“I write everything in longhand - I’ve never written any other way,” Ranulph Fiennes told me when we chatted in Lismore almost a decade ago.
I’ve actually never sent an Email; I can’t use a text on a mobile – I’m just not into that sort of thing and I can’t say I regret it.” When it’s worked as well as it has for the past 36 years, why change?”
Fiennes, the most prominent figure I’ve ever interviewed, was the keynote speaker at that year’s Immrama Festival of Travel Writing, an event held annually in the resplendent West Waterford Heritage Town.
This is a man who, in historical terms, rubs shoulders with Ernest Shackleton and Roald Amundsen, a giant in the field of exploration and a living testament to the capabilities the human body can extend itself. It’s not an exaggeration to suggest there may never be another man of such astounding physical endurance like him any decade soon – or century for that matter.
Fiennes was the first man to reach both poles by surface and the first to cross the Antarctic unsupported. In 2009, in what was his third attempt, he became the oldest Briton to summit Mount Everest, six years on from running seven marathons in Patagonia, the Falklands, Sydney, Singapore, London, Egypt and New York in a single week.
That he accomplished this feat alongside his friend Mike Stroud just months after suffering a heart attack underlines his astounding drive and unrelenting level of ambition. After all, this is not a man known for doing anything in half measures. His life has been defined by pursuing and achieving what most of us would justly consider unattainable. He is a living, breathing superlative.
His marathon odyssey did appear to jar with him when we spoke about it. “That was a touch upsetting to my wife (Ginny) obviously, which might have been a bad thing given what happened to her afterwards (she died of cancer in 2004, aged 56) so that I might regret, but I’ll never know if that was a cause and effect.
“But I did go to the (heart) surgeon with her after my heart attack, and I know Ginny was possibly hoping he’d say no, that I couldn’t do it. But he didn’t.”
Had Dr Giovanni Angelini given the marathon mission the thumbs down, what would the Knight of the British Realm have done? “That’s hypothetical,” he replied. “I don’t know.”
Memories of what was literally a marathon effort were, by his own admission, a touch vague in places. “Mike got dysentery in Australia, then in Singapore I ended up at the finishing post in an ambulance on a drip, with Mike down the road behind me, still running, being sick and peeing blood. But we got there.”
It’s odd to consider Ranulph Fiennes being frightened of anything given the adventures which have defined his life but when we spoke in the tranquil surrounds of Ballyrafter House, he admitted to experiencing stage fright for the first time during the previous year.
“I don’t know why it’s started happening – maybe it’s a post-cardiac thing or whether it’s just a sign of old age, I’m not too sure. But rather like when vertigo comes on, you get a funny feeling it’s coming on before it does – and (when it comes to speeches or presentations) I get this feeling of the sense being gone, the theme being gone. For example if somebody moves, takes a photograph or if someone’s phone goes off, that can trigger it. Didn’t happen today, I’m glad to say.” And I can vouch for that.
After we exchanged pleasantries at the beginning of our interview, Sir Ranulph handed me the single sheet of paper he’d used during his speech at the Blackwater Community College Sports Hall. It was nothing more than a prop, featuring only his flight details. “I try not to have a paper, so I just get something which I look as if I’m reading from – it could be anything,” he told me.
“It gives me something to look at when I’m trying to remember what I’m about to say whereas if you look at people, that can put you off. And there have been occasions when I’ve gone blank – and that’s embarrassing – you’re standing there before a crowd and you’re saying nothing. And I’m permanently frightened that it might happen.”
He was refreshingly honest about what has motivated so many of his books: cold, hard cash. And if an expedition doesn’t go to plan, his publisher come looking for what he described as “the filler”.
“Literary agents will tell you there are about six topics which you can do which will always sell a reasonable amount,” he said. “One of them is how to have a baby, which obviously in my case I couldn’t do; DIY is another and then there’s cricket and fishing. But in my case I couldn’t do any of those things so I did a book on fitness just to fill, thus avoiding having to pay back my advance.”
When I asked him about how he views his own mortality, Fiennes replied: “When you’re on the trips, you’re not being morbid. But when you’re home, and there’s nothing actually happening, you might start thinking much more about the fact that you’re creaking, getting older and your teeth are going, but it’s not something I try to dwell on.” As a man who has lived in perpetual motion, always chasing the next target, his answer didn’t surprise me in the slightest.
Given the Covid-19 cloud hanging over the world currently, much of what Ranulph Fiennes shared with me that afternoon felt worthy of re-sharing, particularly the following : “When I’m feeling down, like we all do from time to time, I consider myself to have been very lucky. because you never know what tomorrow might bring, be it cancer or another condition. We all end up dead - everyone of us – nobody ever gets remembered for anything.
“Before my wife died, I went down into the catacombs in Paris with her. There were six million skeletons neatly stacked down there, 11 deep and 11 high on both sides. All of these people had names, wives, business colleagues, relations and so on. And when I get hot around the collar, I think of that place and those nameless skeletons and it reminds me that arguments and negative thoughts and so on are all just a complete waste of time.”
We may not all live our lives as spectacularly or dangerously as Ranulph Fiennes has, but we can make the same psychological choice he plumped for by kicking negativity to touch. The better angels of our nature well and truly deserve our attention. We must get busy living.
Lots of good stuff in there Dernot, keep it going. Most intresting.