I am never quite sure what my great-grandfather would have made of it.
For him life was just about as simple as it got. He was a farm labourer in the North of England. This meant living in a small cottage (no idea what facilities these had, but I would imagine that they were pretty basic) on the landowner's estate, getting up at sunrise, going to bed at sunset, and working on the land and with, I would expect, the chickens, pigs and sheep (more sheep country than cattle country, more Australia than the USA if you like) throughout the day.
No fancy holidays, no amazing ambition, a routine predictable experience every day.
He apparently could not read or write (he was born before the advent of public education in the UK) and, according to the family legend, died in a ditch at the age of 47. My sister, who has studied the family genealogy, sent me a copy of his death certificate - nothing remarkable. Could he have lived longer if there had been better health care available? Who can tell now, this was the 1880s!
In three generations we have gone through basic education and moving from a rural environment to an urban one (my grandfather), consolidation (my father) to me and my university degree, command of four languages, and living in a completely different country. Take my sister as an example, it is nearly as complicated. I have no children, my sister has three - all adults in their 30s none of whom have any children - so this side of the line at least ends here maybe. There are of course my cousins and their offspring, but that requires too much time and research to go into here.
The point here though, and it needs taking seriously, is that societies change, as do economic environments. In the 1980s when the arguments were going on in the UK (and similar events were occurring with less noise in the German industrial heartlands) about the closure of coal mines and steel works in the North of England, my concern was not so much the style of the job (if I had ever had a son, would I have wanted him to work down a pit, or in a noisy dirty steel mill? No!), but rather the fact that jobs were disappearing and not being replaced!
And it is also to be emphasised that thanks to negotiations over many years these jobs provided a living wage as their reward (and given the conditions under which these people worked, that was more than deserved IMHO). Working hard doing lengthy shifts in a coal mine is just that. It is not like sitting on the end of a 'phone ringing your stockbroker for a couple of hours a day.
Eventually expecting coal miners to become estate agents or steelworkers to become stockbrokers? Some may have done, but not many. They are more likely to have been offered insulting low-paid jobs as McLackeys or Burger Klods if the economy we have these days is anything to go by. And could you blame anyone for turning such jobs down? In my home town where the fishing industry, once a major staple job supplier, has collapsed, many older people are forced into taking jobs filling supermarket shelves. Badly paid, uninspiring work! 8 to 10 hours a day of that? No thanks!
Times have changed to the point across the western world where you can no longer learn a skill, get a job using it, build your life round it, live within your means, work industriously for years, save for the future and eventually retire on the proceeds - with a few solitary exceptions - lawyers for example (cough, cough, splutter, splutter).
Given the world that we now live in, the chances are that in a not too distant period of time your skills will be regarded as redundant and your wage demands (simply "a living wage") will make you too expensive. At which point life gets extremely simple (into unemployment and poverty) or extremely complex - into the heart of the debt and speculation of the gamblers' economy!
My father's ashes will be turning in their urn at the thought of the latter. He managed to work over 40 years for the same company. He wouldn't be able to do that now - for one thing that company has since, like many others, gone out of business!
2. Climbing the Matterhorn.
OK - readers, shock, horror, a picture (a second picture in 340 items on this blog, the world will be coming to an end next!):
That wonderful piece of Alpine rock suitably covered in the best weather the Swiss winter can offer (satire!) is the Matterhorn. Apparently this was the last mountain in the Alps to be climbed - in 1865. My interest in it really started with a tacky old movie of the first successful ascent that I saw when I was about seven years old. The descent is (tragically) as historically interesting, as 4 of the 7 who made the ascent fell to their deaths on the way back down (three Britons, Hadow, Douglas and Hudson, and a French guide, Michel Croz). The three survivors (Whymper of whom more later) and the Swiss guides Taugwalder, father and son, only survived as the rope connecting them to the others broke.
Hadow, who was still only 18 and probably far too inexperienced to be climbing a mountain of that calibre, had slipped, and dragged the others with him as he fell. Remember though the fact that Douglas was scarcely more than a year older, but was a much more experienced climber, so age should not have been the crucial factor.
Whymper's is an interesting story. I have always remembered his name as Edmond (or Edmund) Whymper - more on this later. I probably have to research more about his background, how affluent usw it was or was not. He was though a Londoner (we will have to forgive him for that, maybe they were not all arrogant conniving thieves, rogues, liars and villains in the 19th century!), 2nd of 11 children, and an engraver and an artist. In 1860 he got one of those offers you cannot refuse - a publisher wanted some sketches made of the Alps, so off he went at the age of 20, suitably armed with his sketching gear.
Whether he could speak German or French, I have no idea. If he learned them while there, ditto. It is an interesting thought being stuck in central Europe with a sketch pad not being able to speak the language, and this before the days when American commercialism had brought the English language to the whole of Europe, like it or not.
Apart from sketching though, he also made a name for himself climbing mountains. Mainly successful elsewhere in the Alps, the Matterhorn became an obsession. But eight unsuccessful attempts followed, mainly on the South-Western face on the Italian side. He then attempted the South-Eastern side with Croz, after which he flew in the face of theory and decided that the allegedly most difficult Eastern face offered the best opportunity, as so it proved for the ascent at least.
Despite the tragedy on the descent, and accusations that he and the Taugwalders had to face about them cutting the rope (to save their own skins?), he was to set several more first climbs in other parts of the world - notably in the Andes and in Canada where Mount Lefroy was renamed Mount Whymper after him after he had scaled it with four Canadian guides.
He was highly respected in much of continental Europe (see, the British were not always stay at home xenophobes!), has a statue erected in the Hautes-Alpes département in France, died shortly after undertaking a climb in the Alps at the age of 71 - and was subsequently buried in Chamonix.
Interesting character and someone who carried his love and passion across the world, even if his name will always be mainly associated with the Matterhorn.
And no, my friends, I have no intention to follow his lead and head off to the Alps tomorrow! But there must be some great photo opportunities up there.
3. Not trusting Wikipedia
Not the first time that I have spotted mistakes upon Wikipedia, but while I was searching round for information on Edmund Whymper the other day, I also tried Wikipedia. Edmund, Edmond - tried both. Not there - one of the party that first climbed the Matterhorn and not mentioned? Surely not.
Discovered eventually that he is listed as "Edward Whymper"! I am absolutely convinced that that is wrong!
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