Queuing for Happiness (part two).

Last night I dreamed I was a zookeeper again.

I’m often highly competent in my dreams.  I am frequently found operating complicated industrial machinery like aeroplanes, submarines and nuclear power stations, and the responsibility never makes me nervous.  The fact that I was a zookeeper, in my dream, didn’t worry me at all, and I felt completely at ease in the role.  The only thing I found odd was that so many people, outside of the zoo, were queuing.

The people in my dreams have been wearing masks for some time.  I’ve attended some zooms in the sleeping hours, but last night was the first time I dreamed of the queues.

I don’t mind the queues.

I like the spontaneous conversations, and opportunities for oversharing with strangers, that can happen in a good, Dublin city, supermarket queue.  You can have a quick-fire chat, express your opinion, and move on with your life without recourse. Another great thing is, that the interaction doesn’t end with somebody saying, “sorry Ruth, I can’t hear you, you’re on mute!”

I chat to the random people in the queues, and I talk to the supermarket staff inside.   I lurk in the frozen food aisles until a member of staff comes my way, and it’s there that I launch into my line of questioning.

“How’s your brother?” I ask a member of staff I’m most familiar with. 

“Did they get to the bottom of that credit card scam, or are the fraud section still investigating?”

If the staff won’t engage with me, I try to converse with other shoppers instead.

“I don’t even like mushy peas,” I say to someone I’ve never met before.      

“I like real peas from a pod” I continue.  “All the same, it’s handy to have a few tins in the dried food cupboard.  My word, do you remember how everyone bought loads of tinned food in the beginning of Lockdown One?  Such a long time ago now, hard to comprehend”.

This kind of behaviour produces one of two results. 

Either the other shopper will nod kindly at me, and then move away quietly.  Or they will respond to my comment with gusto and enthusiasm.

“I think mushy peas are the devil’s food!” they say, eyes flashing wildly, hair unkempt.

“I will not permit them in my kitchen!  Mushy peas soften your brain tissue and make you go vegan.  Bill Gates is behind the Big Pea industry, and I know there are peas in the vaccines!”

You never know who you might run into while shopping in the supermarket, and that’s the exciting thing about it.  The supermarkets and the queues are the only places left for spontaneous chats; they are the beer gardens and the cigarette areas of yonder year.

There are queues on Everest now. 

Remember the photo, by Nirma Purja, that showed all the people queuing to summit Everest, like you might queue for a ride in Disney Land?  I was looking at that photo again, and I honestly couldn’t believe it.  I’ve been watching a lot of documentaries and films about Everest this week.  In fact, I now only refer to the mountain by the name of Chomolungma, and I would appreciate it if you would do likewise.

My partner asks me “how’s the training going for your bid for the summit?” when he sees that I’m resting in between the mountaineering documentaries on Youtube.

“Everything’s fine” I tell him.  “The conditions are excellent, and I hope to be through the Khumbu Icefall by sunset!”

“Good to hear!” he says encouragingly, “radio through if you need any supplies”.

He’s always been very supportive of my projects.

The only two things preventing me from attempting to summit this season are finances and ability.  Apart from that, I’m ready to put together a small team for 2022.  From my extensive training programme, it’s clear that as long as we’re on the top by 2.00pm on 10 May, everything else should be fine.  We’ll need to pack a lot of snacks, oxygen and good quality crampons.  We’ll need to employ at least a dozen Sherpa.

It’s a long way to go for a view, but it’s one I’d like to see.

One of the most macabre details, about the tallest mountain on the earth, is the fact that it’s littered with the corpses of climbers.  Every season, a few people go up the mountain and never return, and sometimes it’s too difficult to bring their bodies back down.

So they remain there, encased in the ice, and frozen forever.

Which is why choosing good teammates is essential.  To this end, I’ve made a list of my best friends alongside the talents they are blessed with, and I think we’re all set.  What we lack in map reading skills, and high altitude mountaineering experience, we make up for with enthusiasm, interest and good humoured optimism.  Even if we got caught in the queues or lost our way for a while in a blizzard, I think we’d be OK.

See you at Base Camp!