EverestDiary: Mayday! Mayday! There's been an invasion! An invasion of the Himalayan Experience shower and toilet tent at Everest base camp. An invasion by hunky Italian climbers.
It's May 1st. We've just come back down from advanced base camp (ABC) and we're badly in need of a wash. But every time I try to have a shower - and it's a long time since I had one as water is a scarce commodity around here - I am confronted by one or more of these pesky Italians in various states of undress.
Normally I would be only too delighted at such an extraordinary turn of affairs. After all, what even tepid-blooded Irish woman wouldn't be thrilled at the prospect of a hot-blooded Roman roamin' in her shower?
But my vow of chastity, taken in a moment of weakness back in January, has held good for so long now and I'm not going to break it until I've climbed the mountain. Chomolungma (Everest) frowns on fornication. And so do I. At least until I've given the summit my best shot and am back off the mountain.
So I'm cross because of all these temptations being dangled before me. And cross because I want a shower. Now!
It's bad enough that I can't get into our shower tent for a shower. But there are other complications.
Himex boss Russell Brice is - rightly - a stickler for ensuring that his expeditions have as little impact as possible on the environment. So pees and poos have to be kept separate, because solids have to be taken off the mountain whereas liquids permeate through the natural rock filtration system.
And that's when things have the potential to become really messy. Everyone has to visit a sort of cross-gender urinal first, regardless of how pressing the nature of their other business. Then it's a mad cross-legged dash for the toilet-seat topped barrel in the shower tent to complete your toilet.
So you can imagine that, when you get to the tent and find both the shower and the solids area filled with Italians, no matter how gorgeous, your EU sisterhood characteristics tend to evaporate, rapidly. Very rapidly.
Now don't get me wrong. I love Italy. And I love the Italians. Just not in my shower and toilet tent.
Especially when I discover that only one of the Everest Vitesse 2005 team - Bruno - is actually climbing the mountain. The other nine are only there for moral support - and to use our facilities.
One of the back-up team, Claudio, summited Everest without oxygen last year. This time, Bruno is planning to speed climb from base camp to the summit and back inside 24 hours - also without oxygen.
Obviously, that's why he spends so much time in our shower and toilet tent. Wind resistance must be kept to an absolute minimum. Every embryonic whisker has to be kept at bay. Bruno's skin must be kept as smooth as the posterior of the proverbial baby. God forbid he might sprout a five o'clock shadow somewhere between the second step and the summit that might slow his ascent.
Meanwhile, we smellier and hairier mortals must sit and wait. Sit and wait for a window in the weather so that we can initiate the summit push. But also sit and wait for a shower and the use of the toilet.
I don't mind going back up the mountain dirty. Obviously I'd prefer not to. But if Bruno is still abluting when that window opens, I'll be gone like a flash. A smelly flash possibly, but a flash nonetheless.
And if the waft of some obscure Italian aftershave should assail my nostrils on the way up, I'll know Bruno has finally vacated our shower tent. But the cloud of pheromones surrounding him will probably set off some weird chemical reaction, so the vast team of Chinese surveyors will find it impossible to fulfil their brief of remeasuring the mountain as a green, white and red streak hurtles ever upwards, taps the summit and hurtles back down again, all without breaking sweat.
Of course, even though he'll remain deliciously scented throughout, Bruno - and all his friends from the Aosta valley - will have to return to our shower tent for a thorough hose-down afterwards. Even though, we now discover, Team Everest Vitesse 2005 is not supposed to be using our toilet facilities as they are only peripherally part of the Himex team.
But I've suddenly been overtaken by a spirit of extraordinary generosity. Let them use our shower. Let them use our toilet. Let them eat cake.
For I've just discovered Bruno's full name. It's Bruno Brunod. That's Brunod with a silent D. With a name like that I think I'd run up to the summit of Everest and back again.
No. On second thoughts, I'd run up to the summit of Everest and stay there.
The Grania Willis Everest Challenge 2005, supported by The North Face, SORD Data Systems, Peak Centre Ireland and Great Outdoors, is in aid of the Irish Hospice Foundation and the Friends of St Luke's Hospital. Donations to the fund can be made to The Grania Willis Everest Challenge, Permanent TSB, Blackrock, Co Dublin, account number 86877341, sort code 99-06-44. Visa card donations to 01-2303009.