He has another callsign that affords a once-only relaxation of this self-imposed rule.
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Rotten luck Gerald,
I was out on the hills today and saw your alerts, so was keeping an eye out on the spots for you. I was surprised to not see anything, so was wondering if something had happened. Ah well, I guess 17 years without a failure is a pretty good record.
Hope your next outing is more successful.
73, Matthew
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You will find my alter-ego hasn’t caught the Uniques bug. 
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Ha ha, that actually surprised me! Do I remember in the distant past that the G8 was also sticking to the uniques? Has that now been relaxed, or am I misremembering?
This of course means that with continued good health and enthusiasm, your G8 call will inevitably overtake G4OIG in the Activator Honour Roll!
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No, my initial idea was to use the call on 70cm and 23cm only as those higher bands were the limitation of the original Class B licence, but that idea soon fell by the wayside. It was soon evident that that strategy wasn’t going to qualify summits up in Scotland, nor in the more remote areas. Then I decided it would be fun to go completely counter-original and I did some HF CW using the callsign and it was FUN.
To keep up our activities for fitness reasons (and a bit of fun), Paul and I have occasionally activated some summits closer to home. Inevitably the WB-002, 003, 004, 005 plus MW-013 quintet during the winter bonus period was of interest. We also decided to use our B calls in certain S2S events on summits we’d already activated using our A calls.
I don’t anticipate that I will ever use my B call sufficiently to overtake my A call. I’m 71 now, so maybe I have another 9 years before I hang up my boots and move on to sitting in my car doing WWFF. 
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80 is the new 50. 100 is the new 80. So you’ve a good 29 years of activating left in you Gerald. Plenty of time!
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Dammit, now I’ve got to find my boots again!
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You know it makes sense Brian.
Anyway, it doesn’t seem like 2 minutes since you showed me a clean pair of heels on Great Mell Fell G/LD-035.
Never mind the boots, get the crampons and ropes out!
I’ve still got the crampons, plus two ice axes and protection hardware, but the working lifetime of a rope is only two years so that was relegated to tree surgery to make space for my doublet!
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Yeah, I did retreat once on EA5/AT-007 Maigmó when I was very close. The north approach was frozen (yes, south-east Spain in January, strange), and the south approach felt a bit too steep and rocky, and even if I saw people going up and down (popular spot), I did not feel safe and decided to go back even if I was just 50 m away from the summit. Will try later this Spring.
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So seeing that I was assessed as having a physiological age of 58 when I was 66, that being before I was replumbed, then I’m now at least 10 years younger than my real age. So, with your permission Tom, I can hang my boots up when I’m 110. Is that okay?
As for crampons, I was cursing I had unfortunately left them back down in Northampton. They might just have made the difference between success and failure on Thursday. 
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Permission granted. But why would you want to?
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Indeed, maybe I should carry on until I’m 130 at least.
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That should just about give you time to do all the GM summits!
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I definitely would have bailed. I’ve been up a snowy hill but it was ankle deep on a path I’d taken previously.
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