– It’s a great honour to interview you, your Highness. I’ve never yet met anyone quite so majestic. Nor will I ever, I imagine, unless I get to interview General de Gaulle.
– 29035 feet and growing! About a centimetre a year. Me, that is, not the General. There’s very little left of him.
– Indeed. So how does it feel to be the highest point on earth?
– Pretty good, on the whole. Though there are days when I get a bit low. That quake in April really shook me. I felt it was so unnecessary. Almost 9000 dead, my own base camp devastated… Blizzards, fair enough, people expect them when they start. But that – I’ll recover one day, of course, but it really got to me. Took a whole inch off my height.
– You mean you actually care about the people who try to climb you?
– Naturally. Just because I’m a mountain doesn’t mean I’m not sensitive.
– Yet you’ve killed lots yourself. Over 200, in fact.
– Not me. Wally.
– Sorry?
– Wally Weather. Sometimes I’m quite happy basking in the sun and Wally comes along and kicks up a storm. He’s very unpredictable. Gets these really violent mood swings. I’ve got used to him now, of course, but he’s pretty tiresome at times. A good 90% of those deaths are due to him, not me. People lump us together all the time, but on a good day, I’m quite accessible, or try to be anyway. Sometimes it’s difficult not to act all high and mighty when that’s actually what you are, so at times I might come across as a bit aloof. But I really don’t get K2, for example – so hostile all the time, really difficult to deal with. Well, of course he’s got this huge chip on his shoulder about his height – he’s almost 800 feet smaller than me. But hey, that’s no reason to be so aggressive. I’ve given up trying to discuss it with him, he never listens.
– So you don’t mind people trudging up your face the whole time? It took you quite a while to come round to that.
– I can’t say I’m overjoyed but I knew I’d have to accept it eventually. I owe it to my fans to grant them that sense of achievement when they reach the top. They’ve made such an effort, they deserve their souvenir selfie. I was pretty sure when I let the first one up there’d be hordes coming after. But I guess that’s democracy, isn’t it?
– You say “the first.” Not going to give us a name?
– Oh, was it George Mallory, you mean? I’m not going to answer that! Wally was in a sulk that day, for sure. They all deserve recognition, in my opinion, Mallory and Irvine in ’24, Hillary and Tenzing in ’53. If I said the first two got to the top, it would detract from the others’ triumph. Because don’t forget they did the most important bit – come back alive. Hats off to all of them, I say. And Mallory’s famous answer to the question of why he wanted to do it – “Because it’s there.” What better way to express the human will?
Journey of a Blogvelist 
Excellent interview!
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