It's near 5am and I've spent yet another sleepless night reading. Sleeping for me is a love hate relationship, it always has been. Far too many nights have been spent deep inside the pages of a story whisking me away from my own thoughts and into a life that is not my own. Another sign of escapism? Probably so. The latest adventure is Bear Grylls' account of his summit of Mount Everest as the youngest Briton to see the curvature of the Earth from atop the highest peak in our world. When I think of the absurdity of what I will be doing in just over a months time, I chuckle to myself and think that it surely must be easier than attempting to reach 29,035 feet with a backpack and oxygen tanks weighing almost as much as myself while struggling to breath at an altitude that provides much less oxygen than what the body requires to survive. Of course it is, I can't think of anything else that punishes and pushes the human body and brain more than months of climbing in the harshest of environments. Since the alarm is set to ring in just a few short hours, I'll make this short and leave with a short excerpt from Walt Unsworth.

"But there are men for whom the unattainable has a special attraction. Usually they are not experts: their ambitions and fantasies are strong enough to brush aside the doubts which more cautious men might have. Determination and faith are their strongest weapons. At best such men are regarded as eccentric: at worst, mad.....Three things these men have in common: faith in themselves, great determination and endurance."