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Peak to peek to pique
My mother was one for hero worship. There may have been precious few heroes to choose from in 1950s northern England, but she had hers. There was SIr Roger Bannister, the smasher of the four-minute mile barrier; there was Sir Peter Ustinov, the Russian-born racounteur and actor (later to be eclipsed in her affections by Russian ballet dancer Rudolph Nureyev). And most of all, there was the great conqueror of Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary. She couldn’t stop talking about him. Oh, and the Queen, too; sorry about that, your Majesty.
So it was with a twinge of cringe that I read a headline recently that said “High-altitude runner conquers Everest, twice.” Killan Journet is a skyrunner and a member of the International Skyrunning Federation. He made a solo ascent of the famed peak (the first solo ascent was in 1980), without the use of supplementary oxygen (the first successful no-oxygen ascent was in 1978). So by current standards, that itself was not remarkable. What was remarkable was that his ascent of the north face was completed in 26 hours—the fastest time ever, according to the Federation.
But then Journet did something even more extraordinary. Just six days later, he made a second solo ascent from a different base camp, without oxygen, this time in 17 hours; not a record (he was out by 15 minutes), but still an incredible accomplishment of a feat that normally takes four days. “I have climbed it with oxygen twice in one week and found it incredibly challenging,” said American mountaineer Adrian Ballinger, who said he also found doing a single climb without oxygen, never mind back-to-back climbs, “devastating.” For Journet, scaling Everest marked the culmination of his ambition to scale the world’s most daunting peaks.
I can’t but feel a little sad on behalf of my mother. Her hero’s accomplishment seems, through the rear view mirror, rather humdrum. Does it threaten to turn the ascent of Everest into a bazaar of ever ascending extreme sports challenges? We’ ve had the summit-reaching record, the no-oxygen record, the solo record, the solo speed record, and the double solo speed record; what’s next—the barefoot record, the climbing up backwards record or the no-granola-bars climbing record?
I know, I should give the grousing a break and credit people for trying to push the envelope (maybe climbing up while pushing an envelope might become an Everest challenge). Which takes me, sadly, to Peek Freans cookies.
One of the pleasures of being a child in 1950s England was the Peek Freans biscuit. I remember Playbox Biscuits, Royal Scotch Shortbread and the greatest of all, Assorted Creme. So it was a pleasure to discover, on immigrating to Canada in the 1960s, I could still have access to the cookie. And for years, I have (only from time to time, of course) faithfully acquired Peek Freans Assorted Creme when I want to feel comforted by a cookie (or two, or three).
Until recently, that is. I began noticing a decline in their quality. The dark, rectangular bourbon creme cookie is softer, has a different colour and lacks the requisite sugar crystals speckled on the outside. All four types in the assortment, circular and rectangular, used to be reliably plumb, the top disk perfectly aligned with the bottom disk notwithstanding the interposition of a creme filling. No more: several cookies I recently sampled were out of alignment by an eighth of an inch or more. And this has proved true in more than one box. The pleasure of eating a quality product has gone, because it simply isn’t a quality product any more. I have complained to Mondelez about this, and to be fair, I note that it is sending me a voucher for a complimentary box and will bring my complaint to its Quality Control Team.
Perhaps its corporate history has something to do with it. Like an unloved foster child, it the Peak Frean brand in North America has been variously owned or controlled in the past 30 years or so by Nabisco Brands, R.J.R. Nabisco, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (in a ‘leveraged buyout’ that was the subject of the best-selling book and movie Barbarians at the Gate), Philip Morris, Kraft Foods and finally Mondelez International in 2012. Mondelez is widely held, mostly by institutional investors. Quite a serial chain of command. Among the “billion dollar brands” that Mondelez now owns are Oreo, Ritz, Toblerone, Trident, Christie, Halls and Cadbury.
So now its apology time. When I compare his stature to that of the Peek Freans Assorted Creme cookies, I realize I shouldn’t be belittling Mr. Journet for pushing the envelope. I’m just chanelling my mother, of course. God Save the Queen—and Sir Roger Bannister, Sir Peter Ustinov, Rudolph Nureyev and Sir Edmund Hillary.
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