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The Virtual Rambler
Number forty eight 20th May 2014
They Rose Without Trace
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After a restless night of shallow sleep , you begin to hear the murmur of traffic around dawn as commerce and commuting get underway. A louder , distant roar announces the first
flight of the morning. And ghostly through the drizzling rain the noise of life begins again. It does so for people in whom the desire to be first burns brightly , the focussed
and the ambitious , the not easily-daunted �.. those who have got to the front of the queue and reached centre stage. They also serve who are born to follow , standing in
attendance on the periphery , those at the back of the queue. Of each in turn it might be said on this dull morning , "they rose without trace". Rather like the souls of the
faithful after death. Or indeed , hard-core mountaineers disappearing into the swirling clouds at 28,000 feet.
�� The way up was by another overhanging crack , with icicles hanging in it. The rock was covered in snow and rime�. the perlon rope was like a wire , my rucksack like a tin
canister , and the hood of my anorak was frozen so firmly to my head covering that I could not push it back. My trouser-legs were each like a battered drainpipe � but I tried to
shake off my misery and despair ...�
Thus spoke Hermann Buhl , an Austrian chap who seemed to specialise in this sort of thing. He is the representative climbing extremist , for whom any engagement with the wider world
beyond the mountains becomes subordinate to an overriding compulsion to ascend steep walls of rock and ice. After following a dozen such escapades in his autobiography , the reader
starts to feel his last remnants of interest draining away , every turn of the page requiring an increased effort of will. Reading through a roll-call of bold ascents needs some of
the endurance required to make them. I wonder what Mrs. Buhl thought about it all.
An artificial search for difficulty wasn�t restricted to mountain arenas. Certain twentieth century authors also ascended to the task. For the fictional characters of Kafka and Beckett (1), just getting up of a morning seemed
akin to greeting a new dawn from a perilous bivouac half way up the Eiger�s north face. A solo ascent of some vertical ice field was no more daunting a task than sustained engagement
with their dense pages. As the hours chimed , blizzards of doubt swept in with page three pending. Weren�t there easier , more pleasurable ways of absorbing your leisure hours than
this ? Nor was the single-mindedness of the fanatic confined to literature and mountaineering. As the twentieth century got into its stride , the wider world beyond theatre , studio
or concert hall was left behind for prolonged prostration before the idol of subjectivity. Modernism became a by-word for difficulty , its works seemingly designed to upset , disturb ,
challenge or subvert the hapless audience�s na�ve expectations of entertainment.
Time now to consider those who compete for prominent positions in Twitter world. Every poltroon who tweeted without trace , occupying their brief hour on the podium with an
unshakeable conviction of their own importance. The multitudes whose standard of achievement in this world never progressed beyond �being on the telly�. The garrulous talk-show
celebrities , bonus-bloated financial consultants , millionaire footballers and their ever-rotating allegiances , 'talent'-show hosts and all their contestants , strangers to pride
if not to prejudice. The politicians whose parties occupied the seat of governance ostensibly on behalf of the people but who were in fact there to do the bidding of business and
finance. The economics of life for most of their constituents ground on , irrespective of which political party was in charge. All of that Westminster moving and shaking was mere
posture , as transient as last year's sets on the Glastonbury world music stage , evanescent as yesterday�s morning dew. Ihey(and the) dew rose without trace.
Wig
(1) Two twentieth century writers whose undeserved reputations for unrelieved gloom (they were not 'blue-sky thinkers') consigned their works to the higher cultural
shelves. They would both have made suitable managers of lowly football clubs were they alive today.
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Archive
Virtual rambler #1 – Posturing, 9th March 2010
Virtual rambler #2 – Managerialism, 17th March 2010
Virtual rambler #3 – Nostalgia, 27th March 2010
Virtual rambler #4 – The Alpha Male, 13th April 2010
Virtual rambler #5 – General Elections, 3rd May 2010
Virtual rambler #6 – The Leisure Industry, 15th May 2010
Virtual rambler #7 – Guide to The World Cup, 15th June 2010
Virtual rambler #8 – Human Nature, 12th July 2010
Virtual rambler #9 – Communities, 13th August 2010
Virtual rambler #10 – Worlds Apart, 6th October 2010
Virtual rambler #11 – Dawdling, 22nd November 2010
Virtual rambler #12 – ELVIS, 24th December 2010
Virtual rambler #13 – Transience, 4th February 2011
Virtual rambler #14 – Regional Accents, 15th April 2011
Virtual rambler #15 – The Afterlife, 21st July 2011
Virtual rambler #16 – Bizspeak, 27th August 2011
Virtual rambler #17 – Night Walks, 3rd October 2011
Virtual rambler #18 – Bob Dylan and Charles Dickens, 8th November 2011
Virtual rambler #19 – Another Nutty Professor, 16th December 2011
Virtual rambler #20 – Customer Choice, 16th January 2012
Virtual rambler #21 – Wearing Shorts, 18th February 2012
Virtual rambler #22 – A Brief History of Progress, 17th March 2012
Virtual rambler #23 – The Myth of Sisyphus, 16th April 2012
Virtual rambler #24 – Natural History, 20th May 2012
Virtual rambler #25 – European Self Importance, 26th June 2012
Virtual rambler #26 – Sweet Dreams, 25th July 2012
Virtual rambler #27 – Excess, 17th August 2012
Virtual rambler #28 – In Denial, 20th September 2012
Virtual rambler #29 – The Way, 21st October 2012
Virtual rambler #30 – On Rambling, 14th November 2012
Virtual rambler #31 – Gazing Into The Abyss, 18th December 2012
Virtual rambler #32 – Intellectual Gloom, 25th January 2013
Virtual rambler #33 – Great Human Achievements, 20th February 2013
Virtual rambler #34 – Autobiography, 20th March 2013
Virtual rambler #35 – Your Good Health, 21st April 2013
Virtual rambler #36 – Deconstruction, 20th May 2013
Virtual rambler #37 – My Home Town, 19th June 2013
Virtual rambler #38 – Ancient History, 21st July 2013
Virtual rambler #39 – Possessions, 20th August 2013
Virtual rambler #40 – Sporting Stoics, 20th September 2013
Virtual rambler #41 – Free Time, 20th October 2013
Virtual rambler #42 – Ewan Don't Allow, 20th November 2013
Virtual rambler #43 – A Literary Nexus, 20th December 2013
Virtual rambler #44 – Taking Liberties, 16th January 2014
Virtual rambler #45 – More or Less, 20th February 2014
Virtual rambler #46 – Under Control, 20th March 2014
Virtual rambler #47 – Waiting, 20th April 2014
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