Agony and virtue of delayed gratification | Letters
Hill walking is better to do than anticipate, writes Margaret Squires, but Karen Morris wonders if waiting has a value
Adrian Chiles is wrong when he says that everything we want we can get almost immediately (Sometimes waiting is better than bingeing. (Ask the millions who watched Line of Duty, 29 April). This year and last, we spent long periods in lockdown and none of my hill-walking friends in Scotland could climb a mountain unless it was in the same regional division as them.
Here in Fife, I did my best to manufacture a munro by climbing seven wee hills on the same day, but it wasn’t the same. Friends who still had several to do fell into deep gloom. Tell any of them that their desires would be so much better for the ripening and they would have replied that all the ripening goes on between the bottom and the top. They don’t need months and months of it. Now they seem ecstatic. The old habit of posting a detailed report has gone, and I learn what they are up to from a few photos on Facebook while they are out climbing.
Margaret Squires
St Andrews, Fife