I saw the excellent film "Touching the Void" a couple of weeks ago. It's a true story about an already arduous mountaineering trip that goes very badly wrong when one of the climbers falls and breaks his leg. His friend tries to help him down, but his plan goes wrong and he is forced to either cut the rope and let his injured colleague fall to his doom, or be dragged over with him. He cuts the rope and not unreasonably assumes his pal has been killed and descends without him.
As it happens though the fall is not fatal and the lucky unfortunate has landed on a ledge in a crevasse. The rest of the film details his extraordinary and agonising journey to essentially crawl down the mountain. He has no food, no means to boil up the snow to make water (and just eating snow does not give you enough fluid apparently - snow is another thing I would allow people to flush down my toilet incidentally - but no more than a standard bucketful) oh, and also his leg is shattered and so every time he moves (and presumably even when he doesn't) he has to endure unbelievable pain.
Given that the injured man takes part in the film, and we see him from the start recounting the story, I don't think it's giving too much away to say that he survives (personally I would like to have seen a film where the commentary was provided only by the other bloke, who appears to be piecing the events together based on clues found on the mountainside, so that you'd think his mate had died and then only at the end when we find out he lived, does the modern day injured man say anything about his ordeal. And even then probably just "Yes, I survived. Surprise!". Maybe it wouldn't be as good). Incredibly the film manages to keep up a degree of suspense despite the fact that you know that it must have worked out OK.
Anyway, it's not really the point, because it's an incredible story of how far the human spirit can get you and what can be achieved (admittedly by an extremely fit young man) in the name of survival. It's a definite recommend.
The reason I tell you about this is because ever since I've seen it I have been using the experience as a benchmark to live my life by. For example I went swimming today and wanted to do 20 lengths, but at about 15 lengths I was really tired and felt like I wanted to stop and go and have a coffee and a pastry of some kind. But then I thought, "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."
"Well at least he wasn't thirsty," said my body.
"No, that's the thing, he was, because as you'd know if you'd watched the film you can't get enough water from just eating snow. Plus old Touching-the-Void-ee was really cold during all this and you're in the heated swimming pool of a swanky Holmes Place Health Club. So get on with it."
"Yeah," said my body, "But I expect the cold helped him really, probably by numbing the pain of the shattered leg, like when you have a hangover and put ice cubes on your head."
"No, it didn't. The cold almost certainly made things worse. His body didn't give up like you, so bloody well get on with it. You're an embarrassment to me."
And through such chiding I force myself to push onwards and achieve my goal.
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?"
Anyway thanks to old Touching-the-void-arama, I now have the strength to push myself onwards in most situations. Because most situations aren't as bad as crawling down a moutain with a broken leg and no food or water. Though if I did find myself having to crawl down a mountain with a broken leg and no food or water, I don't think I would take much comfort from the actions of Touching-the Void-a. I think I'd most probably just cry a bit and then give in.
