Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [13]
I guess his career was being a good dad.
I remember, for example, the time at prep school when I was chosen for the under nines’ rugby team. Well, to be more accurate, I was chosen to be linesman, as I wasn’t good enough for the actual team.
Anyway, it was a cold, miserable winter’s day, and there were no spectators out watching, which was uncommon. (Normally, at least a few boys or teachers would come out to watch the school matches.) But on this cold blustery day the touchlines were deserted, except for one lone figure.
It was my dad, standing in the rain, watching me, his son, perform my linesman duties.
I felt so happy to see him, but also felt guilty. I mean, I hadn’t even made the team and here he was to watch me run up and down waving a silly flag.
Yet it meant the world to me.
When the half-time whistle blew it was my big moment.
On I ran to the pitch, the plate of oranges in my hands, with Dad applauding from the touchline.
Lives are made in such moments.
Likewise, I remember Dad playing in the fathers’ and sons’ cricket match. All the other fathers were taking it very seriously, and then there was Dad in an old African safari hat, coming in to bat and tripping over his wicket – out for a duck.
I loved that fun side of Dad, and everyone else seemed to love him for it as well.
To be a part of that always made me smile.
CHAPTER 11
I remember vividly, as a young teenager, finding an old photograph of my father from when he was seventeen and a fresh-faced Royal Marines commando. He looked just like me … but much smarter and with a parting in his hair.
Next to this photograph in the album was a shot of him ice-climbing with his fellow marines on the north face of Ben Nevis in winter: a treacherous place to be if things go wrong.
I asked him about the climb, and he told me how a rock-fall had almost killed him outright that day, when a boulder the size of a basketball had been dislodged two hundred feet above him.
It had missed his head by less than a foot and smashed into a thousand tiny rock fragments just below him on a ledge.
He felt he had been handed his ‘get out of jail free’ card that day, a moment of grace and good fortune. He always told me: ‘Never depend on those luck moments – they are gifts – but instead always build your own back-up plan.’
I use that thinking a lot in my job nowadays. Thanks, Dad, if you can read this from the other side.
As a young boy I used to love any trips away with him.
I look back now and can see how much my father also found his own freedom in the adventures we did together, whether it was galloping along a beach in the Isle of Wight with me behind him, or climbing on the steep hills and cliffs around the island’s coast.
It was at times like these that I found a real intimacy with him.
It was also where I learnt to recognize that ‘tightening’ sensation, deep in the pit of my stomach, as being a great thing to follow in life. Some call it fear.
I remember the joy of climbing with him in the wintertime. It was always an adventure and often turned into much more than just a climb. Dad would determine that, not only did we have to climb a sheer hundred-and-fifty-foot chalk cliff, but that also German paratroopers held the high ground. We therefore had to climb the cliff silently and unseen, and then grenade the German fire position once at the summit.
In reality this meant lobbing clumps of manure towards a deserted bench on the cliff tops. Brilliant.
What a great way to spend a wet and windy winter’s day when you are aged eight (or twenty-eight, for that matter).
I loved returning from the cliff climbs totally caked in mud, out of breath, having scared ourselves a little. I learnt to love that feeling of the wind and rain blowing hard on my face. It made me feel like a man, when in reality I was a little boy.
We also used to talk about Mount Everest,