence of intense concentration. As I pushed on, I kept reminding myself that we were walking in the steps of my mountaineering hero Edmund Hillary, who’d penetrated these glacial valleys, known hereabouts as ‘cwms’, and scaled these icy cliffs more than six decades ago. We were way above the birds, it seemed, intruding into the realm of the gods and playing by their rules. I tried not to focus on the height or the danger, although I could feel the fear as a kind of tense sickness in my gut. This was getting serious. A couple of steps to the right and you were off the mountain. Dead.

A crack. A cry.

‘Shit!’

A rock the size of a cannonball flew past my face, missing my jaw by about half an inch. It was so close I could smell its cold metallic tang as it shot by. I lurched out of the way, skidding on the track, almost following the rock down. Above my head a brown boot scrabbled on the snowy scree for purchase. I looked down to see the rock being swallowed by the abyss, smacking and echoing as it bashed down the mountainside. An icy wind blew around my neck and face.

‘You all right?’ I shouted up.

The lad above me was gripping on to the mountainside, as if the earth itself were shaking. His cheeks were pale, his shoulders slumped, his gaze rigid.

‘Yeah,’ he said. And then, with a little more assurance, ‘Yes, mate.’

I watched him steel himself and try swallow his dread. He turned to carry on.

‘Good man.’

He lifted his leg once again, trying to find a more secure foothold. But then he paused, his boot hovering mid-air. He sucked in tightly through his chapped lips, breath billowing out.

‘I’m coming down,’ he said. ‘It’s, er … I’m, er …’

I thought he was going to lose it. His breathing became rapid and he started looking all around him, as if surrounded by invisible buzzing demons.

‘Just take it slow,’ I shouted up.

As he picked his way past me, I pressed my body into the freezing incline. His fear was infectious. I wanted so badly to go with him. It was safe down there. There was tea and biscuits and shelter. What the fuck was I doing up here? What was the point? What was I trying to achieve? The mountain didn’t want us crawling up it like fleas, it was making that all too obvious. It was trying to shake us off, one by one. Who was I to think I could take it on? Who was I to think I could succeed where Hillary himself had struggled? How was I supposed to know where to put my feet? The guy in front of me had placed his foot on a rock that looked like it had been rooted in place for a thousand years, and it had nearly made him fall off the mountain and taken me with him.

‘What you doing, Midsy?’ came a frustrated voice from below. ‘Come on!’

I had to make a decision, one way or the other. I had to commit. Up? Or down?

Up.

I pushed myself back into a climbing position. The instant my body followed my mind’s instruction, something incredible happened. The entire mountain changed. It wasn’t trying to shake me off any more – it was pulling me towards it. Every rock had been put there, not to trick me, but to help me. When they worked loose from the mountainside and gave way, that wasn’t the mountain trying to kill me, that was the mountain telling me where not to put my feet. These icy gullies weren’t death slides, they were ladders. Look how beautiful it was up there. I’d never seen anything like it. I’d never felt anything like I was feeling, right then. I would achieve this. I would fight the fear. I would use it like fuel. I would make it up there, to the top of the world, to the seat of the gods. I would conquer heaven.