Flash in The Pan

Flash in The Pan F

Chris Hamper

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Contents Prologue…………………………..…

Not long in Nottingham……...

Coventry City………………….....

Binley early years……………….

Binley surge kids…………........

Leeds university 1st year……..

Leeds university 2nd & 3rd year.

Sidney Stringer……………………

Sheffield…………………………....

Atlantic College………………….

Norway………………………….....

Parkinson’s……………………….

Part 2...............................................

Norway revisited............................

The last 5 years………………….

UKClimbing..................................

Shaking out...................................

Losing the thread……………….

Spotting the nutter.......................

Rock bottom.................................

One hand clapping........................

The present..................................

p3 p5 p10 p21 p33 p43 p57 p67 p88 p100 p108 p119 p125 p128 p149 p164 p164 p169 p176 p183 p189 p196

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Prologue I’m not sure what the British climbing scene is like now but in the 70’s and 80,s it was pretty insular, everyone knew everyone and not only if you were any good. Getting known was a slow process first you had to do something like a first ascent or notable repeat. A first ascent was easiest as it didn’t have to be difficult to get a mention in the magazines, there were a whole army of climbers out there getting famous bumbling about on never to be repeated mossy slabs. When I say famous I mean their name would appear in print, climbing magazines used to have a new routes list in each edition. To inform the magazine about your latest exploit you’d have to either write to the editor or scribble the details into one of the numerous new route books that sat under the counter in several distinguished café’s around the country. Alternatively you’d just have to wait until someone noticed you. There were probably hundreds of brilliant climbers who just never got noticed The magazines in those days were Mountain, Rocksport, Climber and Rambler and Mountain life. I don’t think that they all existed at the same time, maybe Mountain life took over from Rocksport. Mountain was THE magazine though, the first copy I bought was number 18. It’s the one with a photo of Martin Boysen and Dave Alcock climbing on suicide wall on the cover. The photo is a classic black and white image like those in John Cleare’s book “climbers in action in Snowdonia”. It made a big impression on me but I didn’t really think I would ever be able to climb route like that. I actually thought the climber was Pete Crew because he wore the same type of glasses and, like everyone else, climbed in Levis. Many years later I got to meet both Martin Boysen and Dave Alcock but I never got to meet the person who I thought I was idolising, Pete Crew.

I got known by and got to know pretty much everyone who was anyone and a lot more who weren’t. It’s all a long time ago and history is interesting, actually, having failed O’level history I obviously don’t find it interesting but some people do so inevitably the brightest stars are persuaded to write their story or persuade others to write it for them. I have to admit that each time I receive the latest book written by/for one of my old friends I read with a feeling of nostalgia but also anticipation, when will I get mentioned? Well I was at that party but it wasn’t me who fell out of the window. I climbed that route, but not first. I drove that car but never crashed it. I did get a mentioned in one of Dennis Greys books “Slack”, described as a fresh faced youth, I continued to be fresh faced well into adulthood, luckily it didn’t last, being fresh faced old man would be somewhat strange. I was quite pleased Dennis remembered me, he was one of my heroes. I don’t know why as he was never a particularly good climber but my dad bought me his book when I was about 14, so when I met Dennis for the first time I was quite star struck. I think I get a mention in Jerry Moffat’s book. I’m probably the climber that his mate Noddy hates because he was crap and could only get up routes due to the length of his arms. I suppose it could have been someone else but I seem to remember something about Noddy not liking me and I have got long arms. It sometimes feels like maybe I dreamt that whole part of my life. The invisible fresh faced youth. How come I remember them but they don’t remember me? Of course it’s not just about remembering it’s about leaving an impression. I seem to have trodden so lightly I didn’t even leave a footprint, very environmentally friendly at least.

Since writing this I did get mentioned in Andy Pollitt’s book, I even wrote a bit for him. I think I must have told him about always being left out and he was very kind. I don’t think I really burnt him off so many times. He also interviewed me for UK climbing although he didn’t really interview me, I sent him some text which he edited and added a load of pictures of himself. Sadly Andy died soon afterwards.

I decided to fill the void and write my own story, not sure if I remember enough to write a whole book, maybe a booklet. When reading other people’s books I am always amazed at the amount of detail they remember, how do they remember all that stuff? Maybe they make 3

some of it up and that’s what I intend to do. I’ve already written a couple of physics books that were based on fact so might be fun to write one based on memory. Strange how you remember some things but not others. Every day I slice bread for my breakfast, 2 slices on weekdays 3 at the weekend one marmite 2 marmalade. Every time I do this I remember sitting in our cabin with a group of students and history teacher, Sylla Cousineau. I’m slicing bread to make sandwiches, quite a lot of them, and he comments on my ability to cut every slice with exactly the same width. So every time I cut bread I remember Sylla, not a big person in my life but in my thoughts once a day, actually twice, I have toast for lunch too and yes I am pretty good at slicing.

I first started to write this book at the beginning of the Christmas holiday 2015, I am a teacher so get long holidays (4 weeks at Christmas). Once I started I couldn’t stop and realised that at 5000 words a day I’d get to 60,000 in 12 days and that’s enough for a book. All I did for 12 days was write, eat sleep and of course train.

Figure 1 Fresh faced youth, probably about 18.

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Not long in Nottingham I was born in Nottingham and I know how to get there but pretty much nothing else about it.

Almost nothing, Robin Hood was from there and Brian Clough used to be the manager of Nottingham forest. There is a statue of Robin Hood somewhere in Sherwood Forest but I don’t think there is one of Brian Clough. My dad, the Reverend R J Hamper was a Baptist minister and my mum, Madeline was his wife, her dad was also a Baptist minister as were two of her brothers. I know that at least one of the brothers wasn’t Baptist but I’m not sure of the difference and anyway this is supposed to be based on memories not the truth. Baptist ministers get a house with the job so we lived right next to the church, Richmond park or Mansfield road, one of those. The church was pretty modern, it had just been built, no spires or buttresses, not even pews, the congregation sat on seats.

Figure 2 Bilborough baptist church, our house was round the back.

I wasn’t old enough to go to church on Sundays but used to play there on week days, Mr Fox seemed to be there quite often. I mean a man called Mr Fox not a fox that I am calling him Mr Fox, I was brought up on Beatrice Potter but I don’t go in for using human names for animals except for my dog of course who I call Mr Bennet. Mr Fox was one of a long line of people associated with our family by connection to the church. I think he had a shop and probably gave us things. People would always be giving us things. Giving the minister and his family gifts is like putting money into the collection box. My Dad would sometime take advantage of this and indirectly ask for things in his sermon.

I got a fishing rod from Mr Carvell. It was a cane fly rod with a cork handle and a wooden reel. I still have the reel but I broke the rod soon after I got it. It was about 12 feet long which is much taller than I was then and am now. We always went on holiday to a cottage in Wales.

I’m jumping ahead a bit now but this is a story not a chronology. Whilst on holiday our parents would always encourage us to play with the local children, for me that meant Ivan the master fisherman. He’d strike so hard the fish would fly out of the water and land in the bushes. I got the rod so I could join in with the fishing expeditions, my dad never fished but let me go to the river on my own even when I was very young. He said that he tried fishing once but couldn’t get the flies onto the line and ended up in a tangle. I’d never heard of fly fishing at the time and always imagined him struggling to tie on bluebottles. Off I ran with my new, much bigger than Ivan’s rod, only to find out why you should never run while holding a rod in front of you. I later learnt why you shouldn’t cycle with a rod either or leave it sticking out of a car door. I don’t think I ever caught a fish with that rod.

Ted Burman gave me a climbing helmet. Ted was a very kind, bear of a man who had done some climbing. Although not so old himself, he was a member of group of old timers calling

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themselves the hemp club. My dentist, Mr Breakspear, another churchgoer, was also a member. He had the quietest voice you ever didn’t hear. He wore rubber gloves that would sometimes get trapped in between my brace and teeth, squeaky rubber gloves. Actually he was an orthodontist not a dentist, apparently he couldn’t handle the drilling. This was a result of a nasty incident when he was young. Something to do with being attacked by a group of teenagers which left him unable to drill or speak. Mr Breakspear was the gentlest of dentist and certainly not the cause for my hatred of the profession, that was Mr “I don’t think you need an injection” Smith. The helmet wasn’t a climbing helmet at all, it was a building site helmet. No chin strap so I made one out of string, not very successful. Never wore it. I never used the ice axe he gave me either. I still have it though. I think he cast the head himself, looks like the sort of thing I tried to make in metalwork.

We got loads of fags from My Forey. Not for me but for my dad, who didn’t smoke, boxes of them. I of course tried the odd one but didn’t start smoking properly until much later. Mr Forey smoked so much that his moustache was permanently orange. I suppose there could be an alternative explanation, maybe he had red hair that had turned white except his moustache, no, I’m sticking with the nicotine theory and anyway, red hair wouldn’t explain the two orange fingers. I assume he died of some smoke related condition.

One of my Dads sermons got my electronics kit fixed. I spent hours constructing a super het radio (whatever that is) that didn’t work. Luckily some electricians are Baptists so one of them took my circuit home and discovered that all the transistors were faulty. Put me off electronics for a while. I also got some bent glass tubing and stuff for my chemistry set from Mr Wiley who was a chemistry teacher, very useful in the production of stink bomb liquid which can be made by passing coal gas through water. To do it properly you need a test tube with a whole in the side which Mr Wiley also supplied. Probably wouldn’t get away with it post “Breaking Bad” but then again I was only ten at the time.

At Easter we would always get a mountain of chocolate. We’d get fussy of course, anyone giving us an egg that wasn’t full of a chocolate box assortment such as milk tray or black magic certainly wasn’t going to end up in heaven. I’d hide all of my stash in my sock drawer and eat a bit each day. It would last almost until the summer holidays. This would annoy my brother and sisters who just didn’t have my level of self-control.

I have two sisters and a brother. Jennifer is a year older, Sarah 2 years younger and at 2 years younger still, Tim was the little one. Must’ve been quite a handful when we were all babies. I don’t have any concrete memories of baby years in Nottingham although have a vague one about all of us being in bed making a lot of noise and my dad coming in and hitting us all through the sheets with a smouldering stick. This is certainly untrue but how do you erase false memories, electric shock treatment? If this worked I’d have had all of my memories erased long ago. I was always fascinated with electricity and liked the tingly feeling you get when you stick your tongue on a battery. 1.5V is slightly tingly, 9V has a bit of a kick, the 12 V AC of my train set was a bit too much. I was lucky not to be able to stretch my tongue between the contacts of my bedside lamp. 240 V through the head would have wiped out not only memories from the past but also from the future. The shock through my fingers that sent me flying the length of my bed taught me a lesson that I already knew. Why do some people need to confirm everything by experiment? I now have a serious aversion to electric shocks and won’t go near the static electricity generator in my classroom. I stand at the other side of the room and ask a student to operate the on/off switch. No point in having a room full of dogs and barking yourself.

The big event in my Nottingham life was the day a rabbit got stuck in a pipe. The pipe was a long lawn roller, the sort they use on cricket pitches to make them flat. There must’ve been a school next to the church, to come to think of it there was, I visited it once. The rabbit had probably been chased into the pipe by a Fox, a real one not Mr Fox although Mr Fox was

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almost certainly there, he always was. To come to think of it, it wasn’t a fox it was a weasel type animal. There was an earth bank in our garden with a couple of holes in it. Definitely a weasel. The rabbit’s name was Peter.

My name is Mrs Rabbit, And happy is my lot, See what beautiful, Children I have got, I work for them, And pray for them, And teach them how to be, Most respected members, Of the bunny family.

Chorus: We're a happy family, We're a happy family, And we live in the roots, Of a big oak tree, Flopsy! Mopsy!

How could they be sweeter.

And funny little Cottontail And Peter.

In the version (on red vinyl) that we had I’m sure the end line was “whoops and Peter”. Peter was a naughty rabbit and shouldn’t have got himself stuck in the roller. I got so excited that I ran back into the house, tripped up and landed teeth first on the concrete step. There is a scene in “America history X” where they open some ones mouth on a curb stone and stamp on his head, well it was like that without the head stamping. I lost a tooth but Mr Fox was there to fix it, maybe he was a dentist.

I don’t know what happened to the rabbit.

During my childhood there we a lot of people who would become members of our family, Mr Fox was of course one and Aunty Popple was another. Aunty Popple was a very kind woman who used to give us presents and take us on trips. She probably never took us on a trip on her own but it seems that way, I think we went to the library once, maybe she worked there. Her brother made model airplanes, he had many hanging from the ceiling of his workroom. I don’t think he went out of the house very often. Aunty Popple got to hold my sister Sarah when she a new born baby. This gave her some sort of bond to Sarah which lived on after we moved away from Nottingham. Every birthday and Christmas the whole family would wait in anticipation for Sarah to open her present from Aunty Popple. Once she got a replica of a Vespa scooter that you could pedal round the garden. It was almost impossible to operate. To get technical it was too heavy and the gear ratio was too high. It made us sad the Aunty Popple had used so much money on such a useless present, still makes me sad.

My dad made an airfix models too. Not a fighter plane as that wouldn’t have gone well with the Baptist minister image, he made a replica of a Viking ship called Hugin, the Viking version of a fighter plane. There is a full size replica of the ship on the cliffs in Ramsgate where we used to go there on holiday to stay with my mum’s parents. I would watch my dad put this model together, painting all the oars one at a time. He wasn’t the most careful model maker and had a few accidents, I think this was the first time I heard him say bum. Unfortunately he put the model together before painting it.

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Not learning from his mistakes I carried on with this tradition resulting in some fairly ugly model aircraft (I taught my own son the proper way). In those days it was perfectly Ok to play with model spitfires and guns. I, the son of a vicar, owned sets of little toy soldiers (also airfix) that could be lined up in battle. I also had a replica field gun that fired small pins that would stick into a wooden door.

Mr Fox didn’t like me using this in the church. A toy gun that fires pins! Surely this can’t be true.

Figure 3 Replica of Hugin near Ramsgate.

A lot of memories are based on photos rather than actual events so I “remember” my fresh faced dad preaching from the wooden pulpit in his white fur Oxford university BA hood. I always liked the fur trimmed hood which he kept in the wardrobe after he swapped it for the less fancy but more prestigious red MA one. As my dad would always tell us a BA from Oxford was worth an MA from anywhere else so paying £10 to convert his BA to an MA was perfectly reasonable. The other thing I learnt about university was that a 2(i) from Oxford was equivalent to a 1st anywhere else. My Dad was certainly not a snob but sometime he was a bit snobbish. He was obviously pretty clever, used to answer all the general knowledge round on mastermind. He had a place to study law at Kings College Cambridge but got a calling to do theology at Oxford. Later in life he enjoyed his time as a magistrate and towards the end wondered if he’d made the right choice. He of course didn’t make the choice it was made for him by God. His faith carried me along for many years until the faint light he kept burning in me finally went out. He had obviously had a very strong experience that I would never have. Never say never, I suppose.

I’m not sure how it all works but it seems that ministers don’t apply for jobs and have interviews etc. they just move, so in 1961 we all moved from Nottingham to Coventry. Getting sent to Coventry means that no one will talk to you, being from Coventry is not something to brag about. At least they had the car industry which was more than Nottingham had. There have been periods of my life when cars meant a lot to me but not at the age of 4, so I have no memory of the car journey from Nottingham to Coventry. There was no such thing as a child seat in those days, in fact most cars didn’t even have seat belts. Children would simply spend journeys crawling around the back of the car, lying on the floor, parcel shelf, anywhere there was space. I found the most comfortable position was kneeling on the floor with my head on the seat. I didn’t suffer from car sickness but someone did. On one occasion the floor well seemed to be completely full of sick. Journeys were often punctuated by sick stops as one of us (not me) was ejected from the car and held at arm’s length until the stomach emptied. On re-entry the unfortunate sibling was treated as if they had leprosy, no one wants to sit near stinky. In those days Leprosy was a high profile illness along with polio, TB and whatever it is that makes someone a spastic. I could never understand how anyone could live with leprosy. Surely if your leg fell off you would bleed to death.

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Figure 4 These collection boxes were everywhere in the 60's

The journey probably took about 6 hours. All journeys seemed to take 6 hours and always meant we had to get up at 5 am. Probably because if you stick 4 children in the car that early in the day they all go back to sleep, delaying the inevitable arguments and sick stops. I don’t think there was so much traffic in those days so that can’t have been the problem. Although the M1 had been opened it’s not sure that we went that way, cross country is always more interesting. We never stopped at service stations or little chefs apart from to use the toilets. Piles of sandwiches were what we survived on.

I’m sure my mother will tell me I am wrong here and it is possible that I am thinking about how it was for my children rather than my own childhood.

The longest journey of all was the journey to Ramsgate to visit Grandma and Grandpa. We didn’t visit my father’s parents so often, his father was a boat builder and owned his own company R and A Hamper. They built some pretty nice wooden boats. The one remaining today are very much collector’s items. His firm also built furniture for family use so we had a teak dining table and sideboard that we were forever afraid of damaging. Hilary and I inherited it after my dad died but one Christmas the table decoration caught light and burnt a hole in it. Cost a fortune to get it renovated so we gave it to my sister who has looked after it much better. The reason we rarely visited my dad’s parents is that his father died shortly after I was born and his mother, Granny was a bit difficult to stay with. Jennifer used to stay there on her own some times and I stayed once but got told off for sitting on my bed so wouldn’t go again. I never quite got over the injustice of being told off for sitting on my bed.

It’s always sunny in Ramsgate. We were allowed to go to the corner shop on our own and went to the beach every day. Grandpa showed me how to fly a kite and we made a model boat using a real hammer and saw. In their house they had a stained glass window half way up the staircase. Garden walls were made of flint pebbles and the beaches had chalk cliffs. This is, I think, where I first tried to climb. No reason why just something to do, thankfully I didn’t get to the top but I did worry some old ladies on the beach. It was also my first encounter with loose rock, those flint pebbles come out easily.

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Coventry city When I later moved up North I would always say I was from Nottingham, it made me almost acceptable to my Northern friends, however my formative years were spent in the city with the famous cathedral and the naked lady on horseback. There are two famous naked statues in Coventry, Lady Godiva is the lady on the horse. She is also featured in a clock. Every hour she would appear in the center of Coventry and peeping Tom would peep out to see her, you are not supposed to look but everyone did. The other statue is of St Michael and the Devil. The Devil is lying on the ground with his genitalia on full display. How many young Coventry boys would avoid walking down those steps with their mum? Rumour had it that there was a milk bottle inside which would explain the strange shape. Lady Godiva was much more careful We moved to quite a posh area of Coventry called Stivichall, not because we had loads of money, the house belonged to the church, Queens rd Baptist Church. This was a more classic sort of church with red bricks and a tower. The tower turned out to be unsafe so has been taken down. I once had the job of climbing up the tower with climbing gear to look for damage. Incredibly dangerous and I failed to do it. This church also has pews a big organ and an upstairs gallery. I’m not sure how many people could be seated but it was several hundred and would often be full. We had our own pew half way down on the right hand side. It didn’t have sign on it or anything but it was always available for us.

Almost everyone in the congregation were regulars, it did happen but in general people wouldn’t exactly drop in to catch a service.

Figure 5 Queens road Baptist church before they shortened the tower.

We didn’t live next to the church but we’d spend a lot of time playing there. Round the back was a jumble of connected rooms, the large hall, small hall, vestry, deacon’s room with a big table, the kitchen and some rooms up the stairs behind the self-service bookshop where you could buy copies of the good news bible and other Christian publications. The upstairs rooms had been commandeered by the boys brigade and a woman called Cynthia Allegro. She always wore a uniform and seemed to think she was the minister. The younger boys in the Boy’s Brigade were called cabin boys. I tried it for a while but it wasn’t for me. I was drawn by the kayak hanging on the wall but they never seemed to use it, not much use for a sea kayak in Coventry, just about the furthest point from any sea in the UK. The deacons room was decorated with photographs of all the past ministers, I can

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picture one of them quite vividly, round glasses and white hair there was a also a huge, well-polished wooden table that you could slide along on your belly, maybe that’s why it was so well polished.

Baptists don’t baptize babies at the font they baptize teenagers in the pool. This is because they believe that it is better for a teenager to decide to join the church than parents deciding that their child should. Baptizing babies isn’t real baptism, that should be called christening, real baptism is full immersion the way John the Baptist did it and for that you need a pool. So hidden at the front of the church under a sliding section of floor was the baptismal pool. Once or twice a year 15/16 year olds from the congregation would line up in their white robes to enter the pool. My Dad had a special set of waders under a waterproof gown, he’d enter the pool and one by one the applicants would join him. He’d say some word from the bible. I baptize you in the name of the son the father and the holy spirit, woosh – splash, sniff. In they went, leaving as the congregation sang another verse of the incredibly rousing hymn the name of which I can’t remember. Baptists may not have incense and red robes but they do have the pool. The pool isn’t kept full all the time so was a good place to hide.

Figure 6 Yep, they really have pools in Baptist churches.

The large hall was big enough for a game of badminton or lots of games of table tennis. Along the side of the hall were a row of windows looking into side rooms, the end one of these was where all the coca cola for the youth club was stored, say no more. The church had an active amateur dramatic society and the large hall had a stage with thick velvet curtains. The amateur actors would always wore cravats. Even though a bit slippery it was possible to climb the curtains and hand traverse the top of the stage. The main entrance doors were decorated with red bricks with channels molded into them, these formed perfect but painful hand jamming cracks arching over the doors. I would often climb these cracks swinging freely at the apex of the arch, well in my dreams at least.

There is a whole bureaucracy behind the running of a church. The minister is the front figure who might have an assistant or two, then there’s the church secretary, the deacons and the members. My dad had various assistants, two young guys called Gethin and Howard and an old chap called Mr Parkhurst. The main man was Jim Lawrence, he was the church secretary and, like Mr Fox, was always around. He must’ve worked for one of the car factories, since he seemed to be able to get us cars for free. I’m not sure how important a lot of these people were but they seemed very important to us children. Looking back I think that quite a few were important in the church but maybe not so important outside of it. There were many good people in the church but there also seemed to be some that didn’t live up to their saviors expectations. My dad would always turn the other cheek but my mum would give as good as she got.

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We once had a visit from an Alabama Baptist church choir all the way from the USA. They were good singers and very friendly. Two of them stayed at our house. At breakfast the conversation turned to Martin Luther King who for a long time I thought was the same person as the German priest who I’d heard about in History, I obviously hadn’t been paying attention as that Martin Luther died in 1546. It was around the time of the famous “I have a dream” speech and my dad said how much he admired the civil rights activist and what they were trying to achieve, the two good Christian people of Alabama didn’t agree. Referring to him as “that black man” they launched into a counter argument that left me baffled. All I know is that for some unknown reason these nice people didn’t like black people, all very confusing. I had never heard of people not liking others because of their skin colour.

Only some 20 years after the Second World War it was accepted that, when playing war games, the Germans or Japanese were the baddies but we all knew they weren’t really. At least I thought everyone knew. In more recent years I got into a very awkward situation trying to explain to some very good friends that happen to be from Germany why the only German words I know are “Englisch schweinehund“, “Achtung” and “Blitzkrieg”. It seemed quite funny to me but to them it was a big deal.

Figure 7 A favourite toy in the 60's

Apparently everyone is a racist but I was bought up to think that there was no sense in the concept of racism. I'm not sure how that happened as there were very few examples in Coventry at the time.

Maybe it was simply the lack of racist ideas and comments. However I do remember watching the black and white minstrel show, reading Enid Blyton books and collecting paper gollywogs from jam jars to send off for the enamel gollywog badge, maybe I was just lucky. We did have some black people staying in our house from time to time. Even then there was a problem with terminology. The word used by the two ladies from Alabama was certainly not used in our house. Not even in that nursery rhyme for making choices, eeny meeny miny mo catch a TIGGER by his toe. My mum used to refer to them as “dark” which sounds a bit menacing but neatly encompasses both Africans and Asians. In the end we settled for Jamaican for people with black skin and Indian for Asian, Chinese people were Chinese along with everyone else who looked vaguely similar. We had several “Jamaicans” staying at our house, Mrs Banjo came from Ghana, obviously part of Jamaica. She was on some sort of missionary exchange, we send missionaries to Jamaica they send them to England. I think there were some books in the self-service bookshop that explained all about it.

Before starting school I went to Mrs Kendedines kindergarten. I didn’t like it there because if you did something wrong you’d have to sit on the mat and I seemed to end up on the mat quite a lot. I wasn’t a naughty boy but sometimes I had difficulty doing some of the things we were being told to do. Not being able to tie a bow got me a fair amount of mat time as did telling the time and identifying letters. I once locked myself into a cupboard in attempt to avoid another day at the nursery. My raincoat got ripped when my sister dragged me out, pity about that it was a perfectly good gaberdine raincoat. Even at that age I knew there was no point in pretending to be sick, my mum was a nurse so never believed we were ill. I was quite ill as a little baby and even my mum had

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to take that seriously, I had a hernia on my belly button and one in each groin, this didn’t affect me at all in later life except that I don’t have a belly button which is always useful for those “thing you didn’t know about me” games. I only reveal the answer when I’m thin. My mum always told me that to stop it popping out she taped a half crown coin to it which explains why I have the Queens head tattooed to my belly. My mum had a collection of medical books at home so I looked up hernia to find out what it was. After seeing the photos I lived in constant fear of that thing popping out again, even wore the coin for a while.

Figure 8 Umbilical hernia.

I was very pleased to leave Mrs K’s. In the car on the way home I announced that I was glad to be finished with school. I don’t know what on earth I thought I was going to do for the rest of my life but maybe this was the start of my worries about how adults know how to do things like pay taxes and stuff like that. Real School was Stivichall infant’s then primary school. Stivichall is pronounced Stye chull although you will probably continue to read it as is written. I once read a book with the character Beate in it. Living in Norway I know this is pronounced “Bee-arter” but I couldn’t help reading it as “beat”. Each time I got to the word I’d have to read it twice, the character became “Beat Bee-arter”. There are many English places with names that aren’t pronounces as they are written.

The most extreme is probably Barnoldswick (Barlick).

Stivichall (Stye chull) was a good school but like most of Coventry the buildings were made from prefabricated sections thrown up after the war. Coventry was pretty much obliterated in the blitz so most of the buildings were new but not made to last. There were also quite a lot of bomb craters, one of these was right in the middle of the school, we called it the dell. German landscaping. We weren’t allowed to go down the dell but one pupil decided to risk it and ended up getting caned in front of the whole school, how can public caning of small children ever have been legal? According to my mum I got my legs slapped on stage by Mrs Jones for climbing a tree, this is strange as one would think such an event as a public leg slapping would be quite traumatizing but I have no memory of it whatsoever. Maybe there is nothing wrong with a good slap. Obviously didn’t stop me climbing though. We met Mrs Jones sometime later whilst picking raspberries. I was quite a good climber at the time and my mum couldn’t help herself. “I hope you know that he’s an international climber now”. My mum always makes me out to be a little bit better than I am.

Infant school is an invisible blur, I had a best friend who I used to follow around the playground he wasn’t my best friend for long, he must’ve moved schools. Probably to get away from the annoying plump boy who always followed him round. We shared the same sense of humour and would wander round arm in arm telling jokes, this isn’t sounding good. The funniest thing of all was when I announced that I had thought of something funny and started to laugh. He laughed too. We were telepathic. To the others we were just pathetic.

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Figure 9 Prefab buildings at Stivichall infant school

The school had all the usual stuff, the cloak room with those metal cages, the smell of floor polish.

And of course the bucket of sand in case someone was sick. I was sick once. I was just going to tell the teacher I was going to be sick but it was too late. I tried to catch it in my hand but ended up spraying the classroom. Completely ruined my art work. It was a “scratch sketch” made by colouring a paper with different coloured pencils covering the whole thing with black wax crayon then scratching the black off with your finger nail to reveal the pretty colours. Actually it wasn’t ruined my mum still has the picture (some sort of bird) on the mantelpiece. (my son the international artist). It’s quite easy to be sick when you’re a kid, once you start it just keeps coming. I went through a period trying to make myself sick and it’s not easy, very salty water is the best method. However if it’s not quite salty enough and you don’t throw up you’ve just had a years’ worth of salt in one go, only one thing for it, more salt. Billy Conolly used to weave a story around the fact that there are always diced carrots in sick. I agree that this did seem to be the case for most classroom eruptions however I once was sick after eating Weetabix for breakfast and there were no carrots.

I never wore long trousers until secondary school, shirt, tie woolly jumper and grey flannel shorts were junior school the uniform. My mum always used the correct words for everything, grey flannel shorts, gabardine coat, anorak and plimsoles. If we ever tried to call plimsoles pumps we would get quickly corrected. Grey flannel shorts are not like the shorts you wear for sport they are proper shorts with pockets and a zip. The good thing about shorts was that if you wet yourself you’d only wet your leg and not your trouser leg. I have always had a weak bladder so wet myself a few times at school, maybe something related to the hernias, same area of the body at least. Like most schools the toilets were outside and open to the elements. We called them “the bogs” and we were sure that we had invented the name. Of course some boys would try to wee as high as possible but I’d prefer to wee in private. Wait for the end of playtime and pop in when no one else was there. Although the shorts had a zip and my pants were proper y fronts I would always used the “quick way” when having a wee which meant I would often dribble down my leg. Funny how some things come back to haunt you. I never poo’d at school, still don’t like pooing in public conveniences although I will if I have to.

The problem with not pooing at school is that you sometime get caught short. If you run it makes you want to go more but if you walk you might not get there in time. A short run followed by some the stiff legged walk and a bit of breath holding, wait for it to subside and then run again. Usually made it home in time but there was one occasion, almost made it. Like being tortured for hours and then letting the secret slip by accident. Not sure how noticeable it is from the outside but felt like I had a log sticking out of the back of my shorts. The first time Steve Bancroft (famous rock climber) visited my room at Leeds University he rushed into the toilet had a long wee flushed the chain then said “there’s nothing more under rated than a good wee when you’re dying for one”. Steve wouldn’t have

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said wee of course he would have used another word but I was brought up not to swear so you’ll not find any rude words in this book.

I wore the same shorts summer and winter but not the same shoes, I always had startrite round toed lace ups in the winter and sandals in the summer. The sandals were red with a cut out flower pattern in the front. I preferred these to the lace ups, still having trouble tying bows. I always wanted a pair of wayfinders. These had the footprints of 10 animals on the sole and a little compass hidden in the heal, everyone else had them or at least that’s what I told my mum. When I was older I graduated to Clarks but never Tuf, they were for bullies. There were a lot of things I wanted at Junior school, the Johnny seven machine gun with grenade launcher was clearly never going to happen. No way was my dad going to ask for one of them from the pulpit. An action man would have been nice, I once got to borrow one from Malcom Longbottom for the weekend, he had several. Chewing gum cards were very popular - for everyone else - I had to go to bed too early so never got to watch the man from uncle anyway. I did manage to collect a whole pile of little waxy bazooka joe comics that came with another type of bubble gum but I never bought one, I found them all on the street and in rubbish bins. If you saved enough you could send off for gifts, I got the X ray specs. We weren’t allowed to have bubble gum when I was little but were allowed chewing gum, something about blowing bubbles being “common”. We were only allowed Wrigley’s, impossible to blow bubbles with.

Figure 10 Bazooka Joe comic and X-Ray specs.

One thing I did have was marbles but I never played with them at school. One of the games played with marbles was drainies. You try to get the marbles into the drain, if you managed you’d get all the marbles. My mum and dad had bought me those marbles specially for me and I didn’t want to lose them. I always treasure things they bought me even if not quite correct. One Christmas I got a huge trainset but it was an old fashioned 3 track variety probably donated by a church member. Another time I wanted scalectrix but got trick track. Scaletrix cars are operated by hand controls and go round a banked track. Trick track cars have one speed and you have to run round the room putting sections of track in front of them. Luckily I sneaked a look above my dad’s wardrobe and saw what I was going to get so stopped asking for scaletrix and started to say I wanted Trick track. Every time the advert came on TV I’d say “this looks really good”, or “I wish I has one of them”. I ended up with two.

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Figure 11 Trick track, the toy that never caught on.

I’ve always been afraid of bullies and spent a good deal of my growing up time avoiding them. My avoidance tactics seemed to work as I never got bullied but watching them work on others frightened me silly. There was one incident at junior school when some of my friends tried to stretch me. This upset my big sister so much that she came to the rescue. She meant well but it really wasn’t done to be rescued by your sister, not even the big one. I was glad she saved me at the time though.

After that incident mummy visited the school and said I needed protection (or something like that) so I ended up sitting outside the headmistress’s room at playtime.

Every school has its bullied boy, Carl Love was the bullied boy at Stivichall. He had red hair and a red face. Somehow you just knew he would be the one to get it. There was also a very thin boy called Martin Forth, every school had one of these too. Extremely thin. He looked just like an old man, his hair was even like an old man’s hair. He had eczema, asthma and once told me he had puss instead of blood. He proved this by showing me green liquid coming out of a sore on his arm. He never got bullied, no point. Ian Wise had a famous politician mother and was one of my friends, I never went round to his house though. I had heard he put people in a burning pit that he’d dug in the garden and covered with corrugated iron, it got so hot in there you could melt candles on the roof. He also made sleeping pills with his chemistry set and told me that the best way to get a day off sick was to drink copper sulphate solution. I tried but it tasted so bad I couldn’t get it down. I mixed it with tea and it curdled the milk. Luckily my experimentation ended there, copper sulphate is deadly poisonous.

There were no Jamaicans at Stivichall School but there were a lot of Jewish kids. You wouldn’t know who they were until morning assembly when they stayed in a classroom while we went to the main hall to sing hymns, say our prayers and watch naughty boys get the slipper. They had their own Jewish teacher, Mrs Green, who would sit with them. I don’t know if the school had to employ someone Jewish to look after them. Maybe in schools without a Mrs Green the Jewish kids just got to run around in the playground. I have no idea what they did in the Jewish assembly but they didn’t sing hymns. Strange how this was going on but there was never any attempt to combine the two or experience one another’s culture, there seem to be a lot of these hidden barriers in British society.

There were obviously no Jews at church but there was a “Jamaican”, his parents might actually have been Jamaican although I think he was born in Coventry. Dudley Burke was his name, nice chap.

Dudley was on our list of names when our son was born, close one.

I was never really fat just a bit chubby. Once I had an eating competition at Ian Scott’s birthday party, good job I lost. My mother is a great cook and we always looked forward to special occasions and Sundays when we’d have a roast dinner, normally chicken. She tells me she was vegetarian but if she was she was the only one. Gravy was always rich dark and thick, not bisto but marmite, try it.

Yorkshire puddings were crispy on the outside and soggy in the middle not full of air like the ones at school. Favourite pudding was and is Pavlova, in those days the strawberries were usually from a tin 16

which gave them a special flavor. I now claim to make a better pavlova than my mum, here’s the recipe: First you need the right equipment and that means a kitchen aid mixer with metal bowl and whisk attachment. Separate 5 eggs whites from the yolks. Do this one at a time into a cup then put the whites, one by one into the bowl. If you get even the smallest bit of yolk in the white chuck it out or make scrambled eggs with it. When you’ve got 5 whites start whisking at high speed until they are so thick that you can turn the bowl upside down and they don’t come out. Not too much though or you’ll have to start again. Unfortunately the only way to know what too much looks like it to whisk too much. I forgot to say that you need 10 ounces of caster sugar. I always use ounces when cooking.

Whisk at low speed while you add the sugar a spoon at a time. When half has been added drop in a teaspoon of vinegar and a teaspoon of corn flour. Finish off with the rest of the sugar. Cook at 120 °C for an hour.

This is not good climbing food and nor is the English breakfast with fried bread and fried egg that we seemed to have every day. I read somewhere that as you grow you develop fat cells that stay with you for the rest of your life. When you get fat the cells get bigger when you get thin they get smaller but if you have a lot of them you can never get completely thin. That obviously explains why I can never get thin. It’s probably complete nonsense but a good explanation.

My mum did almost all of the cooking but my dad would sometimes have a go. We were quite a big family and through his church connections my dad was able to get shop at a wholesale supplier so we had boxes of crunchy bars which were kept “hidden” in the same cupboard I hid in to avoid Mrs Kendedine. He also bought catering packs of Angel Delight which weren’t actually Angel Delight but some sort of catering Angel Delight substitute. Angel Delight was my dad’s specialty so he made a huge bowl, ended up paying us to eat it, I can still remember that nutty, pseudo chocolate taste. On another occasion he burned a huge saucepan of catering pack soup, bribing again saved us from waste.

Figure 12 Angel delight, always a treat.

Holidays were still spent in Ramsgate with the occasional trip to the lake district. We’d stay in Ferndale bed and breakfast in Ambleside and go on mountain walks. Grasmere, Borrowdale, Helvelyn and the langdale pikes, long days out fueled by lucozade, Heinz cream of tomato soup cooked on a gaz stove and of course Kendal mint cake. Lucozade is an energy drink that we were only allowed to have when we were ill or on mountain trips, it contains a lot of glucose which seems to enter the blood even before you swallow it. If that wasn’t enough we have an emergency supply of glucose tablets. My dad couldn’t use a compass but knew his way around, we never got lost. In Ambleside there is a park with some boulders in it, considerably smaller than the bowderstone in fact more like 17

big stones than boulders. I spent some time climbing on these stones, it just seemed like the thing to do. Later that week we were walking up Borrowdale and through the trees spotted some people rock climbing. I realized straight away that I was one of them.

I never played sport at junior school we had a sort of sports day but it wasn’t really sport, it was “fun” stuff like egg and spoon, three legged and sack races, not fun at all. One of my Sunday school friends, Andrew Millard, was having a birthday party and I was invited, the problem was it was a football party and I not only didn’t play football but didn’t have boots or the rest of the kit. My dad was keen that I should go so bought me boots and a Coventry city strip. Even though my dad’s father and brother were keen footballers my dad wasn’t, he also didn’t know the difference between a football boot and a hob nailed boot. It wasn’t quite that bad but almost, the boots had reinforced toe caps and came over my ankles. Coventry City are known as the sky blues so why was my strip green?

Looks like I’m going to be in Goal. The match was a disaster, I had no idea what to do, where to be or how to make the ball go in the direction intended. Never used the boots again and hated football ever since. Made me sad though, thinking about my dad buying the boots for me, trying to do the right thing but not knowing what the right thing was. Blumin’ football.

Figure 13 I think these are the exact model of boot I had.

Even before the football party I didn’t like the game. My dad had no interest in it whatsoever so we never watched it on TV or spoke about it at home. This meant I didn’t know what the other boys were talking about when they discussed the weekend’s matches and couldn’t understand why draws were so important, I also didn’t like the supporters. Living quite close to the station we could hear the away team arrive from our house. Once or twice I saw them being escorted by the police to the football ground, they didn’t look very friendly. I always thought it was a bit of a thug’s game and was quite surprised the first time I met a well-educated person who liked football. I once was persuaded to take part in a staff vs student’s friendly match. Nothing friendly about it. I thought they said it didn’t matter if you can’t play. I couldn’t believe just how unfriendly it was. After the match they were all friends again, not me though.

There were no “Jamaicans” at Stivichall and no one with a disability either, except Simon Rogers of course. I think he must have been epileptic as he’d shake his way of his chair from time to time. It would start in his arm and quickly progress to the rest of his body until he was writhing about on the floor. We got used to it after a while but he probably didn’t. During the fit he was in danger of hitting his head so he always wore a helmet, a proper motor bike helmet. That was pretty cool.

I always liked school dinners except that sometimes the meat had gristle in it. The dinner ladies used to patrol the dining room to make sure we’d eaten everything. It wasn’t long after the war and older people still remembered rationing, so we weren’t allowed to leave any meat. There was one day when we had liver and I got a bit with a particularly nasty looking piece of tubing in it. I like liver but not tubes so managed to eat everything but a neat cube of tube which I carefully covered in potato.

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Got busted and had to sit at the table until I gagged it down. I never really understood why dinner ladies always hate me. I like the food they prepare and always say please and thank you, maybe they think I’m being sarcastic. Everyone hated the dinner lady who gave the whole school dysentery. It made the national news and even my mum had to keep me at home for more than a week. I found giving the samples rather degrading but knowledge of the implications of the disease came in handy at secondary school. I needed to go to the toilet but didn’t want to use the school toilet so I Told the teacher that I’d got dysentery and was sent home like a shot. “How do you know you’ve got dysentery”? “I’ve had it before”. Get out of here. What I meant to say was diahorea but I was too embarrassed to say that word to the teacher. The hour long bus journey home must have been agony but I made it this time.

If sport was lacking in my early years music wasn’t, that wasn’t my thing either. At school I played the recorder and sang, I also sang in church. My mother refused to sit at the front with the choir but led the singing from the family pew, there was definitely some competition going on although I don’t think the choir knew about it. I think I must take after my mum in that I also only compete with people who don’t know about it. Mummy would certainly be proud if I joined the school choir (he’s got a wonderful singing voice) so I went to the first practice. Every time I sang the choir mistress would frown in my direction. I started to mime and everything was fine. Didn’t think I’d get away with it for long so retired early. We had a piano at home and my dad would play it and sing hymns.

After the Sunday evening service “the students” would come round for some food and a sing song, thinking about it now it sounds like something from a Louis Theroux documentary but to us it was normal. Aunty Gutteridge was a generous but quite cross old lady who attempted to teach the ministers children how to play the piano. Jennifer did rather well but I only got as far as “the motorboat” and gave up. You’re probably not familiar with the motor boat but it’s a bit easier than row, row, row the boat, I think there are two notes. By the time Sarah and Tim were old enough the deal was off, this is a pity because Tim has an ear for music and could play a tune on the piano without ever having a lesson. I once spent a whole hour in front of a keyboard trying to work out how to play “happy birthday” but failed. I’m a good whistler though.

Mr Hahn was my first male teacher, he was probably a bit wacky and encouraged creativity with some weird projects. I rather liked making stuff and we often had things to do at home. One of the most bizzare projects was to construct a model of model cactus. The framework was made from bending canes and fixing them to a plywood base. My dad wasn’t much into DIY so we had to get a church member to help with the drilling. Once complete the frame was padded out with newspaper and covered with polyfilla which was spiked into spikes and painted green. The finished item looked like a green mitten standing on a tea tray. Mrs Green didn’t just look after the Jewish kids she shared her passion in making stuff out of cane, probably something to do with moses, my mum probably still has the full set of useful trays and waste paper bins. There were also plenty of pinch pots but the most ambitious project was a model airport complete with two airfix models flying round on the end of an electric motor driven beam. I think I got more than a little help with that one. One of my friends, David Thomas was very clever and impressed the teacher with his plans to build a TV, I was also impressed until I saw that it was just a box with a lightbulb in it.

Classes consisted of a lot of memorizing which I am hopeless at, multiplication tables were always problematic as was spelling. We once had to memorize a poem and recite it to the class. I chose Jabberwocky, good poem, bad choice.

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

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From the age of about 8 they tried to teach us French which seemed rather pointless at the time, in fact it was rather pointless as far as I was concerned because I didn’t remember any of it. I never understood English Grammar so all this nouns and adjectives stuff just didn’t mean anything.

Sunday school was what happened when the adults listened to my dad’s sermon, this was mainly colouring, cutting and sticking but there were also exams. A whole system of scripture competitions.

I always felt a bit pressurized. Surely the minister’s son should know that. Why? We never did this stuff at home. Not quite true, my dad did attempt some private tuition but it didn’t help. Jennifer was rather better at this than I was. I don’t know why but there seemed to be a lot of seriously clever kids at Sunday school.

In the 1960’s, at the end of junior school everyone sat the 11+ exam to see who was clever enough to get into grammar school. At that time there were 5 possibilities. Public school that you had to pay for, Grammar school that you didn’t, Comprehensive open to everyone, secondary modern if you failed the 11+ and special school if there was something wrong with you (Simon Rogers actually went to the grammar school, had a special cap like helmet made. My dad had strong political views, I think he was a socialist but voted liberal. He didn’t believe that children should be put into different schools and was a keen supporter of the comprehensive system. Stivichall was posh but not posh enough for public school. There was a place called a preparatory school quite close to where I lived, the name in itself was confusing aren’t all schools preparatory? I never knew any of the boys who went there but sometimes saw them through the fence, they played cricket and rugby and wore all the proper kit. Some of them had caps with a tassel on it. I have no idea where they lived or anything about them. Another mysterious world.

Almost everyone at Stivichall Junior school went to King Henry the eighth grammar school, just up the road from our house. I say everyone but only boys went there girls went to Barr’s Hill (Bras Hill teehee). Ian Wise didn’t go either, his mum was a socialist too, I think she was an MP, Audrey Wise. I trained for the 11+ to prove a point but it didn’t matter I was going to join my sister at Binley Park, which due to an excellent head master, Mr Rumble, was the best in the city. Problem was it was on the other side of the city, 2 buses and about an hour of travelling each way.

My dad says I passed the 11+ but I’m not sure, the preparation didn’t go too well. When my teachers heard I was going to Binley Park they just said “never mind”. All my friends went to Henry’s as did everyone who lived on my street. I’d walk in the same direction every morning only to catch the bus to Binley outside their school. They never bullied me, they didn’t even look at me.

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Binley early years First days at a new school are always traumatic, even worse if it’s the other side of town and you don’t know anyone. Actually I knew two people, my sister Jennifer and Penelope Smith who was the only other Stivichall pupil who ended up in a comprehensive school, well, maybe the only one who ended up at this one. Before starting the big school certain items needed to be bought. All other comprehensive kids went to the coop but we went to the same shop as the grammar school boys, made to measure, much better quality but not the same as everyone else and did we really need to buy the cap. I always thought my barathea blazer came down to my knees so that I would grow into it, didn’t realise it’s because to fit my arms it had to be one size too big. Obviously not made to measure then, made to measure my arms. Also needed something for all those books, how about an ex-army rucksack like everyone else had? No chance. I got the biggest leather satchel you’ve ever seen, same colour as a freshly peeled conker. Made to last and last it did, right up to the day that some skin heads put a firework in it. Hope it made them happy ‘cos it didn’t make me happy at all. I wonder if they think back and share a laugh about the day they set fire to that little kids bag. I doubt they even remember it, probably just one of many. Lucky for me it was a one off incident. Even though the satchel was a bit of an embarrassment I would never say so to my parents, they just wanted me to have the best and I wanted them to think I did. I wasn’t alone with my satchel, my sisters of course had satchels as did Paul Toogood.

Figure 14 My satchel and an army surplus bag like everyone else had.

The first day at school was pretty frightening but at least I had managed to convince my mum that boys don’t wear shorts in big school. Christopher Wright wasn’t so lucky he must have had a similar condition to Martin Forth, he was extremely thin, looked like a mouse and always seemed out of breath. Maybe his mum thought his legs needed a bit of sun on them. It might have been worse for Christopher Wright if it hadn’t been for Johnathan Martin who diverted everyone’s attention because his mum had sewn his badge on upside down. I bet he couldn’t wait for the day to end.

The years were streamed and I was in form K. This was one of the three top forms, J, K and L. X, Y and Z were the next level down then there was R and S who had a slightly different programme. To make sure the clever kids mixed with the thickies we were arranged in houses, my family were all in Aylward because it was named after a missionary. Gladys Aylward helped to stop the tradition of binding women’s feet in China. From the time they were born, parents would wrap bandages around the feet of baby girls to stop them growing. This would continue for their whole life so when they were adults they would still have the feet of a baby. I suppose babies feet have a certain attraction, Hilary used to occasionally suck the feet of our babies but stopped when a teenager in Tesco’s told her it was disgusting. Gladys Aylward came to visit once and had tea at our house. She brought with

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her one of her rescued babies who got too close to my brother on the garden swing and ended up with stitches in his head.

It takes time to find your group but from the first year I pal’d up with the best fighter in the class, Steven Hitchins. Always a good plan to hang around with the toughest kids. He was no nutter though, tough because he was physically fit not mean. We’d always sit at the front of the class, under the teacher’s radar, or so we thought. I think I was a good influence on Steve although I occasionally did something stupid. Like the message I sent to Kathleen Gunter. I would’ve probably been head boy if hadn’t sent that note, can’t even remember what it said but it wasn’t very nice. Nothing rude just Gunter stinks or the like. I only went round to Steve’s house once, he showed me his extensive collection of bird’s eggs then we went out to find some more. Flying over a field we saw some big black birds and I asked if they were Ravens. “I wish they were” he said “Ravens eggs are pretty rare”.

“Well I know where I can get some” I blurted out. “I’ve seen some near our holiday cottage” and the promise was made. Next holiday I climbed high up a tree to the nest and to my horror there were two eggs there I was going to have to take one. Steve said put them in your mouth but they wouldn’t fit so I stuck one in my pocket. Two branches down and the inevitable happened. How am I going to explain that? I tripped up and landed on an egg? I felt really bad about killing the unhatched bird.

When I got back to school I explained what had happened to Steve. He was a bit confused about the nesting spot, Ravens nest on cliffs, that was a crow.

I was a good boy at school, teachers liked me and I did my homework, I never got in trouble apart from the note incident and I was always happy. Too happy. My main aim was to make the class laugh so at any opportunity I’d make some clever remark, some teachers liked it others didn’t. On reading my school report my mum stormed into the deputy heads office with the words “what do you mean my son’s too happy”. Maybe “always happy” is stretching it a bit, I wasn’t happy in PE. First time out on the playing field and it’s time to pick the football sides. Paul Hughes and I are last to be picked and then he says it, the teacher calls me Kangaroo features. Now, what on Earth does that mean? I asked around and was told that a kangaroo has a pouch and so do I. A pouch? Like a pot belly? Apparently so. So I sent off for the Charles Atlas information pack and stood in doorways trying to lift my arms.

Dynamic tension. Went to the library and borrowed books about yoga but never got far with the exercises, bullworker, chest expanders I tried everything but not properly and with little effect.

Figure 15 Mr Pilbin

My mother had 3 brothers. The youngest, Uncle John was particularly good at rugby and cricket and had a nose to prove it. He was an airline pilot and was my “Aunty Popple”, he used to buy me the best Christmas presents, always some sort of scientific kit, he was a great uncle but because of him I felt obliged to choose rugby in PE. Everyone else who chose rugby was in the rugby team, so there 22

was me on the pitch with all the biggest boys in the school. I’d catch the ball- thump. Drop the ball – thump. Stand still – thump. Run away –thump. Worst of all was that Rugby was a winter game so the ground would be either frozen solid or muddy and I don’t like getting muddy. It means you have to take a shower with the big boys and what with my hernias and everything, well.

Summer was a bit better I even had my own cricket pads and a special long bag like the boys at the grammar school carried, problem was that no one at my school had one and I wasn’t even in the team. I always had a plentiful supply of whites since that’s what the boys wear when they get baptised. These proved to be very useful after a set photos appeared in Mountain magazine of Mark Hudon and Max Jones climbing in white trousers. I never quite did the right thing but didn’t get teased for my peculiarities, one of the advantages of being Steven Hitchin’s best friend, he was in the rugby team, cricket team and football team.

I didn’t hate all sports, I liked table tennis and running about in the gym. There was one occasion when a gymnastics coach visited the school looking for young talent. We had to climb ropes and do stuff like that. I was always quite good at rope climbing but unfortunately for the future of British gymnastics he didn’t notice.

During my first year at Binley Park there was a lot of building going on, a new sports hall was being constructed and in that hall was a climbing wall. You wouldn’t call it a climbing wall these days but that’s what it was supposed to be. It was made entirely of varnished wood. There was a layback flange that you climb like a drainpipe and a jamming crack was formed between two triangular beams, to climb it you’d slot in a hand, make a fist so it won’t come out then pull up and repeat. In the corner there was chimney with a ledge. It was about 1 meter wide so you’d climb it with by putting your back against one wall and your feet on the other. There was a shelf at half height which made things awkward but was useful for practicing multi pitch routes. You had to tie yourself onto a ring and hold the rope while your partner climbed up and joined you on the ledge, all of 5m above the ground. The most interesting feature was a slab that had movable metal rungs for holds, the angle could be varied, but we normally had it set as easy as possible. To the right of this was an overhanging plank used for aid climbing. We’d climb to the end then slide down the rope. Getting ones hair or shirt caught in the rope was a frequent occurrence so scissors were always kept in the equipment store. Along with the climbing wall came a new biology teacher Mr Van den Toorn he’d been climbing in the Alps and had corduroy climbing breeches. Doesn’t sound very cool but he was.

Figure 16 Mr Van den Toorn

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Once the hall was finished the climbing wall was open for use by the newly formed climbing club, Paul Hughes and I were the only first year members the rest all seemed to be sixth formers, no girls.

It’s not that kernmantle ropes hadn’t been invented but they were too fragile for school use so we had hawser laid nylon that we wrapped once around our waist and tied onto with a bowline knot.

When we fell off the rope would leave a big mark under our ribs. Mr Van den Toorn told us that you could only survive for 3 minutes hanging free on the end of the rope, you couldn’t hang on the rope to practice moves in those days. My first route was the chimney. Varnished wood has little friction but you could make your feet stick if you pushed hard enough. You see, friction is proportional to the normal force so the harder you push the wall the harder it pushes back and the more you can rely on friction. First attempt wasn’t so successful. I think I was more scared of the rope than the height. The tricky bit was moving round the half height ledge. Paul Hughes was better than me, I think he must have been before or something.

I have very long arms and extremely thin ankles, even now I can close my hand around each ankle.

My right ankle is slightly thicker due to the plate put in after I broke it walking to work. I stood on a patch of ice and snap. I get the arms and ankles from my dad who could have been a good climber if he hadn’t been terrified of heights. He also had a pair of very old tennis shoes or should I say plimsoles. I think they had been in the baptismal pool a few too many times because the rubber soles had perished and gone sticky, next time I went to the wall I took a secret weapon, friction.

The jamming crack was quite unlike anything I’ve ever seen on rock, the triangular sides meant that the hand fitted perfectly but the sharp edge bit into the sides of the feet. We’d often climb it with our feet smeared against the wall to avoid the pain. The slab was the focus of most of our attention, square section blue painted metal holds slotted into holes in a board so you could adjust the routes.

Put two holds close to each other and a third high as possible and way over to one side. Pull on the first to get the second. Bunch up to get your foot on the first, rock over and stretch to the final hold.

My short body, long arms and sticky plimmies were well suited to the move so I started to feel I could do this stuff. After years of practice we managed to climb the board with one hold. Admittedly it was set at the easiest angle and the hold had to be pulled out so you could get fingers behind it but the move was still hard. Take a run up one foot on the board and launch for the hold, mount it with a flying mantle, somehow get your foot on too and stand up, early parkour. I was never so good at this method as I found it difficult to straighten my leg. The alternative was to get both hands on the hold with a foot in the middle and use the lower leg to spring your centre of gravity up and over the hold.

Running starts are very difficult to belay so we often climbed without ropes, no one ever got hurt which is quite surprising since we didn’t have a mat.

The fact that my science teacher was also my climbing instructor probably did a lot to seal my interest in science, that and the presents from Uncle John of course. There was also a science club where I got some more electric shocks, made gun powder, rubber and nylon, bred rats, locust and fruit flies and brewed beer. You may not believe this but the beer brewing was a scientific experiment we never drank it, at least I never drank it. My mum and dad were strict teetotalers, my dad’s dad used to drink but my dad had never let a drop pass his lips. When he was in the Navy, doing his national service working as a nurse, he was forced to drink from an unmarked bottle.

Thinking it was alcohol he struggled hard but failed to stop the liquid passing between his lips. Luckily it was olive oil. Along with his calling to the ministry he must have also had a calling not to drink.

Even the communion wine was nonalcoholic. It could be specially ordered from Baptist times, I know because I’ve seen the advert on the back page, plus I’ve tried it of course. For some reason we always

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had a miniature of brandy in the pantry. I think this was for the Christmas pudding which is difficult to flame with a nonalcoholic beverage. Prohibition makes one interested but the brandy bottle was so small a sip would be noticeable. For some reason I worked out that it might be possible to feel the effects of alcohol from one drop if it was injected directly into the blood stream, don’t worry I didn’t do it. Next best thing would be up the nose and I did try that. Not to be recommended.

Cigarettes were also a fascination and thanks to Mr Forey we often had a box in the house. In the days of smoking upstairs on the bus it was much easier to have the odd fag since everyone smelled of tobacco anyway. All my early experiments with tobacco were done in private, it wasn’t very often but when the opportunity arose it was difficult not to have a secret puff. I once found a packet of cigarette papers. I’d never seen these before and thought that they were, as the name suggests, paper that you can make cigarettes out of, what I hadn’t realized was that you need tobacco. I rolled one up with scrunched up papers rolled in another paper. Wooosh. My little brother was more open about smoking and at the age of 12 left a confessional tape for my parents to play. “I have recorded this message to tell you that I have started to smoke.” Fair enough at least he’s being honest. “I like it and have decided to continue”. Baptists don’t do confessionals but sometimes it’s good to confess.

Another object of fascination was the medicine cabinet. This was a rectangular mirrored cupboard above the bathroom sink inside were all sorts of interesting tubes and bottles including a tube of preparation H. Reading the label I discovered it was for hemorrhoids and reading my mums medical books I discovered what that was. The interesting thing about preparation H is its list of contents which include sharks liver oil. The question is, how did they discover that sharks liver cures hemorrhoids. Maybe it was serendipitous, someone was walking along a nudist beach with an itchy bottom, went over to investigate a dead shark, slipped on a wet rock landing in such a way to cause the sharks liver to slip up their bottom. Dusting themselves down after the embarrassing incident they realise that they itch no more. Alternatively it could be the result of experiment, horses kidney, no, pineapple, no, sharks liver, bingo.

Soon after forming the climbing club Mr Van den Toorn organized a trip to North Wales. There was Paul Hughes and me together with a bunch of sixth formers. There were probably some that weren’t actually in the sixth form but all big boys seemed liked sixth formers to me. No girls. One of them was pretty good, his name was Steve and he had long hair. After leaving school he went to Bangor University in North Wales. I saw his name in the mags once. He’d climbed a new route with one of the best climbers at that time, Alec Sharp. The sixth formers were all quite cool but kind and didn’t

Figure 17 Idwal slabs

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seem to mind us first years being there. We stayed at Willies camp site in the Ogwen valley and climbed on Idwal slabs. It rained a lot and I had to abandon my tent and sleep in the barn. First climb was the ordinary route. Mr VdT led the first pitch, belayed and brought about 6 of us onto the ledge.

We had practiced standing on ledges on the chimney ledge so were well prepared. All I remember was the crowd on the ledge and water running in one arm of my cagoule and out of the other. We also did faith, hope and charity and the big boys did tennis shoe. On the way down we looked up in awe at suicide wall. What a name. Thinking back this was all a bit dodgy. Mr VdT would lead off leaving 6 beginners standing on the ledge with no proper idea of what to do. We knew we had to untie something before we could start climbing but didn’t know exactly which bit to untie. I’m sure there were moments when some of us were not attached to the rock.

We weren’t the only climbers staying in the barn, there was also a group of wild kids from somewhere in the North of England. They were obviously totally obsessed with climbing and would climb around the inside of the barn and talk a lot about the different climbs they’d done. One of them looked rather like a big nosed monkey with long arms and that dangled from hunched shoulders, they called him Hunch. He seemed to be the best climber because one day he did something called a HVS. He was so pleased with this achievement that he carved “I did a HVS today“ on one of the beams.

After this rather wet experience it would be quite understandable if I never wanted to climb again but I was completely hooked. All I wanted to do was climb, I was a rock climber. I lived for that next trip to a crag. All pocket money was saved so I could go to the sport shop and buy a hiat steel karabiner and a hemp waist line, yep hemp. I can’t remember why but hemp was still used to tie around the body. It was wound around with a knot on each turn then a screw gate karabiner used to attach the rope. It was slightly more comfortable than a bowline but not much. Probably extended hanging life to 8 minutes. Other essentials were a rucksack, Paul Hughes and I bought Joe Brown extendables. The reason being that if you got caught out on a mountain without a tent you could simply empty your sac and put your legs in it. I wonder if anyone ever did this. If you are carrying such a big sack maybe it would make sense to put a tent and sleeping bag in it. Another neat feature was the karimat in the back, trouble was it was too narrow even for a twelve year old to sleep on. It was a massive sack though and if you packed out the extension it would tower over your head. The only acceptable alternative would have been the Whillans alpinist, much more practical and a lot smaller. I can just see Brown and Whillans off on an expedition with their eponymous rucksacks Joe being rather miffed at having to haul such a big sack whilst Don puffs away smiling at his neat little orange back pack.

Don Whillans and Joe Brown were obviously massive names for any rock climbers at the time, they were often on TV sometimes even climbing live. This was a bit like the latest Norwegian concept “slow TV”. The broadcasts would go on all day interrupting all the other programmes with news on the latest bit of progress. Spiders web on Gogarth, The Old Man of Hoy and Strone Ulladale were all done live. Good job they climbed slowly. I read both of their books enjoying the stories but was most impressed by the photos, particularly those impossible looking gritstone routes, Sloth, esso extra and dangler.

During my second year I went on a school trip to Plas Dol y moch. This was an outdoor activity centre that smelled of dubbin and mold. In the common room they had some climbing magazines and I ripped a couple of pages out of one of them, it was actually the second edition of mountain, a collector’s item now. I put the pictures on the wall of my bedroom, still have the pictures but there not on my wall. The Tre Cime di Laverdo, some climbers sitting on a ledge one with his legs in a ruck sack, elder crack (dark and atmospheric) the spider on Cheedale and Centurion on Carn Dearg. I spent hours staring at these photos dreaming about doing those routes. I’ve done Elder crack and the

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spider (free) but never been to the dolomites or Ben Nevis and the only ledge I’ve slept on is windy ledge in the peak district. I did forget my sleeping bag once but by that time the Joe Brown extendable had worn out so I never got to try the “legs in sack” method of survival, pity. Just goes to show that staring at photos does not achieve anything.

Sunday school also has its different levels, when you got promoted from seniors to venturers you could choose a book to receive as a gift. You were supposed to choose one from the self-service book store but we had all of those at home already (not really) so I chose Alan Blackshaw’s mountaineering bible instead.

Figure 18 Alan Blackshaw

That’s where I got the hemp waist line tip. I’ve still got the book and just looked up why you use hemp. It “reduces the possibility of nylon running across nylon; this exists in the direct waist tie when a belayed climber is holding a falling climber with a waist belay, unless he pulls his anorak or other clothing over his waist loop to protect it.” Oh yes, we used the waist belay and continued to do so for about 10 years. We also practiced the classic abseil: It’s on page 242. Stand astride the rope facing up hill. Take the downhill rope and bring it around one leg (your least favourite one) then across your body to the opposite shoulder. Now take the rope in the other hand (the same one as your least favourite leg, unfortunate if this is your favourite hand but you have to way up the pros and cons). Lean backwards until your body is perpendicular to the rock and start to walk down. Try to avoid bending at the waist, if this happens you won’t be able to straighten up again. Don’t let your leg (least favourite) move upwards as this will result in an abseil with the rope behind your knee. Always do this with lots of cloths on never in your gym shorts. Never do this hanging from the roof. The reason for choosing the least favorite leg is that it’s going to get a rope burn around it, you should also be very careful how the rope between your legs is positioned.

On a school open day some skinhead girls had a go at abseiling and really enjoyed it, I honestly had no idea why.

The plimsoles worked fine on wood but not on rock, not that we actually climbed on rock very often, maybe once a year at the start. In those days there was a limited choice of footwear •

EB’s. We thought this stood for Ellis Brigham because they had them on their advert. It actually stands for something like Escalade Bleausards which didn’t mean much at the time even though we all did French. These were by far the best but no one told us that. They

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• •

•

looked very much like the sort of basketball shoes my mum would never let me wear, canvas rubbish.

PA’s. Named after Piere Allain who must have been the French equivalent of Joe Brown. They were red and the other climbing teacher Mr Reynold had a pair but he wasn’t as good as Mr VdT and taught French so not someone to follow. Paul Hughes disagreed and bought a pair.

Masters. Absolutely terrible boots, very stiff and no friction. To this day I have no idea what possessed me to ask for these, price I suppose. What probably happened was that my dad got talked into buying them by some guy in the shop. Made me learn how to climb without my feet. Imagine my disappointment trying them out for the first time, expecting to be able to stand on footholds at last. Luckily feet grow fast.

RD’s. This is what Mr VdT had. Very plush brown leather, wonderful smell. After my disaster with the cheap shoes I decided to go for the best with my second pair of shoes and got some of these, another big mistake.

The problem is that they are not the best and last forever. When I eventually wore them out and got a pair of EB’s my climbing grade shot up, at last I could use my feet. Sort of.

Figure 19 RDs, PAs and EBs couldn't find any masters.

After being at the school for only a couple of years Mr VdT left, there may not have been any girls in the climbing club but there were girls at the school and Mr VdT married one of them. Nice for him but who was going to take us climbing. Mr Reynolds wasn’t so keen and drifted away from the scene so we were left to our own devices.

My dad as always turned to the church and discovered the hemp club (the whispering dentist and the helmet man). He was also on the governing body of Whitley Abbey, another comprehensive school. This school was much closer to home but we couldn’t go there because dad thought it would be unethical since he was on the board. Maybe it would’ve been easier for him to resign from the board rather than us having to trek across the city every day for 7 years, but anyway the uniform was a horrid brown blazer with orange piping. On one of his visits to the school my dad had been discovered there was a boy at there who was also keen to start climbing, his name was Arnis Strapcans. A pretty weird name but he was Latvian.

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Figure 20 Arnis Strapcans using a waist belay but not a hemp rope

It wasn’t my first hemp club meet, previously I’d been to Cratcliffe Tor and Carl’s wark. I’ve never climbed at Carls wark again as it’s just a jumble of small boulders however I have been to Cratcliffe many times. It’s one of my favourite cliffs. On the hemp club visit we climbed the central feature of Owl Gulley and a chimney round to the left. The silent dentist obviously liked cavities. The trip with Arnis was to Harborough and Brassington, again two cliffs I have never returned to, the hemp club seemed to like obscure crags. Arnis was a year older than me and a lot more adventurous. He told me of a time he had hiked to some remote area where he pitched his tent. A storm blew up and he had to cook his tea inside but the canvas caught fire and the tent burned down so he had to go back home. I remember thinking “you’re bonkers” but pretended to admire his adventurous spirit. We started by towing the line and followed the old guys into some dark chimneys but the open faces seemed more appealing so we decided to go it alone and tried a couple of route graded VS which is short for very severe. This sounds quite difficult but it’s not really.

We had a good time feeding off each other’s enthusiasm. The Hemp club had never seen anything like it and told my dad that they could no longer take responsibility for us. They probably said something more about Arnis as I was never allowed to climb with him again. Pity because he lived just down the road from me, literally just round the corner, but we never bumped into each other.

Maybe he was always off on tent burning adventures. As the years passed I would often hear about what Arnis was up to. Some older climbers, Mick Putnam and Ted Lister took him under their wing for a time and he started doing new routes and making a name for himself, not surprising with a name like that. I always competed with him but he never knew it. I never saw him climb but assumed he was brave but not technically very good, I have no grounds for this assessment but it kept me ahead as far as I was concerned. I’m sure Arnis never even thought about whether he was better than me or not.

Another attempt to meet climbers was an evening at the Coventry mountaineering club, I was 14 and they met in a pub. My dad and I had never been in a pub and he didn’t want to start now so I was dropped off at 6 o’clock. Bed time was nine so he arranged to pick me up at eight. Problem was no one arrived until eight thirty so I spent the evening sat in the games room on my own not daring to go into the bar to buy a lemonade. I never went again.

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In the absence of any organized activity we had to go it alone. By that time there were more of us.

Friends at school had seen Paul and me hanging off the wall and wanted to try as well. Paul Toogood and Richard Skelton joined the gang. Toog always seemed to be covered in spots and about as athletic as I was. He wasn’t very good at climbing but he didn’t used to be good at table tennis either, went to Butlins for a holiday and came back the master of spin. No natural ability at anything but incredible determination. He also had parents that didn’t always buy the right thing, he once had a pair of the most horrible suede shows you could imagine. Light brown hush puppies with dark brown bands. He tried as hard as he could to scuff them into oblivion but they just wouldn’t wear out. Skelly wasn’t exactly the opposite but he didn’t have spots was naturally strong and not so determined, he didn’t need to be. His dad made gates and stuff out of metal with his bare hands, he looked like Don Whillans without the beard and was incredibly strong. He could do a one arm pull up without any problem even though he must have weighed 100 kg. Skelly’s dad and my dad got together and took turns driving the four of us to the peak district. Always stanage and mostly robin hoods area, Skelly’s dad had a 3.5 litre V8 Rover.

Figure 21 3.5 litre V8 Rover.

There weren’t so many climbers in those days, I don’t remember meeting a single one on our many trips to stanage. Pity ‘cos they could have shown us what to do. I had acquired a kernmantle rope for my birthday, it was a 9mm rope meant to be used double but I only had one. We attached it to the top of the cliff above the cave innominate. The rope wasn’t for top roping though it was for swinging on. It was good fun while it lasted but after half an hour my rope was completely ruined. I don’t think I ever told my dad about that, he would sit in the car reading the paper all day, didn’t want to watch, I guess he thought we knew what we were doing. It wasn’t all top roping though we had read all about lead climbing and had acquired a couple of “chocks” each. Chocks are metal wedges attached to loops of rope. Toog preferred to attach his chocks to nylon tape which he sewed into loops with fishing line. As you climb up you place the chocks into cracks and attach your climbing rope to them with a metal link called a karabiner. It was then called a running belay or runner, since the rope ran through it. If you can get one in above your head then you are as safe as houses but as you climb past it starts to get scary. I always liked to have one above my head and would use all sorts of tactics to achieve this. On one occasion I tried to get a large hexagonal chock into a high crack by swinging it overhead. I was standing in a chimney so could use both hands. On the second attempt I swung it back and the metal lump hit me smack on top of my head. Almost knocked myself out. I wore my helmet for the rest of the day. My helmet was a Joe Brown heavyweight that I customized with a spray painted white cross and some stickers. I used to write the grade of the hardest route I’d done on it. “VS kid”.

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Figure 22 Moac classic

My brother was small but good at sports so on family holidays I tried to get him climbing. Some short routes in the Elan valley were a good start but gimmer chimney proved to be a bit too high. Luckily I managed to climb down but it took time and by the time we got down the mountain rescue were on their way out. It was a long time before he trusted me enough to try climbing again. The next occasion was at Ilkley. I persuaded him to try leading Josephine in the quarry, he got about 10 feet up panicked and let go. I saved him from hitting the ground by catching him in my arms. He was still small. That was probably the last time.

Summer holidays meant the possibility to travel further so the 4 of us planned a trip to Llanberis pass. I’d heard of the famous cenotaph corner but was quite disappointed when I saw that it went inwards like a book not outwards like the corner of a house. I wasn’t allowed to hitch so we must have been dropped off by my dad, long drive. By this time we had quite a pile of equipment all bought with pocket money or received as gifts at Christmas, even managed to get stuff at bonfire night instead of fireworks. Everyone in Alan Blackshaw’s book is wearing breeches, so did we. Mine were made from an old pair of brown corduroy trousers, with leather reinforcement on the bottom (good to avoid piles when sitting on rocks). On the end of the legs, which were just under my knees, my sister had sewn little gold buckles that didn’t work. With the red wool socks and a super itchy Joe Brown woolen shirt I really looked the part. Not sure which part but I looked it. For once I wasn’t on my own, we were all dressed like this.

Alan Blackshaw may have written our bible but Ron James wrote our guide book. In those days guidebooks were descriptive: 3. 90ft Climb up R , easily, to a small pulpit from which a well-worn foothold leads onto the very bridge of the nose. A long, low reach. Or a hard hand-traverse brings good holds into reach and a short ascent ends on a good flat ledge with huge belay flakes.

There were also photos with lines drawn on them but it’s difficult to know where the line goes when you are on the cliff rather than looking at it. All guidebooks are pocket sized the reason for this is obvious, so they fit in your pocket. They are also plastic covered because it rains sometimes. Ron James took the revolutionary decision to publish in long thin format that wouldn’t fit into your pocket and wasn’t waterproof. I bet there aren’t many pristine examples in existence, probably most have a badly chewed top edge like mine, worn away whilst chimneying with it in my back pocket, even the sellotape reinforcement has worn through. It was also common tick routes and write comments. Scattered throughout the pages of mine are comments that Arnis had made to me about routes he’d done. About cenotaph corner he had commented “resting places after each move” I was always very keen to collect information about routes I dreamt of doing.

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Figure 23 Ron James plus comments.

By this time we were climbing about VS so made a beeline for such classics as Sabre cut, Dives with better things, phantom rib, ribstone crack, the cracks and the direct route. Maybe no one does these routes anymore but they were big adventures for us. Paul was usually in the lead as I was a bit too scared to stand on small holds due to my appalling footwear. Sabre cut was particularly memorable not so much for the climbing but for the hot aches I got when I reached the top with frozen hands.

Summer in North Wales can be quite cold especially when the wind blows down the valley. On this occasion it was blowing straight up the route. I’ve never thought of this before but climbing in an upwind would definitely make things easier, I think I’ll do some research on wind directions to see if I can find a cliff with favorable conditions.

We didn’t only climb in the pass, I had read the black cliff and wanted to have a look at cloggy. My dad loved books and would often go for a browse in a bookshop returning with some theological tome for himself and a climbing book for me. I never read story books but would read anything that was about climbing including some lesser known works such as “Artificial climbing walls” by Kim Meldrum and Brian Royle, “New climbs 1970” edited by Ian Roper and “A climber in the West Country” by Edward C Pyatt. The black Cliff was one of his better buys.

We walked from the pass into Llanberis then up the railway track to cloggy where we found that you don’t have to layback the first pitch of curving crack. On the way back we tried something mentioned in Dennis Grays book and rode the rods back to llanberis. I am sure it’s completely forbidden but you get a big stone and put it on the centre track of the railway then just sit on the stone and slide down.

The track is covered in grease so you go quite fast. I couldn’t find a big stone so used a little one, about the size and shape of a slightly bent half baggette. It worked fine and we went quite a long way but my Joe Brown extendable dragged on the track wearing a hole in the bottom and covering it in grease.

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The Binley Surge kids The climbing community at Binley Park grew to include Ady Blythe and Alan Taylor plus a bunch of other kids who would have a go from time to time. Ady was by far the best, he was strong, thin and would go for it much more than the rest of us. He was also a bit older and although he put up with us for a while didn’t stay part of the gang for long. I think he found us a bit childish. There were still no girls.

I was always frightened of girls, I don’t know why, I had two sisters and they weren’t in the least bit frightening. I did like girls and there were a couple who I wanted to get to know but I never made any effort to start the process. At Junior school there’d been Vivian Mc Comb, everyone liked her and she invited me (and everyone else) to her birthday party. One day in the playground I foolishly announced that I liked her and my friends picked me up and carried me over to her for a kiss. The quite public rejection put me off asking girls for kisses for the rest of my life.

During my first few years at Binley I had little interest in girls and don’t recall ever fancying one of them, half the school were girls but I only remember a hand full. Kathleen Gunter I remember because of the note of course and Penelope Smith since she got on the same bus.

There was also a very small girl in Aylward house who had something wrong with her legs and at the other end of the height spectrum was Susan Knocker who became known as Susan Knockers for the obvious reason. She had a pile of curly hair and wore make up. Apparently she went out with men. I did fall in love once but can’t remember her name. There was a girl in one of the other classes who started going to Queen’s road Baptist church. I must have got the idea that if she went to the same church maybe she would be interested in me, surely being the son of the minister has to have some value. There were plenty of other girls at church but they were grammar school girls, and might not want to go out with a comprehensive boy, this girl was in form x so might be impressed with my higher level of academic achievement. Well I spent a lot of time trying to work out how I could get “unnamed girl” to realise that the boy in church who kept looking at her went to the same school but she never noticed me. Maybe I should have tried talking to her?

Even though I now had a sporting interest I still didn’t like doing other sports. Cross country running maybe something I could have been interested in but it wasn’t. I’d get the stitch after about 5 minutes and spend the rest of the run holding my guts. It would take many years before I would see the benefit of pain. Shower time was also still problematic as the other boys were growing stuff and I wasn’t. I’ve never worn a jock strap, wouldn’t even know how to put one on, not even sure what the point is, why does your bottom have to be exposed? Lots of Hairy bottoms. The whole of the games lesson was spent working out how I would get out of having a shower. Swimming was a bit better, no one can tell if you’ve had a shower or not when you’re already wet. I learnt to swim at junior school but was never any good. My breast stroke kick was pathetic and I couldn’t breathe when doing crawl. I recently had a couple of coaching sessions and realised that I still swim in the incorrect way I was taught as a child. On one occasion I forgot my swimming costume and was given a girls swimming costume to wear. That’ll teach him. Sure did, taught me not to choose swimming again.

The climbing club wasn’t just a club we were a group of friends who shared a lot of interests, one of these was stage lighting. To hang lights you normally have to build a scaffold tower but it’s much quicker if you swing up onto the beams without. You would think that another requirement would be lack of colour blindness but I’m colour blind which might be why my lighting for the school production of Peer Gynt got particular mention for artistic interpretation and interesting use of colour. Probably good that I didn’t take this any further. I actually preferred to be on stage but as my subject choices turned in the direction of science few of my mates were volunteering for roles in the school play so I didn’t either. Stage lighting was directed from the lighting loft and one of the jobs was to climb into the roof 33

space above the assembly hall and run cables to the lights. It was like a maze up there and you could crawl all over the place, a hole led into the space above the headmasters office but it was sealed after one of the team fell through. The other members of the crew were all sixth formers and they introduced us kids to Pink Floyd, Led Zeplin and Uriah Heap. They also introduced us to the real reason they were in the lighting crew, the smoking room. Tucked away in a corner of the roof space was a square tent made out of black out curtain where they would go to smoke. When I say we were introduced to it I mean introduced to the outside of it, I never went in. I once saw a girl coming down from there and apparently they weren’t just smoking cigarettes which would explain why one of them fell through.

Climbing continued with all too infrequent trips to the peak district plus a week in wales at Easter and the summer. There was also the Lake District. My dad was a keen fell walker and in his youth had spent many holidays in Ambleside with his mother. He grew up in Fareham so it must have been a long journey. As a minister he was involved with all ages, he dedicating babies (that’s what Baptists do instead of baptising) and buried dead people but his greatest passion was working with teenagers. The church with all its halls was the perfect venue for a youth club. The youth club wasn’t just for church goers but my dad always invited the young people to come to church on a Sunday and many did, the back of the upstairs gallery was always full of young people. One of the motivating factors was that if you came to church you’d be eligible for the annual Lake District trip.

Figure 24 Christian fellowship holiday to the lake district with my family, climbing mates and a load of Christians.

I’m not sure why the holidays were so popular it was probably something to do with boys and girls spending a week away from their parents but I wasn’t away from my parents so that didn’t apply. I was there for the climbing and so were my mates who also went through the whole process of attending Sunday worship etc. My dad was charismatic and well liked, he did a lot for other people and those people repaid by coming to church. It was a sign of respect not really anything to do with religion, he would of course push the Jesus aspects from the pulpit but never outside. I think one or two of my school friends went the whole hog and got baptised but most didn’t.

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The lake district holidays took place at Newlands near Keswick, Keswick is near Borrowdale so that’s where we mainly climbed, we only went there once a year but thanks to my dad’s book buying addiction I have a full set of the fell and rock climbing clubs colour coded guides. Toog was still in the lead but wasn’t the most ethical leader, his ascent of Kransic Crack, VS stands out as a triumph of rope tension over gravity. I don’t suppose many people bought the buttermere guide (blue) but my dad did so I could find my way up the 440 ft Waterfall buttress ordinary route, a long climb interesting for its standard. We once made the long trek up Scafell crag (pink) via Scafell pike, to climb Botterill’s slab VS. My guide book says I did it with Toog in the lead but there is an asterisk halfway through the description which means we only climbed half way up the slab, the walk up had taken so long that we ran out of time. Rock climbers are very good at making excuses, running out of time is an acceptable excuse as is, “it got dark” or “it started to rain”. Saying that it was too hard or I wasn’t good enough is just not on but worse still is “it was too scary”.

Without transport we were limited to where we could climb but we discovered that you could walk to Avon Gorge from the train station so this became our new weekend venue. The other advantage was that you didn’t need a tent as you could sleep in the toilets. If you ever do need to spend the night in a public toilet always sleep in the ladies, the floors aren’t covered in wee and they don’t flush every half an hour. The women visiting in the night are generally a bit shocked but not violent like men might be. I’d always been honest with my parents but I didn’t tell them exactly where we were sleeping. This meant that I had to carry my tent all the way there so I could support the pretence that there was a nice camp site in the gorge. So, at the age of 15 the four of us set off for the Avon gorge. Avon is serious stuff. We started on that big slab behind the toilets before progressing onto the main wall. Central wall was the big tick, one of our first HVS’s . The best thing about climbing at Avon was the pegs, compared to jammed in wedges these hammered in blades of steel seemed totally safe.

We had several trips there over the next 3 years always staying in the toilets occasionally we’d meet other climbers and once or twice we’d even talk to them. Most climbing areas has its locals and Avon, being close to the city centre has more local locals than most. We were always intrigued that the ones who talked about climbing the most never actually seemed to climb anything. There was one particularly friendly individual who was always there, I think his name was Joe or George and he always wore a woolly hat and would give us advise about the routes we wanted to do. I suppose the reason he never climbed was because he’d done everything.

One day we saw a body lying in the mud down by the river, the police soon came to remove it confirming its real body status. Must have been a jumper. Having spent so many weekends in the gorge the news that Tony Wilmott fell to his death there hit a nerve. The photo that accompanied his obituary gave a small glimpse of another world, wild eyes, wild hair, using hands to describe the intricacies of some complex move. We always copied our heros, I climbed with a tape sling round my neck for years but why did all my heroes have to have blond curly hair? When someone dies climbing people often say they died doing what they loved. No they didn’t. They loved “not falling off”, falling off is what climbers hate.

By this stage we were no longer climbing on hemp waist lines, Don Whillans’ rucksack might not have caught on but his harness did. The Whillans wasn’t my first harness I of course got it wrong and bought a webbing belt with removable leg loops. People may criticise the Whillans sit harness but it was far better than the alternatives. I of course had to go through several alternatives before I conformed to the norm of a Whillans. If you fell off in a Whillans it was important to bend the legs, that’s why it’s called a sit harness, failure to do this would have serious consequences, something that I was well prepared for before taking my first leader fall at stoney middleton many years later. We no longer called the metal wedges chocks we called them nuts and we carried them on a bandolier like they did in Yosemite. We had also seen

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pictures of American climbers using chalk so were keen to emulate our heroes, the problem was we didn’t know what type to use. The first attempt was with French chalk, it’s the stuff you used to get in the bicycle repair kit, It came in a small cube that could be ground into a powder and sprinkled onto the repaired inner tube to stop it sticking to the tyre, also stopped your fingers sticking to rock, it’s as slippery as the skin of an eel. School chalk is better but feels horrible on your skin so we settled on boxes of magnesium carbonate used to cure indigestion. It was ages before anyone realised that Gymnasts have been using block chalk for years. Sisters were employed to make the bags, the elastic draw cord on my first bag was not particularly helpful and the Velcro fastening on my second was an innovation that never caught on.

School was no longer terrifying, I had a good bunch of friends, all climbers, all scientists, all youth club members, all boys. We were also into progressive rock and had a continual battle with the skin heads at the youth club over the choice of music, paranoid followed by monkey spanner, whole lotta love followed by double barrel. We hated reggae because of those who liked it. They danced in lines we danced all over the place. Didn’t really move our feet but made up for it above the waist. Clothes were pretty cool too, loon pants, south sea bubble scoop neck t shirts and denim jackets with flared sleeves, hair was long of course, blue suede desert boots were the start of an interesting selection of unconventional shoes that included white wooden soled clogs, crepe soled brothel creepers, blue platforms and purple dock martins. I’d be wearing perfectly normal clothes and then you’d see the feet. Well that was the idea but the reality was that the wide flared jeans completely covered whatever shoes I happened to be wearing. I should’ve stuck with Clark’s sensibles.

Music was quite important too as we discovered new groups (now known as bands) watching the Old Grey Whistle test. My first album was Pink Floyds Meddle, my sister, Sarah and I would sit in the dark and listen to it on our fake quadraphonic stereo while we burnt joss sticks. Coventry is a fairly big city so was on the circuit for a lot of the big bands, Led Zeplin played at the Locarno but I was too young to go. The school arranged a trip to see Hawkwind in Birmingham and we were all very excited because at some point in the concert a naked woman would dance on stage. She did but it was very smokey due to all the burning joss sticks. Joss sticks seemed to go hand in hand with the music of the time but I had no idea why. I have few regrets but one is that I didn’t see Genesis (with Peter Gabriel) when they played Birmingham. I had some vague idea that I was going to ask a girl out on the same day so I sold my ticket, I never did pluck up the courage to ask her out, so I was left high and dry which is a strange expression to use when you miss out on something.

Figure 25 Hawkwind program including naked lady.

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My sisters also went to the youth club, Jennifer was all wuthering heights and windswept with her long velvet coat and leather boots, Sarah, several years younger hadn’t been swept by the wind yet and seemed more interested in my friends than Heathcliff. In particular Toog whose spots didn’t seem to put her off in the least. To get me off her back she introduced me to her very good looking friend Kim Lister who I wouldn’t have approached in a million years.

Well, she seemed to like my style for about 2 weeks then realised how boring I was and gave me the boot. Meanwhile Sarah had spotted someone new so that was the end of introductions for me. I really was only capable of talking about climbing with climbers anything else just wasn’t interesting.

We had some inspiring teachers at Binley Park Miss Goult my English teacher encouraged expression. Poems have less words than essays so I wrote poems. She particularly liked a poem I wrote in the shape of a volcano The volcano Lava gushing From the open crater Running down the sloping sides Cooling quickly as it flows towards the sea Forming glass like rock on contact with the water I also did geology.

My Physics teacher was Mr Cheatham, typical tweed jacket and dry sense of humour.

Supported Grimsby town and let us do Milikan’s oil drop experiment at lunch time.

My house head was Mrs Walton, she must have had the same problem as the small girl and wore calipers on her legs. Strange how you don’t see people with calipers anymore. She was also our Maths teacher for a while. Walton wobbles but she won’t fall down. Mrs Rippon tried to teach me French and failed. She wore absolutely loads of makeup and put me off Chanel number 7 for life. I can’t remember the name of my Art teacher but she wore a leather skirt and boots. We were most disappointed when she got married, as if a twenty eight year old blond art teacher would be at all interested in any of us giggling, spotty kids ( I didn’t actually have spots but Toog had plenty to go around).

Mr Billington was our favourite, he shared our silly sense of humour and had huge feet, hence the nickname skiboots. He was also an excellent table tennis player. He once drew a line at the top of the board and said just ruling off after last class. I’ve cracked the same joke many time with my students but they never laugh as much as we did. Mr Billington also ran the table tennis club, he was really good but had a strange style. His serve was a killer, throw the ball, look away then with a shrug of the shoulders slice the ball from an impossible to determine direction. I copied the sideways glance and shrug but never mastered the slice.

There were several PE teachers, they’d seen me on the climbing wall so I gained their respect, no more kangaroo features. One of them always wore a blazer with badge depicting a man throwing a discus. None of them knew anything about climbing but they let us use the wall whenever we wanted to.

After disappointing myself at O’levels I went in to the sixth form for a bit more under achievement. How is it possible to fail history O’level after writing so much? By the this time I wasn’t only obsessed with climbing I was also quite good. We had discovered that to climb harder routes you had to train so we spent every lunch break in the stair well climbing up the back of the stairs. Each step had a nasty sharp edge so we were often getting cut especially when dynoing between steps. We had also heard of someone called Alan Manson who could lock his arms. We weren’t sure what that meant but we’d hang off door mantles with one arm

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bent for as long as we could, by the time I got to university I could do it better than him.

There was also the Warwick university wall.

Warwick University is now the home of Bear Rock, quite an old indoor wall but not old enough to have been there when I was at school, we climbed on the wall at the end of the sports hall. It’s a brick wall with some bricks missing and some sticking out. Also has a big overhang and a small overhang which are sloping concrete shelves and a couple of parallel sided jamming cracks with pods in them. We’d go there once a week and climb up and down the routes, here we got to meet other climbers in particular the members of the GEC climbing club.

Mike Sayer, mike the monkey, gritstone extreme leader was one of those climbers with incredible natural ability who never performed at anywhere near his potential on rock. These days no one would care, he’d be an indoor star but years ago it was about rock. He’d done a couple of easy gritstone extremes and this was the gold standard. Gritstone is exactly what it sounds like, stone made of grit. It has lots of cracks, arêtes and rounded holds with blank bits in between. To climb well on grit you have to use your whole body. It’s a long time since I last climbed on grit and I’d be quite useless on it now, too much 1D climbing, gritstone is three dimensional. I never was very good at the 3D stuff but I managed quite a lot in a wild slapping sort of way. Extremely severe was the top of the difficulty scale and gritstone extremes were harder than anything else because they were short and in Yorkshire. It’s the first ascensionist’s job to name the route and suggest its grade, others then repeat the route and either confirm the grade or downgrade it. It’s not good to have a route downgraded because it means that you must have found it more difficult than it really is which means you can’t be much good. On the other hand it’s good if the second ascensionist has a struggle and says “no way is that HVS”. It means they can’t be as good as you since you found it easy and they didn’t. Of course you’re not supposed to do this, it’s called sandbagging which according to the urban dictionary means: “The act of undermining someone else's opinion subtly, yet in a public area, to make him/her appear foolish.” Yep, that pretty much sums it up.

Another regular at the Warwick wall was Ted Lister. He was a chemistry teacher, now very well known as the author of many A’level chemistry books. He was very cool and therefore unapproachable. He’d come in on his own put his shoes on and solo up and down the crack then the big overhang. He’d make everything look easy he didn’t join in with the bouldering but sometimes climbed with a sack on. He was obviously good and had done a lot of hard routes but he never spoke to us. Some years later he appeared with a couple of his students.

They’d arrive in their school uniform get changed into their PE kit and climb with their teacher. They didn’t speak to us either. One was pretty good his name was John Arran, he later became very good indeed.

Bill Turner was a first year student at the university and came from Yorkshire. I hadn’t met many people from Yorkshire and found it difficult to equate speaking like that with going to university. He had done some first ascents at Baildon bank with his hero Ian Edwards, he was miles stronger than any of us and much taller, better keep away.

You couldn’t miss the Binley Surge Kids, every teenager climbing in Coventry at the time seemed to be from the same school. Warwick university climbing wall was a purpose built training facility and completely useless Kenilworth castle was a purpose built castle and brilliant, so that is where I focused my attention. I would often go there alone as it was on my side of the city and I had begun to take my obsession a little bit further than the others. It was good to train alone because it meant I was soon better than they were. I’d do traverses work out new sequences and fall from great height from the sandstone walls. There was one arête but mostly crimpy walls. George Buss was the guy who developed the walls and did all the classics first, I climbed with him once on real rock but we mainly climbed together on the castle. He looked like a Viking.

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There is also a castle in Warwick, we never climbed on it but did abseil down the walls once.

It was a stunt for Blue Peter, a children’s TV programme. Warwick castle pretended that local climbers help them to clean the walls and the Blue Peter presenter at the time was going to help do it. I always wanted a Claud Butler racing bike, even sent off for the catalogue, never got one though, too dangerous. My brother did get a racing bike and to placate the rest of us we got a Moulton standard to share. This was a small wheel shopping bike for old ladies. I didn’t have any other transport so had to ride from Coventry to Warwick on the bike arriving too late to meet the stars but not too late to sneak into the now deserted hospitality room which was still stacked up with booze. I had never tried any of these drink before, except brandy up the nose, so thought I’d try a little bit of each. I needed the full width of the dual carriageway on my ride home. I was always a happy chappy so my mum suspected nothing when I sidled past with a big grin on my face. Never again.

The problem with small wheeled bikes is that they are more difficult to balance, no, the problem is they look silly. I tried my best to look cool on it, even managed to ride no handed but only downhill. One of the good things was the luggage rack which came in very handy on a fossil finding trip. Found loads of belemnites and gastropods so the rack was loaded down.

This made the front rather light but easier for wheelies, oops wobble wobble. I’d read somewhere that it was impossible to ride a bike with your arms crossed. It is, especially top speed down a steep hill on an overladen Moulton standard.

Figure 26 A Moulton standard an a Claud Butler

A’levels soon came round along with university choices. I’d picked the limiting combination of biology, Maths and physics and had ideas above my station so applied for dentistry. My predicted grades were nowhere near good enough so I didn’t get a single offer. Physics had lower requirements and it was my favourite subject so my dad made some phone calls (his contacts reached far and wide) and I had unofficial interviews arranged at Sheffield and Leeds. Today I would probably have gone for Sheffield but in those days Leeds was the only one with a climbing wall I knew this because it is featured in the book my dad bought for me “Artificial climbing walls”. The wall was quite something at the time, built in a corridor that was open 24 hours a day nothing to pay and no regulations gave it a crag like quality. Unlike most walls at the time the holds weren’t sticking out bricks but were actual pieces of rock cemented in place, there were gritstone slopers, huge jugs, crimps, balancy ledges and pockets. I think the pockets were originally filled with pitons but they had been taken out long ago. I didn’t get the grades but I my dad must have impressed them at my interview so was given a place at Leeds with the promise that I would work hard. Before that there was another summer holiday in the pass.

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Figure 27 Terry Hirst on THE wall.

Once I’d got the place I started to train a bit more systematically traversing the castle doing pullups and using the bullworker. Up to that point I had only done a hand full of extremes and only one on grit, Green crack on Curbar. That was a big surprise after seeing the photo of Geoff Birtles in the classic article “true grit” (Mountain 26) I thought it would be a death route, palming that undercut looked desperate. This wouldn’t be the last time I’d realise things aren’t always what they are cracked up to be. I’m not sure who I went to Wales with that year I can’t believe it but maybe I went alone. From my diary I can see that I climbed with various people so either I went on my own or got ditched by whoever I went with. The Binley surge kids had pretty much disbanded, Paul Hughes had put on weight, Toog was into girls, Skelly still climbed but was more into driving fast and drinking beer. By that time I had my driving licence so I might have borrowed my dad’s car. I drove like a maniac even with my dad in the passenger seat, I still didn’t drink so alcohol wasn’t the problem just nuttiness. My dad liked cars with enough power to accelerate out of trouble, enough to accelerate into trouble too. I wasn’t a very good driver but I survived, maybe it was because I had a man of God strapped in beside me?

About this time the magazines started reporting on people of my age and even younger. Dave Humphries and Dave Butler had caused a sensation the previous year by doing everything at Tremadoc, a cliff out near Port Madoc that is very close to the road. Ron Fawcett who was a bit older than me was doing everything everywhere and John Allen, considerably younger, was head and chin above the rest. I’d heard about Gabriel Reagan while hitching home from Wales one year (I was eventually allowed to hitch) he’d apparently climbed Hangover direct which sounded impressive even though at the time I didn’t know what it was. Arnis was making a name for himself with loads of new routes down south and something on Cloggy but I still hadn’t seen him climb.

Getting all your information from the written word can be problematic as it’s sometimes difficult to understand what it means. The description of Tom Proctors route “Our Father” XS included an undercut jam. A jam is when you put your hand in a crack make it bigger by making a fist so you can pull up on it. An undercut is an upside down hold so an undercut jam must be a jam that you use upside down, so it must be a crack that flares the wrong was so you have to have your hands pointing downwards, desperate. Actually not so desperate, it was a slot under a little overhang that you get a jam in from below, an undercut hold with a jam in it. All that wasted effort climbing the school jamming crack with my hands the wrong way.

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I met Tom at Stoney when I failed to lead Memnon. He came along and soloed up to get my runner back, really nice guy no feeling that he was doing it to show how bad we were, just genuinely helpful. Eventually I would get to meet all my heroes but this summer would be the first time I’d get to know climbers outside of the Coventry scene. The place to stay in the pass was Humphries barn and when I arrived there were already several people in situ. John Tout had been there but had been asked to leave because of something he did on the floor. The Kirk brothers (now Kirk/Mitchel) were having an argument so I agreed to do a route with John. It had been raining but I was keen to get on the rock so we headed for the closest route, Yellow Wall. I got a migraine half way up but still continued not wanting to lose face in front of my new mate. Climbing with tunnel vision wasn’t a completely awful experience, in fact it probably made the rather poor route seem somewhat better.

Figure 28 John Kirk

Dave Humphries was there too, turns out he comes from Birmingham which is quite close to Coventry. He led Erosion grooves direct which was a significant tick at the time. He bridged it but Bridging requires a certain flexibility in the hips that I don’t have so I used thug tactics and lay backed. This was one of the routes depicted in the classic black and white book “Climbers in Action in Snowdonia” described as strenuous and very fierce which is a bit of putting but I actually found it quite straightforward so began to realise I was quite good at this climbing game.

At the time there were a few routes that were graded Hard Extremely Severe plexus girdle was one and I did this with Pete Gomersall. He wore some sort of fluffy trousers called Helly Hansen. Pete had climbed with Ron and Pete Livesey so was the real deal, anything he did I did too. I wrapped insulation tape around my wires, to stop slings cutting through, attached a fifi hook to my harness for the odd rest and bought some Helly Hansen trousers. I think the reason for the trousers was that climbers only shopped in climbing shops which didn’t stock items such as track suit bottoms that might have been more appropriate than the far too warm Helly Hansens. There was also a sort of non-sport attitude, most climbers didn’t like sport and didn’t want to look like they did.

I met a lot of people that summer all from the North of England. Keith Sharples was there with a load of his mates. I remember he was off to university too and we said we’d keep in touch but didn’t, Sheffield is only down the road from Leeds but it’s quite a long road. There was also a team from Scotland who called themselves the Squirrels. One of them had a beard and no teeth he told a story about how one winter he got so drunk that he fell asleep outside.

When he woke he couldn’t move because he’d been sick and it had frozen his head to the 41

ground. His mates had to cut him out with ice axes. I never saw any of that group again but I often wondered who they were.

Before leaving for university I had a weekend trip to the lakes with a guy called Geoff. He was a member of the GEC club and wanted me to lead him up some route he’d always wanted to do. His car was a Hillman Hunter GLS, this was one of those cars that looks like a family saloon but goes like stink. Made in Coventry of course as was the ultimate wolf in sheeps clothing the Triumph Dolomite Sprint. My dad never had one of them but he did have a Hillman imp sport with its alloy racing engine overhanging the back wheels, quite nippy but appalling handling. It was recommended to put a sack of cement in the in the front luggage compartment to weigh down the front. The imp was Hillman’s answer to the mini but the mini with its front wheel drive was far better. Grandpa had a mini he drove all the way from the isle of white to Coventry in it, then drove it into a bridge and it disintegrated. He escaped with minor injuries but didn’t live long afterwards. He died of cancer and I inherited his old watch with luminous numbers, it was the most radioactive thing I have ever touched. We drove to the lakes on Friday night through pouring rain Geoff was tired so asked me to drive, this was my first time driving on a motorway and I was petrified. Geoff fell asleep but I had the nightmare. Fit after a summer of climbing Triemain eliminate, the medlar and central pillar were easy.

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Leeds University first year I packed my climbing gear which by this time had grown to a sizeable collection that hung on my bedroom wall next to the stolen pages from Mountain. I also packed my foot high pile of climbing mags. The most recent edition (Mountain 43) had a photo of Alan Manson on High Noon, looked like there was a girl watching him, maybe there will be girls in the climbing club? Mountain 42 is my most thumbed copy “Castaways on gritstone island” by Pete Livesey gave me a lot to dream about, not that I thought I would ever be able to climb routes like wall of horrors, all quiet etc. Up until this time I didn’t really know very much about Yorkshire grit so this article was pretty well timed, goblins eyes roof, Rectum rift. On top of the mountain magazines were two editions of the leeds university climbing club journal I still have the one with the “Bonington cover”. It’s a parody of the cover of the first edition of Bonington’s book “I chose to climb”. On the cover of his book Bonington is climbing a boulder in his big mountain boots, on the journal every one climbs it including a girl (ooh er) and someone with a broken leg. The other edition, with a less memorable cover, went walkies long ago, a shame because this was my favourite, it had a great article by Al Manson about the gritstone scene, photos of Pete Kitson on the Virgin boulder and what looked like a party with a barrel of beer at almscliff. Never did meet Pete Kitson.

Figure 29 Al Manson on high noon.

My best friend Robert Moseley had acquired a Ford Anglia and a place at Bradford Uni so we arranged to travel up together. Strange that my best friend doesn’t get a mention until now but he wasn’t so much into climbing. He must’ve climbed a bit I suppose or we wouldn’t have had much to talk about. We drove cross country, since the car was a bit dodgy, arriving at Leeds in the afternoon, he dropped me off and continued to Bradford. I never saw him again.

Never saw Toog or Paul Hughes again either, Binley Park doesn’t have a strong alumni network.

I had already been to the wall on my interview (before and after) so knew the campus layout and chose my accommodation so I would be as close as possible, there was in fact one hall that was a bit closer but it was men only and I’d come to university not a monastery, I wanted to meet girls. My hall was Charles Morris or Charley Mo to the ex-public school students it 43

was full of. My room the first on the left on the bottom floor of the block on the left, the closest room in the closest hall. The buildings were based on a Swedish prison design and had a very strange toilet/shower arrangement. Two rooms shared a shower/toilet so I shared with my neighbour Chris Varley. Each room had a door onto this central arrangement so if you wanted to use it you’d have to lock your neighbour out. There was no separate shower cubicle so when you had a shower the water went all over the toilet, the idea was to dry the seat afterwards but Chris Varley never did. I had been brought up with a bath not a shower so this was a bit new for me, Chris Varley seemed right at home spending hours in the shower with his impressive collections of shampoos and skin care products. I had my own shampoo for a while then just used his. I didn’t like the arrangement very much and felt rather uncomfortable knowing that someone could hear me going to the toilet. Laying a piece of toilet paper in the bowl dampens the splash, maybe I should’ve informed Chris Varley of this technique.

Other floor mates included medical student Kieth Wildgoose who had a chiselled face and glasses that fit the angle I can’t remember where he was from but I think he was from the North like Chris Varley who was from Chorley. Nigel was from Devon and had been to a posh school, then there was a mature student from Manchester who hadn’t. The mature student got a girlfriend on the first day but his neighbour, who studied French, had a different girlfriend every day. There was also a guy called Tim who was from Liverpool and had a moustache and curly hair, don’t they all? He had a girlfriend who seemed to live in his room.

She was from Newcastle, I had never heard anyone speak like that before. I’ve forgotten his name but there was also a student who studied food science, he was a bit plump so seemed to enjoy his studies. At the end of the corridor there was a dayroom where the others sat. I spent most of my time sat at my desk getting distracted by passing females, they didn’t try to distract me, which would be difficult since they didn’t even notice I was there.

Charles Morris was connected to the physics department by the longest corridor in the world, the corridor had a wonderful springy rubber floor that made you feel like you were flying when late for a lecture. At regular intervals on the journey to the end were coffee bars where I would sometimes treat myself to a cup of tea and a penguin. To get to the wall you had to go outside but bed to wall was manageable in under a minute. I probably arrived on a Tuesday and before unpacking popped over to see if anyone was at the wall, no one there but a good opportunity to practice some problems. The most obvious feature was the arête, three notches and some drilled holes. It was a long time ago and I might be wrong but I think you got a drilled hole with the left hand, stepped up on a small nick with the left foot quickly planting the right foot on the first proper notch. The drill holes had been opened up to make them rounded and more comfortable, the middle finger rested on the hole and the two either side went in the depression. The second notch was used to reach a sidepull where the cement in between two bricks had formed a nice angle. Leaning off this you could straighten up quickly for the finishing jug which was a big hook shaped piece of rock. The wall was 12 feet high and the floor lino covered concrete. If you were really unlucky you could possibly get impaled on a great big hook of metal that held the window open. Luckily we were all lucky.

The wall wasn’t so popular so most of the first week I spent on my own, if anyone else arrived I’d watch the closely then practice later on my own.

Fresher’s week wasn’t a particularly happy affair I’d arrived on my own and at the end of the week was still on my own. Everyone else had a bunch of friends and seemed to be having a great time. There were a lot of events and dances but they just served to increase the feeling of isolation. Apart from the Warwick castle episode I still hadn’t had much experience with alcohol, everyone else was drinking so why not see what it’s like. Beer tasted like ear wax so I plumped for cider, I’d seen Pete Gomersall drinking cider so maybe it was a climber’s drink.

5 pints of the stuff later and I’m lying in bed with the room spinning out of control, I’d already heard Chris Varley throwing up into the toilet now it was my turn. Unfortunately he’d

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locked me out so the paper bin got put into use for the first time. The good thing about this drinking method, “one off binging”, is that after such a gut wrenching experience you can’t face alcohol for a long time, I saved a lot of money that way.

I was to learn that quarks have charm, truth and strangeness but not loneliness. If they did it would be to describe a property that went away when two particles came together. Two lonely people are not lonely anymore. I met the other loner in the physics department. I may be wrong about him being lonely but Robert Beardsworth didn’t seem to have many friends, maybe strangeness or lack of charm was the problem. Robert was very clever as he was quick to point out, he got A’s in many different sorts of Maths A’levels and had an IQ of way over 150. I was brought up to be tolerant of all sorts of people so his brashness didn’t put me off and we became friends. He was also physically very strong so naturally I introduced him to the climbing wall in return he introduced me to physics, or to be more honest he did my homework.

Chris Varley was an only child and had a car, he also had a pair of climbing boots and an interest in climbing, If I had kangaroo features he had wombat features. I persuaded him to visit almscliff the most well-known gritstone crag in Yorkshire and home to such desperates as “wall of horrors” and “Western Front”. Chris was not in that league so in deference to his limited ability we did some easy routes. I did have a look around the corner where all the difficult routes were located. Pretty steep.

Friday night was climbing wall night and I was ready to meet my heroes. My heroes were basically anyone who had ever appeared in a climbing magazine. I had spent days practicing the arête and nonchalantly climbed it every time someone new walked around the corner, I was out to impress. Bernard Newman was one of the first to arrive, I recognised his large nose and close together eyes from the photo in the journal. I hadn’t realised his arms were so big though. Bernard liked to give everyone a nickname and I became Chris the Flash, I thought it was because I always climbed routes as quick as a flash but it was actually because he thought I was a flash in the pan, as Bernard said “’I’ve seen ‘um come I’ve seen ‘um go”. Bernard had left the university several years previously but still lived nearby and every day came to drink coffee in the MJ lounge. He was the godfather of the climbing scene, thanks to huge arms and non-existent legs he was pretty good on the wall. I think he was quite proud of his thin ankles so not pleased when I got mine out, I laugh at your not so thin ankles.

Chris “the nose” Addy was still there, I recognised the arms that dangled from hunched shoulders. He was the kid who carved I did a HVS today in Willies barn all those years ago.

Maybe I shouldn’t have reminded him of this in front of Bernard. Chris wasn’t a student anymore either. Alex McIntyre called in on the way to the pub he wasn’t much into the climbing wall and often seemed a bit unfriendly. The girl in the high noon photo was there but she didn’t climb either, it was about the only time I saw her not that I had any romantic desires regarding her just that I remember her being there and she fitted into my “magazine heroes” category, just. She was the only girl on the climbing scene apart from Dirty Alex’s girlfriend Gwyneth and Jan and Cherry Brownsort who occasionally visited from Bradford.

The person I really wanted to meet was Al Manson, he strolled in at about 7 o’clock.

He was wearing a denim jacket with a sheep skin lining, very straight hair, stubble, long eye lashes slightly sunken eyes and normal looking fingers, at over 30 he was the oldest person there. He spoke slowly always making fun of something or someone, often me. He took ages to get going stretching and warming up. He was a PE teacher and, like my PE teacher, had a discus man blazer which meant he knew what he was doing training wise, unfortunately he never passed this information on to anyone else. He climbed slowly and precisely placing fingers carefully on brick edges then locking them off with his thumb. Rocking over he’d limit his movement to 2 dimensions by flattening his body against the wall pressing in with his trailing foot. Above and beyond the kinesthetic barrier. He

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spotted me and we had a chat, I told him I’d been to Almscliff and had done some severes, he said he’d take me back.

Figure 30 Rare sight of Al Manson tying on to a rope.

There were two other characters at the wall who, during my 3 years at Leeds, would rescue me from my naivety, Steve’s Bancroft and Webster. I had seen Steve Bancroft’s name in the mags but not his picture. He was a couple of years older than me but looked my age, I looked even younger with my fresh face. He had long quite greasy hair and scruffy clothes, seemed somewhat unhealthy. Pale skin and thin arms, he didn’t look like a good climber at all, but he certainly was.

Figure 31 Steve Bancroft.

Steve Webster was a lot more muscular, big boned my mum would say. Well known but not famous he lived at home and had a job but I have no idea what it was. He used to be a skinhead and was involved in all the nastiness that that entails. Then he was introduced to climbing by a teacher and it changed his life, until he got drunk that is, then he would revert to past practices and you’d better watch out. I did see this a couple of times but the violence was always for a reason and never directed towards me. He was actually a really nice guy, I always felt safe when he was around.

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Figure 32 Steve Webster and Martin Boysen.

Arrangements were made for the following weeks return trip to Almscliff. Mike Hammil picked me up and we drove to Alans place. Mike was a post grad students with arms like Popeye. He was good but should have been better. No one ever saw him lift weights so we concluded that he must take steroids, the real reason that we never saw him lift weights is because we never went to the weights room. Al lived in a flat with his wife I think. I never met his wife but he must’ve had one. Mike wanted to do “All Quiet” the traverse of wall of horrors so he placed the runners. Steve Bancroft carefully explained how to do all the moves and I flashed wall of horrors on the preplaced gear which was apparently acceptable since you can climb down after placing it. It’s not really ok to have someone else put in the gear for you as placing them whilst hanging off one arm is quite difficult especially since you often have to hang on way to hard because you know you’ll die if you let go. It’s amazing how your strength returns when the rope is clipped in.

Mike was really pleased to repeat All Quiet but not so pleased when I did it too. He later regained the lead with first ascent of the counter line Ems telegram. It’s not a major new line but he was keen to use the name which had some historical significance related to the western front. This was supposed to give the message to Livesey that his route was harder but I don’t know how. He was very cross when one magazine reported it as Elms Telegram, sort of lost the point.

The day at Almscliff made it into the mags. Mountain life and Rocksport 23.

Chris Hamper, a first year student at Leeds, is currently following the trail blazed by John Syrett. After a couple of weeks’ intense training on the university wall, he completed a remarkable series of ascents at Almscliff, all on his first attempt (Chris the Flash). On his first visit he climbed nothing harder than severe which he considered quite hard (yes quite hard for severe). On his subsequent outing to the crag he climbed All Quiet, Wall of Horrors and Western front (on preplaced gear). The secret of his success, apart from techniques learnt on the wall, could be his almost ape-like arms; they really are just like the faked picture of Brown in his book (almost)!

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Figure 33 Joe Brown's arms but not his head.

My dad bought several copies of the mag, he always bought magazines I was mentioned in. Liked reading about me climbing but not watching, I don’t think he ever saw me climb.

I met John Syrett only once. He called into the wall one evening tried pulling on some holds and left.

It was after his accident, maybe he was trying out his damaged hand? He used to live in some ones cupboard and would walk around without a jumper even in the middle of winter.

I’d not really done much bouldering outside but on my next visit to Almscliff I did pebble wall and syretts roof taking a nasty fall off the latter almost breaking both wrists. I remember first looking at pebble wall wondering how on earth it was possible to pull up on a pebble, Steve showed me how to place my weight so that I didn’t have to, cunning. Considering that I could’ve gone climbing every weekend I did very little climbing outside during my first term however I was invited on a trip to Southern Sandstone.

The team was basically all the best climbers in the world and me, not quite but it felt like it. I have no record of the trip in my diary and hope it’s not one of those, “never really happened memories”. I shouldn’t have gone really as I had homework to do but was saved by Robert Beardsworth on Monday morning. I have a vague feeling that I got invited because Ron couldn’t go at least Chris Gibb was there without him. Jerry Peel was definitely there so was Hank Pasquil, Mark Stokes, John Alllen, Tom Proctor, Al Manson, a guy called Gilly and me. A couple of months before there’d been a big article on southern sandstone in Mountain with photo of routes like the Thing and Hate, I don’t think we’d been invited or anything this was more of a raid. We first visited Bowles and a rope were set up on Hate, not everyone managed it but I did, it was actually quite easy. It always feels that way when you expect something to be absolutely impossible but do it. Hank was the most impressive, bending his way instead of pulling. He wore green tracksuit bottoms and looked just like jiminy cricket. I think he’d forgotten his chalk bag since he kept chalk in his pockets, it soon got all over the place. There was a lot of messing about. Gilly was apparently a martial arts expert and tried to prove it by snapping tree trunks with his kick, I think they were rotten. In the evening we went to a pub but Tom refused to go in because of some bikers. Mark, John and I kept him company in the minibus. The trip was reported in Mountain but my name was never mentioned, seemed a bit unfair since I did more routes than anyone else, at least that’s how it seemed, maybe I wasn’t there after all.

Just before returning home for Christmas I went back to almscliff with Steve where we did Rectum Rift. Good job the mags didn’t report that ascent or my dad would have wondered what I was up to.

It was significant in that it was a very new route, I was getting closer to the cutting edge. It was also interesting to watch Steve arrange the opposing nuts for protection he’d learnt his art from the master Tom Proctor who once made a complete arch out of interlocking hexes.

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I may have started drinking at Leeds but I didn’t start swearing which caused me some pain when Banks and Webbo tried to make me. First they chased me round then when they caught me they got me in a strangle hold and tried to get me to say a forbidden word, I survived the torture which only strengthened my reserve. I can’t say that I never swear now but it’s very rare and only when in more pain that those two inflicted. Instead of shouting the F word I’d say flippin ‘eck, blast or at worst bum. Al would often make fun of me and I would play up to it by feeding him stuff to make fun of. On one occasion he was trying a problem with a rather painful hold and he let out an “Eek” the hold became known as the eek hold and was compulsory to say eek when using it. We got sentimental about many of the holds and gave the names. The famous hold was pictured in the previously mentioned book “artificial climbing walls”, the cigarette stubber looked just like one and the hook was a hook. There were countless variations on every problem, the arête with left hand, the arête with right hand, the pure arête, the arête without the arête, the arête in shoes, the blind fold arête, the silent arête etc. There was also a “training circuit” where you couldn’t use footholds. Brick edges were strictly forbidden but try telling Ron Fawcet that. There were weird problems like traversing underneath the sticking out stones only a few cm above the ground. Most of the classics were near the arête, the wall left of the squash court entrance had almost no problems, we tried to create some new problems by chipping pockets but we made them too small.

Figure 34 The famous hold.

I would go to the wall 3 times a day every day, I wouldn’t always climb, sometimes I’d just sit on the chair but that was only when Al wasn’t there, if he was present then he got the chair, no questions asked. If there was ever any visitors I’d run and get my EBs and nonchalantly climb around. Alan was the king of nonchalant climbing which has the right effect in front of other climbers but makes non climbers think it must be easy. Ron and Pete used to visit occasionally and we’d try to be friendly show them some problems involve them in the games but they weren’t interested preferring to traverse back and forth, no fun at all. We of course thought it was because they were rubbish which gave us a psychological advantage when trying to repeat their routes. Stevie Haston was around for a while, we thought he was a ballet dancer because he wore tights, he was good but never joined the club. The wall club consisted of Webbo, Banks and me. It was formed so that we could annoy Al by not letting him join it was silly but I think it worked a bit. To make things worse we let in Tim the army game, a hopeless climber who happened to have car so could drive us around on club meets.

We called him “the army game” because he was on some sort of military scholarship and sometimes had to do training with them, he had a sort of moustache and looked the part.

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I would talk to my Charles Morris floor mates but I’d never go out in the evening with them, all my social time was spent at the wall or occasionally with my climbing friends at the pub. I didn’t know anyone on any other floor but would bump into them at one of the 3 meals a day supplied by the hall. I’ve never liked wasting food especially when I’ve paid for it so always ate all my allocation including pudding, still a bit kangaroo’d. I may not have been wanting to talk to the others but there was a whole group who didn’t want to talk to me or anyone else who didn’t have super rich families.

Chairman of British Airways, Ratners jewelers. It’s strange how you can live in the same space but a different place. Everyone seemed to be having parties so we decided to have one. We all chipped in some cash and bought some booze and crisps. The idea was that the girl friends of the mature student and French student would invite their friends. Unfortunately no one told them this, in fact they didn’t even show up themselves. We ended up drinking everything ourselves. When everything had run out we headed for another party where all the girls were. I distinctly remember talking to one of them.

There were many climbers that came and went but weren’t really part of our group, Graham Desroy was one. I’d met him before at Avon and he suddenly appeared in Leeds. Alan said he was like a streak of bacon and the name stuck. There are probably a lot of people that claim they gave streaky his nickname but this is my version of the truth. Streaky was friends with Arnis who, after a year at Manchester moved back south to Bristol. We all said it was because he couldn’t hack it on grit but I doubt that this is the real reason. I should ask my wife as she was his girlfriend at the time. On one occasion she travelled to Leeds with him to go to a Party at streakies place. The wall club plus Al were invited but Al had to stay in so the rest of us went. There was a big controversy at the time about using chalk which became a sort of North – South thing. In the North we used Chalk in the south some people didn’t. The clean hand gang was led by Pat Littlejohn and Arnis with Ken Wilson, the editor of Mountain magazine, giving media support. I think it all blew up at the party and beer was thrown at Arnis. Hilary thinks it was me but I don’t remember, I do remember he had a nice looking girlfriend though which made him a bit different from the rest of us.

Most of the older generation of climbers lived in a house on the other side of Hyde Park and this is where they kept the club logbook used for recording significant ascents and new routes. Banks thought I should record some of my activity so took me along. Bernard lived downstairs and was looking rather worried, he’d eaten a whole bottle of vitamin C tablets and was convinced he’d OD’d, no Google in those days. He showed me his impossible one arm pull up edge ¼” edge. Bernard had another party trick pull up edge on the stairs leading up to the wall, it was painted in gloss paint and very difficult to hold, before making an attempt you had to stand outside to make your hands cold.

Upstairs in the house was a living room where the book could be found. I spent ages flicking through the pages by which time the room had filled up. People were sitting on the floor in a circle smoking cigarettes. I sat down to join them and someone offered me one already lit. “Oh, no thankyou I don’t smoke”. Soon it was bedtime so I made my way home across the park where I came across several groups of witches huddled together in different locations. When I told Al about the witches he asked me how I knew they were witches my answer that there was no other explanation proved too much for him and he collapsed on the floor literally crying with laughter. It was many years later that I realized what they were smoking in that room and that there probably weren’t actually witches in Hyde Park.

I never took hallucinatory drugs at university but I had plenty of hallucinations staring at the posters on my wall. Apart from the climbing pictures I had two large posters one was of the group Genesis.

Quite a boring poster of the band members with Pete Gabriel in the middle. He had shaved a line through the middle of his hair, Steve said this was a reverse Mohican. The other poster was Salvador Dali’s Metamorphosis of Narcissus. It’s the one where a hand holding an egg turns into a person with their head on their knee. I didn’t have anything to play music so we’d get Chris Varley to put on some Yes and we’d look for hidden meanings in the painting. There’s lots of secret stuff, the ants, the 50

African stick men, Dali himself, the man looking at his own bottom (Narcissus himself possibly) and to bring the focus back to climbing some interesting looking cliffs. To keep Steve amused I’d draw cartoons of climbers in my diary, I can’t draw but I’d pretend I could, hours of senseless fun and laughter. When not in my room we’d go to the MJ lounge for a coffee. We could have had coffee in the dayroom but some of my floor mates didn’t like Steve being there even though I explained he was famous. Steve did get on well with Keith Wildgoose who was an excellent guitarist and could play the Harmonic rich guitar solo Horizons from the Genesis album Foxtrot. “Wild goose plays foxtrot” sounds like a cryptic crossword clue. Steve once said he would swap his climbing talent for Keith’s guitar playing talent any day. I could never understand why. Steve was a really famous climber, one of the best, Kieth Wildgoose was a medical student who played the guitar. It wouldn’t be a fair swap. If you’re going to swap then swap with Steve Hacket not Keith Wildgoose. The reason that everyone went to the MJ because the juke box played freebird by Lynyrd Skynyrd so you got a lot of music for your sixpence. Bernard was always there with his Guardian crossword, some of the other regulars were even stranger. The only time I got asked if I would like to go to bed with someone was in the MJ. A woman suggesting such a thing would have freaked me out but to make it worse this was a man. I’d heard of this sort of thing and there were rumors about David Bowie but I wasn’t sure I believed in such behavior. Witches yes, homosexuality no. I was quite shocked, felt like I had been abused in some way, wasn’t it illegal? It’s difficult to be tolerant when you are ignorant.

Figure 35 The Dali poster.

After the Christmas holiday things really took off and I made a list of gritstone extremes in Yorkshire, I certainly didn’t knock it dead but the focus shifted to the peak. That’s where Banks’s best friend John Allen lived. Steve had some difficult home situation which meant he couldn’t live there. He once turned up at John’s house having walked all the way from Manchester to Sheffield. John’s parents seemed to be very tolerant but there are limits so he moved to live in John Syrett’s cupboard which must have been small since he lived in a cupboard himself. I’m sure this isn’t accurate but it’s what I thought was going on. I would often listen to conversations and get the wrong end of the stick creating my own version of events, it’s much worse now I live in a Norway. I once listened with amazement to a whole radio programme about a Muslim gay wedding. As I recounted this to my colleagues the next day I realized maybe I’d misunderstood. A Norwegian who’d listened to the same programme explained it was about a gay man attending a Muslim wedding as a guest.

John Allen must have been about 16 at the time but was somehow more mature than the rest of us. I first met him on the train to Almscliff. Steve was trying to raise some cash by eating the contents of an ash tray and John was encouraging him. I rarely saw John climb, at 16 he’d already done 51

everything so there was nothing left to do. He’d turn up with the Stokes family and cool Pete, try to make Nicky stokes do something and do some bouldering. He once spent the whole day at Gardoms edge, a crag near Sheffield, trying to prise small flakes of rock off the wall with his fingers. “Finger training youth”. The Sheffield boys all had a special way of talking, a sort of Northern drawl, the called everyone youth even if they were old. Sometimes they’d all start saying “hubris is my very good friend” in a mock posh accent imitating Ed ward Drummond an older and very famous climber who may have been the initiator of the Helly Hansen trousers. None of the Sheffield stars climbed in Helly Hansen’s they wore normal clothes except Steve who always climbed in cut off trousers. I followed suit cutting up an old pair of cords.

Figure 36 Nicky, Cool Pete, Steve, Me, Martin, Nick, Chris Addy, Terry, Uncle Choe, Bob.

On visits to the peak we’d stay in various dosses either at stoney or a barn up near burbage. Steve would sometimes stay with John whose parents still gave him permission at the weekends. The toilets outside The Moon were a favourite place with climbers but space was limited so there was the occasional confrontation. On one occasion a well-known character from Manchester tried to make space by peeing in someone’s ear. I never quite worked out why you’d pee in someone’s ear when you were sleeping next to the urinal. Maybe he was sleepwalking. I once walked into my parents’ bedroom, opened a draw a pee’d in it. My son did the same thing maybe it’s in the genes? Perhaps this guy’s dad aslo pee’d in ears. Most of the other dossers came from Manchester, Sheffield climbers went home after a day’s climbing. Gabriel Reagan was the star but Jim the Moran was close behind, there was also Jim the gob who had hands made of putty that could jam in anything. Con Carey was scary, he looked like an SS officer. I have no idea what any of them did for work, or anything about them just that they we all shared the same addiction. Strange how you can know people without knowing them at all, I wonder what they knew about me. I’m often surprised when accepting old climbing friends on Facebook to see what they do now. I didn’t even know that Ian Horrocks went to university and now he’s a professor at Oxford.

Peak grit belonged to John and Steve, they had a secret book with all the possible new lines recorded in it. The only person daring to steal their routes was Ed Drummond. Ed would wander along the edges soloing routes in his one piece Helly Hansen, French Beret and massive chalk bag. I was always interested in chalk bags and even drew pictures of them in my diary. Al had a very special one he’d got in Yosemite. It had a lightning flash on it like the one on midnight lightning. The sign of the stone masters he’d proudly tell us. I would nod wisely as if I knew what he was on about. On the side of the

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bag was a special place for a tooth brush which we thought odd. Pete Livesey had a bright orange plastic chalk bag with a rip in it, when he put it in his rucksack he’d close it with a rubber band. We didn’t think this was very professional.

Because Steve was the boss of the peak he’d naturally boss me around when we went there. He knew what I was good at so chose routes that suited me but there were rules. Runners were limited to the same ones that he had used and some routes had to be soloed. I’d soloed severes and VS’s before but soloing gritstone extremes was outrageous. Not so outrageous if you choose the right ones, Desperation, Strapiombante, Long John’s slab, Stiff Cheese and Banana Finger. Steve’s rule was that if a route had ever been graded extreme then it counted. I was pretty pleased with my 12 extremes in a weekend all classics and including an early repeat of Steve’s route Heartless Hare.

We usually climbed on grit but would occasional do a route on Stoney, Steve pointed me at Wee Doris. Only two runners were allowed a clog 6 hexagonal nut under the roof and a moac wedge for the top. Wee Doris wasn’t done so often so there were onlookers, the Kirks were there and for some reason so was my brother (this is starting to sound like a dream). I raced up the bottom placed the moac and set off for the top. I should’ve taken note of Livesey’s training methods because I soon ran out of steam and reaching for a bore hole my hands suddenly opened. It had never happened before, in fact up to this point I had never taken a leader fall, the fear of doing so resulting in many flashed ascents but it is better to overcome fears than feed off them. My main fear was that on the way down I would scrape myself on the passing rock. With this in mind I kicked off the wall with both feet, this projected me outwards in a massive arc. I fell about 30 feet stopped by Steve using a waist belay.

That was another of Steve’s rules, you had to hold the rope around the waist. There weren’t all the sophisticated devices of today but we did have other safer ways to hold the rope. Steve’s theory was that it was easier to deal with two ropes without a belay device, he was probably right. Tim is still grateful that Steve saved his brother’s life. Climbers don’t really think so much about it.

Another limestone experience was out trip to Malham undoubtedly driven their by Tim the army game (the student with a car) we first walked to the top to solo a small roof crack called Samson (not Tim the army game of course, he just watched). A massive expanse of rock and we do a boulder problem. We did have a couple of other routes in mind so abseiled down to get into the cove proper.

Steve also had rules about abseil anchors and decided that one small thread was sufficient. It was sufficient but I’m not sure it was worth the fear filled five minutes hanging on a single threaded loop of tape.

The other route was the Seventh Grade, a recent route put up and provocatively named by Pete Gomersall, now an unknowing rival. The route had several aid points which meant that Pete had pulled on runners which is sort of cheating but Ok provided you admit it. We were there to clean it up by climbing past the runners Pete had used for assistance. If we managed this it would mean we were better than Pete. Steve eliminated one of two on the first pitch but it started to get dark so we climbed up a different route, Scorpio to get to the top. The next day we did the awful abseil again, Steve’s rules, but didn’t look at the holds on the route, Steve’s rules again. Steve gave me the first go knowing that I wouldn’t be able to do it but whilst failing I would place some nuts that would help him for his attempt. I didn’t fail. Steve failed to hide the disappointment in his congratulations. I thought it was quite significant but nobody else did. E5 6b in ’75 wasn’t bad at all. It turned out later the Gummy had been back to free it before me. Pants!

In March 1979 the first issue of Crags came out. Mountain was a bit serious this wasn’t, produced by the editorial team of Birtles and Evans it was meant to stir things up. The pictures of bare breasted women on page 3 were supposed to be a joke but the comment about Steve soloing Wee Doris in front of an unknown crowd was not taken as one. Steve sulked about that for a long time as can be

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seen from the photo in a later edition. Steve had further opportunity to sulk when it was reported that he had now got a job so could at last pay for his round. I thought this was a bit unfair, Steve always paid for his round. Crags magazine took over from the posters as the focal points of time wasting in my room. The magazine made Steve famous but not entirely in the right way. Steve was always clear about one thing, never write to the magazines to publicise your own ascents, wait for someone else to notice. I think this might be a case of a one rule for him a different one for me.

Steve and John were the kings of grit but Livesey was the king of everything else, he climbed with Jill Lawrence who we thought was made of Pete’s old head and Ron’s old body. He had done some pretty audacious new routes in the Lakes that were so cloaked in mystery that no one would go near them, except the Berzins brothers that is (pronounced as if doing a Sean Connery impression). In common with Arnis, Martin and Bob’s parents were Latvian but unlike Arnis they were huge, the brothers that is not the parents who were actually quite small. Bob was particularly massive and also the youngest. They were from Leeds but Martin had moved to Manchester to study maths. Martin must’ve missed his mum’s cooking because he was home quite often. When home he would visit the wall and one day asked if he could be in the wall club, we told him he’d have to move back to Leeds so he did. We were lying of course the wall club was full, we let him climb with us though.

Figure 37 Martin Berzins

Steve was busy with his guidebook so he wasn’t around much so I teamed up with the Berzins who generously let me tag along. Our first trip was to High Tor, it was the start of the 70’s limestone revival. We did Robert Brown and Lyme Cryme two routes with some history. Robert Brown was a pupil at King Henry the eight school in Coventry, he was a good climber a year older than me, I’d never heard of him until he died. It seems that all good climbers in Coventry weren’t from Binley Park. The accident happened at Gogarth, Arnis was leading but fell off due to loose rock and dragged Robert into the sea. Robert died Arnis survived, tragic. The route is his memorial, pity it’s not better.

Lyme Cryme is spelt that way to pay homage to the Genesis LP Nursery Crymes so it was obviously Steve who had done the first ascent. He did it whilst attending the teacher training college in Matlock, he was going to be a Math’s teacher but things didn’t work out. The Cryme in question was the placing of a bolt. Like chalk this wasn’t accepted yet but things would change.

My second trip with the Berzins was to Wales. My dad’s contacts in the church/car industry managed to get us two cars. Now a forgotten brand, Simca was originally French but taken over by British Leyland. They made a sort of hatch back, we had a blue one and a white one, the white one was the sports version. I must’ve borrowed one for a week since there’s no way we walked from Ogwen to

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Tremadoc. First route of the holiday was an early ascent of the recently freed Great Wall on cloggy.

John Allen did the first free ascent and it was a big tick. Long before I really understood the significance my dad had bought me a copy of The Black Cliff which is a history of climbing at clogwyn dur arddu. The poor print quality of the black and white photos only added to the foreboding atmosphere of the place. The photos of Great Wall were particularly impressive, Ed Drummond, white helmet and matching woolly jumper, crab like on a sooty wall, coal smoke from the valleys punctuating the dark satanic hill. I’d been looking at these photos for years and was amazed that we were actually going to try this outrageous route. Pete Crew, arrow climber couldn’t do it free how could I? But I did, I led the top pitch by the skin of my teeth, Martin Boysen velvet feet, it was a good start to the trip, wall without end. Beaten to a third ascent by Ian Edwards and Bill Turner, it was a small world but we had other projects, two of them at Ogwen.

My imagined relationship with Great Wall was a long one but the one with suicide wall was longer.

First day climbing, the cover of my first magazine, reading descriptions of the routes in books by Grey, Brown and Whillans. Cleaning lines for first ascents was too much hassle so the easy way to get famous was first free ascents which, if you were lucky, might even include some free pegs for protection.

Sometime later I wrote this for Extreme Rock, friends in high places, Bernard Newman was the editor.

Hard training on the Leeds wall and then a week in Wales with the Berzins brothers, Martin and Bob. After completing some good routes we thought we were ready for fame and glory, and the poor protection, of suicide wall. As we approached the crag along the stony Idwal path I had ample time to contemplate what lay ahead. I didn’t mind taking long falls onto good runners, but even lowering off poor ones made my teeth curl. I longed for the dark clouds above to burst and put an end to my worries.

Arriving at the crag behind the others I found that plans had already been made. The cold conditions called for a warm up so Bob led suicide groove, which we seconded rapidly. Next on the sports plan was Suspended Sentence, which I was suckered into leading. This gave us the feel for the imaginary protection that could be fingered into bubbles and behind wafers on the rock. I thought the runners would have held but Martin’s insane laughter as he blew them out convinced me otherwise.

Bob soon decided he was ill, leaving Martin and me sentenced to Capital Punishment. Nigel shepherd wrote that “Capital Punishment demands either a cool head or no brains at all” Martin qualified on one count, (obviously cool head Professor Berzins) and went through his ritual of tightening EBs and carefully chalking up before he was ready to start.

The only description we had was memorized from the guide at Brown’s so the start was a bit tentative. Once started. However, Martin slid up the triangular slab only to be suddenly woken up on landing at its apex by the shock that he was runnerless. (This had been the site of Boysen’s aid pegs, but where he put them I can’t imagine.)By this time Martin looked worried. Fidgeting with some runners he eventually managed to balance a Moac between two flakes and, being careful not to knock it out, tip toed past. His movements accelerated and his breathing stopped as he skinned the groove and greased up the wall, not daring to think of the fall (Miss Goults Creative English classes have a lot to answer for). Suddenly the tension snapped as he swung off a hidden jug. More important than the hold was the thread runner it provided giving him confidence to gorilla the final wall to the ledge.

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Anyone who has climbed on the wall will have a lasting memory of the pathetic belays to be found on the grass moustaches. If you really want to live dangerously, just climb on the wall without a hammer and pegs. Luckily Bob had carried the necessary gear, which was quickly flown up to Martin. (Bob had his uses) After a bit of hammering he got a belay and I followed the pitch. I thought it was pretty hard but my competitive nature prevented me from letting on. The next pitch was mine, and my confidence was instantly boosted when I saw a wire in place a few feet up. When I got to it I nearly fell off with shock. Only one strand was intact, and that was well rusted (It has now snapped completely). I calmed myself down with a dose of chalk, clipped into the runner with a light krab so as not to snap it, and climbed on.

I kept telling myself that it can’t be that bad; it was free anyway. There must be runners somewhere.

Thirty feet above the belay with no runners the climbing got wicked. I was standing on a rounded green arête with two side pills and a foothold by my chest. The numbers were obvious but dare I do it. If I had a runner I could walk it, so the search for a runner was on, scraping lichen from every little depression and would-be crack. At last I “thought” one onto the rock, and concentrating hard to stop it slipping from my imagination, I made the move. After that the rest was easy and I climbed to the top, rolling into the wet grass.

By this time, Bob had recovered and emerged from his cave, eager to get in on the act. He seconded the first pitch, joining Martin on the ledge, giving me time to sleep, dreaming of chalk fairies and witches in the park (don’t ask).

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Leeds university second (and third) year By the end of the first year I had many friends so my Sunday night phone calls home were not so trembly. I also owned a car, it was a Renault 6 with a gear shift like an umbrella handle sticking out of the dashboard. My Granny had recently died so my parents had a bit of cash which was put together with all the grant money I had saved thanks to my once a term drinking habit and general unwillingness to buy anything. So good bye Tim the army game. Dennis Gleason was around for a while and was so strong we let him join the wall club. An early trip to the lakes saw me doing the longest route I would ever do, Lord of the Rings on Scafell east buttress which according to my diary was “only 1200 feet long, wish it was longer, only two or three bits of technical climbing, didn’t use tension, yawn.” Put me off long multi pitch routes for life. I also had bit of a foray into soloing with an ascent of Ghormenghast, future ambitions to solo hard rock routes never got any further.

There weren’t only rock climbers hanging around in Leeds there were also a fair number of mountaineers. Dirty Alex was the star, I saw him rock climbing only once and was surprised that he wasn’t better. There was also Bushman, Uncle Choe and Tim the knife I’ve no idea why we called Choe Uncle in fact I don’t know why we called him Choe either. I do know how Tim became “the knife” though, he used to wake up his roommate with a blade at their throat, he was a medical student of course. Because of the mountaineering connection we got to hear about the Alpine Climbing Club annual party. It was in Buxton and I drove there in the new car with Webbo and Banks.

Many stories have been told about the ACG do’s but none of them are about me, most start with a bunch of law abiding climbers being attacked by a large number of local hardmen and end with Rab. I hadn’t met Rab Carrington at the time but had read his name in the climbing mags. Sure enough there was a scuffle someone said get Rab, Rab came and suddenly there was someone lying at my feet. I have never had a fight in my life, even in dreams my punches dissolve before they make contact. Chalkey White once punched me for a bet but I wouldn’t call it a fight. To my continued shame I punched the local yob as he lay on the floor. I think it was the heat of the moment. He didn’t notice the punch but I did. Of course this didn’t happen every year, this was the year that everyone writes about.

Alex may not have been a particularly good rock climber but there was something about him that made him stand out, an intensity in the way he did things. He had some wild ideas, sometimes they worked sometimes they didn’t. The one about him getting me to the base of the Bonatti pillar so I could lead the difficult bits never came off, thank goodness. I think I might have been a wee bit out of my depth. Alex was to die in the mountains some years later. He was the first climber to die that I had known personally.

While all this was going on I was also studying physics I went to lectures, did my homework (with help from Robert Beardsworth) and only skipped labs to go climbing when the weather was particularly good. It wasn’t easy but by practicing past papers I managed to pass the exams, apart from the one on computer programming that everyone failed. Obviously not a visionary, I thought computers with all their cards were stupid and preferred doing calculations with my calculator. The bit I most enjoyed were the sessions with the lab technician where we learnt how to file bits of metal. At school I had been bottom of the class at metalwork but here I was the star pupil.

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Figure 38 Playing with liquid helium in the physics lab.

There was a hospital down the road from the university and rumour had it there were student nurses there and they sometimes had parties. I must’ve been feeling particularly brave because I managed to get into one of their parties and started speaking to a girl. Must have been made easier with our common interest, my mum being a nurse and all. The evening ended, I walked her home kissed her goodnight and went back to my room. Lying in bed I did contemplate going back and throwing stones at her window but I didn’t know which window was her’s and any way, I needed to let the glandular fever that I’d just been infected with incubate.

Arriving back at uni after the holidays I was finding the work more difficult than usual, every time I opened a book I fell asleep. On the wall I was absolutely rubbish, couldn’t even do a pull up. Went to bed and started to burn up so made a late night entry to the sick bay, by morning I felt OK so asked to leave but was imprisoned until further notice, I escaped that afternoon to be informed of my diagnosis a few days later. Better to be sick than weak I suppose. I had to go home for three weeks and missed quite a lot to lectures. The examiners compensated for my illness resulting in my best grades ever.

Every area had its home team Arnis, Nipper Harrison, Pat Littlejohn and lots of climbers called Steve in the south. Cleasby, Botteril and Clegg in the North, Dave Cuthbertson and Murray Hamilton in the Far North, Gabe and Jim Moran Peak west, John and Steve Peak East. Pete and Ron in Yorkshire.

Everyone raided everyone else except for the Southern team who couldn’t climb on grit so stayed at home. At the time I would’ve put myself forward for the Yorkshire team but wouldn’t have been picked. So, on a raid from nowhere The Berzins’ and I headed for the lakes to repeat some new routes, Creation, Close to the Edge, and Medlar free. Creation was a recent Fawcet route so obviously worth getting that one under your belt. There was also rumour that he found it hard. I don’t think Ron went in for the sandbagging game, if it was hard he said so.

The new E grading system was just being developed splitting the extreme grade into 5 E grades. The “technical grade”, 5a, 5b, 5c, 6a, 6b etc. had been going for some years. This was the grade of the hardest move and 6b was the hardest at the time. The E grade was for the whole route taking into account danger and effort. E5 5a was dangerous but easy, E3 6a was difficult but safe and E1 6b didn’t exist because to climb 6b would require too much effort for it to be only E1. I always found it

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difficult to grade routes, still do. If you know that your limit is E5 6b then if you just get up a route by the skin of your teeth it must be E5 6b, anything else is easy. Creation gets E5 6a today which is quite respectable.

I led Creation without too much fuss and Martin led the first free ascent of the Medlar. On the way back to the car we bumped into a team I’d never heard of. I have a very clear memory of walking along a lane and meeting them coming the other way. They weren’t shy. “What’ve you done?” “Just freed Medlar”. “Oh, we were going to do that.” Who are these people, how can these unknowns have wanted to do such a hard route? They were the London team, Chris Gore, Leigh McGinley and Strappo. They would all become part of the next Sheffield team as did the Hairy Hearts.

Figure 39 Chris Gore

Probably no one else used this name but we called them the hairy hearts. Mick Fowler, John Stevenson and a girl, Geraldine Abrey. Steve couldn’t stop going on about them, how dare they steal one of his routes and to add insult to injury they had given it a silly name, how can a heart be hairy?

The route in question is a direct finish to a famous Brown route “Great Slab” at Froggat. The original route is difficult enough, no protection possible as you tiptoe across the concavity. John had already done one direct finish and called it hairless heart, named after a song by Genesis on the album Lamb lies down on Broadway, with your heart in your mouth step into the bald groove. Hairy heart just seems like a joke, sacrilege. According to Steve, rumours were rife, they must have chipped it.

Chipping is the creation of holds using a hammer and chisel and it’s totally not allowed. They didn’t chip holds on hairy heart so the rumours switched to Linden. This climb was first done with skyhooks

by Ed Drummond. These are metal hooks that are placed on the holds then used to hang on, “strictly spacewalking”. The two skyhook placements had originally been created with a some careful hits with a hammer but now they were bigger (allegedly) and Mick Fowler was getting the blame. He almost certainly wasn’t guilty, however it’s not what you did it’s what Steve says you did that is important and anyway it was supposed to be Steve’s route, how dare they steal it from him.

If a cliff face doesn’t have enough holds then it can still be ascended using aid. If there are cracks then pitons can be used, if too thin for pitons then soft metal copper heads can be hammered onto the rock in the hope that some of the metal will squidge into tiny cracks. Skyhooks can be used on flat edges and if totally blank holes can be drilled for bolts. I’ve never done any of this but learnt about it watching the first ascent of Strone on the TV. As climbers got better a lot of routes that had previously been done with aid became possible without. Free climbing aid routes was much less effort than doing new routes so this is what I focused on.

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In the Lake District there is a crag called Dove crag which is so overhanging no one had managed to climb it without aid, Martin and I made the long walk to have a go. The route, North Buttress wasn’t entirely an aid route but used a fair amount, Martin thought it would go free. The first pitch didn’t but the second did. It wasn’t that hard but climbing upward and outwards above Martins dubious belay was very frightening. A first ascent is worth dying for so I pushed the boat out and reached the top. The relief on topping out was somewhat dampened by the lack of belay but I just wanted to get down so brought Martin up without one. This means I sat in the steep grass at the top of the cliff without being attached to the rock. I may have led the pitch but Martin soloed it. Luckily for both of us he didn’t fall off.

We had raided the North, now it was time for the south the South, Arnis said we could stay with him.

By this time Arnis Strapcans, the human anagram, was very well known, I wasn’t but wanted to be. A free ascent of Paradise lost might do the trick. It was the first time I’d climbed with Arnis since the Hemp club and I have to say I found him quite annoying, he just wouldn’t shut up. There I was attempting to undercut my way around the first roof and there he was singing loudly to himself. My attempts were pathetic, not because of the singing but because I wasn’t strong enough. That night we went to a prog rock disco and “danced” to Pink Floyd, he was an energetic dancer as was his girlfriend, she still is. When we left his apartment we emptied our chalk bags into his box of “Clean hand gang T shirts”.

Figure 40 Arnis and his girlfriend Hilary, plus Rosie, Frank Cannings and one of the Steve's (Mariotte)

Each year at Leeds there seemed to be one rising star amongst the new intake, I had risen the year before this year’s hot new climber was Terry Hirst, Nick Hallam was also new but not so hot. Terry had Joe 90 glasses and unlike the rest of us played sports, like rugby which meant he was fit, very strong and didn’t mind pain. Al played sports too but he doesn’t count. After tentative introductions we became good friends and I decided to grow up and leave the safety of Charles Morris Hall to share a flat with them. We needed a 4th person so convinced a second year mining student, John Holmes to join us. The flat was on the other side of the city along the same road as the Gaiety strip club. We went there once but were too frightened to enjoy it. There was also a club right opposite our house, at least that’s what it said on the door. Never saw anyone going in so must have been a very late night venue. Went to Soho once to see what it was like, lot’s of shops selling magazines with curtained off areas and down stair regions where strange things went on, peep shows, live acts, xxxxx. I’d heard the stories, pay £5 to get in then forced to buy a drink for a thousand quid. I’ll just flick through the magazines thank you very much.

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That summer was all about “freeing the pass”. Geoff Milburn had posted a request for climbers to help eliminate the remaining aid points before the publication of the next guide to the Llanberis Pass.

We headed for Nexus direct. It’s a good line up a blank groove. I set off placed a good stopper 3 (I still remember the placement behind a little downward pointing block). Feet high layback and I was committed but rather than panicking I just kept climbing to the top, cranked it out youth. At last a significant first ascent, the hardest route on the crag. I wasn’t allowed to write to the mags, it was against Steve’s rules, but I did write to Geoff Milburn and he wrote back telling me the Dave Roberts had done it a couple of weeks before. How could that be possible I didn’t even know him. As a consolation I did get a mention in the guide and I did beat him to the second ascent of Right Wall.

Right wall is an iconic route climbing what looks like a completely blank, vertical wall of rock high on the North side of the Llanberis pass. When Pete Livesey did the first ascent it was hailed as the hardest route in the Wales maybe Britain. Pete had his own grading scale extremely severe, hard extremely severe and harder still, this was harder still. Right Wall had only been done by Ron and Pete so it was waiting for a human to open the floodgates. I was often opening floodgates, “if he can do it so can I”. To add to the mythology both Chris Gore and Rick Acamozo (a famous American and friend of Al) had taken massive falls. It was a very hot day so Terry and I had the ideal excuse not to do it so after walking all the way up decided to pack up and go down. Deciding not to do it somehow broke the tension and minds were changed, bags unpacked and up I went. We had no description but knew it was between the corner and the gates but after a couple of “phew moments” and an eek I got to the girdle ledge but then got stuck on the upper wall. I was actually off route on what was to become lord of the Flies. This couldn’t be right so I retreated up a neighbouring route cemetery gates. That evening we got the description by copying it from a magazine in Joe Browns shop (my dad liked buying books but I didn’t) and returned the next day. A bit too scared to do the start again we did the climbed the much easier Cemetery Gates, belayed on the girdle ledge then climbed the last bit of right wall to the top. So I’d done the whole route but in two pitches. When Martin and Bob repeated the route sometime later they did the same and someone photographed them. The magazines had a field day. I felt bad but kept quiet. Until now that is. To be fair I never lied about the style of our ascent, no one ever asked if we’d done it in one pitch or two but then again why would they.

Garrotte was a biggy for me. I’d been looking at the photo of Martin Boysen on it ever since I bought my first magazine so it meant a lot. The route isn’t brilliant but something happened when I climbed it that would only happen once again, I left my body. The route was rather dirty and I was having to clean moss off the holds as I climbed, runners were almost nonexistent. High up bridging on nothing, hands on opposing flakes, I was stuck then suddenly I wasn’t in my body anymore but watched as it made several moves up the groove to reach a resting place where I joined it again. I wonder what would have happened if my body would have fallen, would I join it on the fall or at the bottom? If my body had died would I still be there? It happened again on Mr Olympian. I thought it was pretty hard but maybe it was just the moss, never really got the media coverage I’d hoped for.

Right wall was old news, supersonic and bastille were hot off the press. Supersonic was on the cover of Crags 4 with the caption “can this be Britains first 6c+?” I wasn’t impressed with the technical difficulty and wrote this in my diary.

The supersonic equation 6c = hard technical grade A one arm pull up is not a technical move → supersonic ≠ 6c A one arm pull up requires no technique → supersonic = 1a Supersonic is well protected → not severe

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Hence the grade of supersonic is V Diff 1a This is verified by the fact that it is not very difficult.

Steve didn’t like the way things were going. He told me that if I carried on like this I’d be the most disliked climber in the UK. I always listened to Steve’s advice but sometimes it took time to sink in and a news item about the Woodward brothers new routes on the Roaches got me going again. Wings of Unreason E6, the hardest route in the world. I made a special trip to repeat the route which wasn’t very hard if you jump to the top. I left my mark with Willow Farm a name that will mean something to Genesis aficionados. Probably harder than wings of Unreason but gave it HVS of course.

Even though Pete Gabriel had left, Genesis were still our firm favorite, even Webbo was a fan although he was starting to develop a liking for a different sort of music. They were going to play in Liverpool but tickets were hard to get so we spent the night on the pavement outside the box office to make sure. It was the wind and wuthering tour. Lying in my down sleeping bag (I still have it) with only my face showing I got mistaken for a girl again. The drunk guy was quite persistent but ran away when Webbo told him I was male. Steve’s new job working as a cleaner at the oil rig base in Kishorn prevented him from attending so my brother got his ticket. To console him we bought Steve a concert T shirt which he wore all the time. He’s wearing it in that iconic photo of him on Strapadichtomy, the photo also features on a T shirt that Ben Moons clothing company produced, Ben gave me a copy that I wore with a certain sense of irony. A T shirt within a T shirt. I should point out that the Genesis obsession stopped abruptly on the release of Trick of the Tale, what on earth were they playing at / playing.

Figure 41 The photo.

The new music was Punk rock which I just didn’t get at first. Why would people who can’t play instruments try to make music? The Sex Pistols not only had a rude name but their music was terrible, whatever happened to harmonics. It wasn’t until the clash and The stranglers that I got the point. Ever since the who had made the album Live at Leeds the uni had been a been able to attract some big names. During my first two years I never went to a concert but that was about to change and so were a few other things.

Whilst at home recovering from Glandular fever I heard about a girl who was working at a new climbing shop that Eddy Hutchinson had opened at his house in Coventry. Apparently she looked just

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like the girl on the Javlin advert which I must have got wrong because the girl in the advert had brown hair she was blond. She was also married but going out with one of my old friends which was confusing. I still couldn’t talk to girls but one that worked in a climbing shop should be doable and my “Coventry’s best climber” status got me noticed. I made a long trip to Wales to sit beside her at a bonfire where I further impressed her with one arm pull ups. For some unexplained reason she then visited me in Leeds, we went to Bernard’s house wrecking party where we pogoed and someone, probably Webbo, went through a window. For her it was a one night stand but not for me. Al never believed anything happened, she was seriously good looking and I was a fresh faced youth, but something did happen and it messed me up for a long time.

The university climbing club was rather superfluous or so I thought. During my first two years it certainly existed but I only remember a couple of meets. Caley was a short bus journey away so anyone wanted to go climbing they could simply go there on the bus. Apart for Terry, Nick and Martin none of the people I climbed with were students. According to Bernard when he was president they spent the university grant on barrels of beer and had a party. I have no idea how it happened but I suddenly became the president of the Leeds University Mountaineering Club, I think Terry was deputy and Nick was treasurer. We had a stand at freshers week and collected all the subs and cashed in the student union grant. John, the miner, helped with the logistics and we managed to secure two barrels of beer, we then simply invited all the members plus anyone else we knew to a big party. This time people showed up but a lot of the beer ended up down the sink. My brother travelled all the way from Coventry for the event and turned up in punk gear. After one term with me as president the other members asked when we were going to have a meet, my reply “catch the bus” didn’t go down well and I was kicked out. I thought it was a bit unfair, after all they were all invited to the party.

Alan was still the king of the wall and was getting even better at burning us off so we let him join the wall club. On the wall under the window to the squash court there was a small pocket scooped out of the brickwork. Several problems revolved around this pocket, one night I was trying one without footholds when pop. A Pain shot up my arm and my hand went tingly. Continued climbing but it felt funny. Al said I had stretched a stretch receptor which was probably a false diagnosis but it was the first of many finger injuries.

I kept taking the bus to Caley but still hadn’t done High Noon this was the route that Al was climbing in the magazine I bought before coming to Leeds, the one with the girl watching. I think she’d left university by now. The route is a sharp overhanging arête that you climb head on by pinching the edge. Steve had done it ages ago as he noted in my diary in 1976 “On the 3rd of March Steve and I went to Caley where he pissed up high Noon and I failed, cos I am crap and Steve is my hero (sigh).”I have added an arrow “written by Sidney” he never liked being called Sidney (or Martin Barnicott).

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Figure 42 Picking bilberries at Caley, Paul Pritchard in the background.

It was about time to catch up with my hero, (2 years later) so I went for a try. Bernard came for some photos, probably already planning Extreme Rock. Dressed in regulation Helly Hansens I pinched my way up the sharp arête to the notch, getting pumped I launched for the finishing hold but sailed right past it, held onto nothing for a split second then came crashing down into the slab, nothing broken but it hurt. The photo ended up in Crags magazine but no name. The chalk bag in the photo is the Velcro version. There was talk about using G clamps for protection but I don’t think it was ever tried.

I never did do the route and now I think I can safely say I never will.

Figure 43 Someone climbing High Noon.

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Nuts don’t work to well in flared cracks and even in parallel sided cracks they need to be placed carefully. These days climbers use camming devices such as “friends”. The first time I saw a friend was at Almscliff. Martin had one and we tried fitting it into outrageously fared pockets and weren’t impressed when it wouldn’t stick. One place they did stick was in Goblins Eyes roof which suddenly became more amenable especially after finding the knee lock which was unfortunately too low for Martin. He got so cross that he threw a rock at Bob. My new route at Brimham rocks, Happy days is now seen very much as a boulder problem. A classic gritstone sort of whole body move, foot above the head, contort to standing position. I did the start one sunny afternoon but didn’t claim or name it until I got to the top of the cliff. I bet not many people bother with the top these days. I seem to remember it being a bit touch and go. Named after an American TV programme that was popular at the time rather than my own life. I even had a Fonz jacket for a while The punk rock rubbed off on me and I had my little rebellion which entailed not wearing socks. The music was different and the concerts exciting. No need for dance steps pogoing was the new order. I was never sure if the bikers liked the music or just turned up to cause trouble but there was always a big gap between them and us punks. Punks looked tough but were all a bit wet really, bikers are as tough as they look. With punk came spitting, the audience used to spit at the band and the band would spit back, there was spit everywhere. Waiting for the Jam to come on stage there was a bit of a commotion, someone had started spitting already, a guy on the balcony was spitting on the crowd below, the spotlight was put on him just as a big ball of gob launched from below arced its way upwards somehow landing in his mouth. I didn’t like the spitting but I did like the jumping about.

On my 21st birthday my dad came to visit and took me for a meal, he also delivered a large fruit cake my mum had baked. I’m sure my mum had meant me to share the cake but I thought since she made it for me she would want me to eat all of it, it took over a month but I managed in the end. By 21 my drinking was more sensible unlike my 20th when I thought I should try to drink a gallon of beer. I failed to drink the gallon and failed to walk home. Steve Carried me home then stayed up with me all night to make sure I didn’t inhale my vomit. It’s times like that when you see who your friends are.

There were many of them mopping my brow that night I couldn’t see what the fuss was about as I lay paralyzed on the bed.

They posted the results on the notice board in rank order. I started from the bottom and didn’t have to go far to find my name. My dad always said the best students get a 2i or a 3rd. The logic being that no one gets a 1st without working but if you are brilliant and don’t do anything you can get a 2i. I’m not sure how he brought the 3rd into the equation but it made me feel better. I would have undoubtedly done better if I’d been cleverer. Towards graduation I’d been applying for jobs, the oil exploration company Schlumberger was my main interest (£60,000 starting salary) and for some reason they were interested in me. They were looking for people who could put up with the hardship of travelling across the desert in a truck. People with initiative who could fix things when they broke, technically minded, quick thinking. I was none of these, I think they confusing being a rock climber with putting up with hardship. The only hardship I’d ever experienced was sleeping in a toilet. I got a second interview in a posh hotel in London, so got to visit the city for the first time. The problem was I still thought I was in with a chance with the Javlin girl/one night stand. Basically I’d heard nothing from her since the visit and no news is better than bad news so maybe…. Big fires can start from tiny sparks and I built this miserable flicker into marriage and children. Obviously I wouldn’t want to be away from home when the children were small so told the man at Schlumberger that I would only be interested in working for them for a couple of years. Goodbye Mr Hamper.

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Graduation day wasn’t such a great day especially as they call you out in order, so a lot of waiting but university was over and I was glad. My green suit was a result of allowing a colour blind person to buy his own clothes but it did match the hood. In my graduation photo (my mum wanted one) I’m a surprisingly fat, fresh faced youth, it must have been that birthday cake. I was climbing about E5 6b at the time which was about as hard as it got, still hadn’t realized the benefits of being thin. I left university to return to Coventry and lost contact with everyone except Steve Bancroft and Bernard Newman. I’ve only been back to Leeds Uni once, walked along the long corridor flashing back to the lonely days of tea and penguin biscuits. I don’t think it was an entirely happy time. Not sure I would have survived without climbing.

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Sidney Stringer I didn’t have a plan B after the Schlumberger job fell through, I’d dismissed teaching because I would have had to do a teaching certificate and I couldn’t face another year at university. My dad had other plans, he’d found out that there was such a need for physics teachers that I didn’t need to do teacher training at all. He also knew of a vacancy, church connections working again. He got the application form, filled it in and got me to sign it. He told me to mention that I used to help out at the youth club and I got the job. The school was Sidney Stringer School and Community College, a combination of very motivated Asian kids, fun black kids and the rest. I’d been bought up to be tolerant of all cultures but I had no idea what these cultures were. I had one Indian friend called Rajinder Singh and one “Jamaican”, Dudley Burke I knew them both from church so they were embracing my culture not me theirs. At Binley Park there were some Indians, most of them kept a low profile except for David Singh who joined in the 4th year. David made a beeline for the toughest most racist kid in the school and beat him up. Everyone wanted to be his friend after that, they were still racist but he was OK. I only remember one “Jamaican” Tony Grant, he was a few years younger. There were no Chinese.

There were lots of Jamaicans (real ones) at the youth club in fact at one time it got almost completely taken over by them. It got pretty rough at times but through his work as a magistrate my dad got to meet some hard nuts and believing in rehabilitation over punishment gave them a chance to make amends by helping out on Saturday nights. These guys were as hard as nails with names to match.

Everyone in Coventry knew who they were and they would do anything for my dad. They never had to do anything though, when you’re called Mental Nev you don’t have to. After all this was Queens Road Baptist church not the Sopranos. At University there were quite a lot of Arabs in the petroleum engineering department. They probably owned it. Some of them had very expensive cars and spent more time in the casino than the lecture hall. There was one in Charles Morris hall but he only spoke to the rich club. There must’ve been some Indian students at Leeds but I don’t remember any, I certainly had no idea that there existed schools with such a high percentage of hard working very clever Asian kids.

Sidney Stringer was extreme. It was very progressive, first name terms, student centred learning, no uniform, mixed ability and it was also a community college which meant that there were evening classes and activities for local residents who could also attend classes. It was a model school so was well funded. There were for example 3 squash courts which was very popular with the Pakistani boys. My biggest challenge was going to be that it was a co-educational school so there were boys and girls. How would I speak to the girls? On the first day I turned up for work and just got on with it, but there was a surprise waiting for me. I wasn’t the only climber at the school, Bill Turner had also got a job. I really didn’t know him until I saw him there but it made a big difference. Bill was a huge guy with sticking up blond hair and a deep voice with a strong Yorkshire accent. He was a very good climber and wanted to be better, out did me in the gym but not on the rock, the perfect training partner.

I had no idea how to plan a lesson or control the class. The science department worked with a readymade scheme of work so I just turned up handed out the books and the kids got on with it. The kids did experiments every lesson so equipment had to be ordered from the lab technicians John Gilbey and Dave Mathews. John knew more about science than most of the teachers and Dave was a bit of a nutter. He liked dropping lumps of sodium down the plug hole and rode his motorbike insanely fast.

The other teachers were very supportive, it was because we had a common enemy, the kids. Every day was a battle but we always won. I often lost control like the time there I had a play fight with a bunch of 4th years in the middle of the school playground. We were all rolling around on the ground when another teacher came to break it up. He wasn’t impressed when I appeared from the bottom 67

of the pile. “never let the bastards get one over you” was his advice. I was 21 and the oldest pupil was 22 so I couldn’t assume respect due to age I had to earn it, but maybe fighting wasn’t the best way.

Figure 44 Dave Matthews, nutter.

Some of the older teachers had completely lost it. The school had been formed when several secondary modern schools had been closed down. All the old staff were offered jobs in the new school but not all of them really accepted the modern teaching methods. They’d come to work sit, in class and wait for the bell to signal home time, I don’t know how they put up with the chaos that ensued but hoped I would never get like that. They were often off sick and it was a nightmare taking their classes. Some were rumoured to have bottles in their desk drawers but I never saw one. The head of science was the church member who helped me with my chemistry set, Mr Wiley. He was there by choice. He’d moved from King Henry the eighth because he supported the concept of comprehensive education I was always impressed by the way he’d moved from a teaching heaven to a war zone because of his principles.

My degree was in physics but I taught all 3 sciences to years 1 to 3 so I had to teach my least favorite science, Chemistry. There is something special about Sulphur, it has 3 different forms or allotropes rhombic, monoclinc and plastic (OK I just looked that up but it was on the tip of my tongue). If you melt Sulphur and allow it to cool at different rates you get different allotropes, so the kids were melting Sulphur and one decided to throw his molten test tube full over his mate. When a liquid changes into a solid energy is released, it’s called latent heat of fusion but has nothing to do with nuclear fusion. This means that it doesn’t cool down until it’s all changed to a solid so when the liquid Sulphur landed on this kid it burnt a hole in his coat then continued through his jumper, t shirt and onto his skin. He tried to stop the inevitable by removing each layer of clothing but he was always a bit late. When it hit skin he leapt up and rushed out of the classroom heading for the toilet crashing into Mr Wiley who had heard the commotion and was coming into rescue me. Mr Wiley lost a tooth but I didn’t lose my job.

Hitting the kids was definitely not allowed and that is something I strongly agree with but not being able to touch them at all is a bit over the top. There were some pretty crazy kids. One 13 year old girl hid under the benches waited for me to come past then while I was helping another pupil with her experiment grabbed me in an uncomfortable place and shouted “I’ve got Mr Hampers balls” difficult to maintain order after that episode. I always felt sorry for the music teacher at Binley Park who cried in front of the class, I didn’t want to be like that. On another occasion a small boy threatened me so I threatened him back. He replied with “I’ll get my dad onto you” I replied “go and get him then” he did. Luckily I saw him coming and ran to the headmaster’s office for protection.

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There were the playfully crazy kids but there were also the seriously crazy ones, they were in a special group and that’s where Bill worked. He actually wanted to be a Chemistry teacher but he’s a big lad and they needed someone like him in to overpower the kids with minimum effort. For some reason the no contact rule didn’t apply here, Bill would often have to physically sit on the kids to stop them killing one another. They never actually killed each other but they did kill an old man.

It always amazed me what these kids could achieve. Try to get them to connect a simple circuit in class and they had no chance but hot wire a car and they had no problem. It was difficult to believe that these skinny little 12 year old kids could not only start a car without a key but could drive, break into houses, terrorize the occupants and steal the TV then sell it down the pub. Al Manson worked with similar kids and was prevented from taking them climbing after one of them used his skill to climb into houses. These kids weren’t playing around. There were of course some extenuating circumstances, they were like this for a reason, after visiting one of them at home in the high rise flats opposite the school I gained some insight as to why they were like that, didn’t make it right though.

Alongside the murderers and rapists were the nicest bunch of well motivated Indian and Pakistani kids you could imagine. In the same class you’d have kids who could hardly read and write alongside future Oxbridge graduates and because everything was student centred it worked. My mentor was Gurpal Atwal a turbaned Sikh with kind eyes. Myth number one busted, Indians don’t drink, well this one did. I learnt a lot from Gurpal he change me from someone who thought they understood other cultures to someone who realized they didn’t. There was the time when I had written some fairly honest words about one Pakistani boy’s behavior in my class. Gurpal saw what I had written and before it was delivered home came to see me. What I hadn’t realized was that if the dad had read that the boy would have got a severe beating and I don’t mean a slap on the legs. Gurpal knew the families, I thought everyone was like me.

Figure 45 Gurpal Atwal.

Working in an Asian community meant lots of Asian food and the best of the best was to be had at Gurpal’s house. The first time I went there I thought the starters were the main course and tucked in.

I didn’t do justice to the main course, a selection of different curries but of course still had room for a second helping of desert, a sort of sweet cardamom flavoured pudding. Intrigued about what was in the pudding I asked Gurpal’s wife. Carrot Halwa: Take 4 pints of milk and 6 pounds of grated carrots, 69

boil for a whole day until you get the medium sized bowl full on the table. I’d just eaten a pint of milk and two pounds of carrots. By the time I got home the carrots had returned to their original size in my stomach. I lay in bed with what felt like a lead weight pinning my stomach to the bed. I could rotate about my center but couldn’t move around. I have just looked this up and the amounts of carrot and milk have grown vastly over the years, please don’t try to follow my recipe.

Before I even received my first pay cheque I spent the first 12 on a car. It was a sapphire blue triumph spitfire 1500. I would have preferred the British racing green TR6 with its huge wheels but it was too expensive. The light weight and rear wheel drive made it a fun car to drive, easy to get the tyres to spin which I made a point of doing every time I rounded the corner at the bottom of our road. What a berk. The car was mainly for attracting girls but if it did I didn’t notice them as I sped past.

Having been thrown in at the deep end I had become more comfortable talking to members of the opposite sex I would have no trouble approaching girls in the bars that my brother, Tim and I would frequent. Tim had left school by now and was working in an electrical shop in Coventry, he was a full on punk, I wasn’t but I’d go along to the concerts. We were lucky enough to arrive at the Sex Pistols concert an hour early because they decided to perform before the audience had arrived. Tim and I had an almost private concert and managed to get out before the riot. We were both living with our parents at the time and would often arrive home a bit worse for wear. They never seemed to notice.

The school had a big sports hall with a wooden climbing wall like the one at Binley. Every lunch time Bill and I would train by heaving ourselves up the wall and climbing ropes. We’d also go to the Warwick wall were there was now quite an active bunch of students. Mike Meysner was the best but there was also Adrian Cooper known to everyone as Noel because he looked like Noel Edmunds. Noel wasn’t a brilliant climber but he was a very friendly guy who wove a web of intrigue around himself.

He often spoke about his dad who he referred to as the golden eagle - rarely seen. He was brought up in Birmingham where he slept in a corridor with a door for a bed. The truth was that his dad was a doctor and he lived in a very nice house. Noel was a keen climber who would often join us on trips to the peak, he also had a girlfriend, Wendy who he would forget to tell where he was going. It was a long time before we met Wendy but they did eventually get married so no harm done. Neil Auchterlonie was another Warwick university student. He was very athletic and quite a good climber but not up to joining in with the bouldering antics. Keen to show that he too could perform at a high level he got out the trampoline and without saying a word performed double twisting back somersaults, piked thingies, Arabian do dahs and other stuff with names I can’t remember. He could also do a standing back somersault from the floor which was very useful for impressing people in car parks. It really didn’t matter how good at climbing you were but you had to be good at something.

Mike had been a gymnast so knew something about training, he also had a girlfriend Julia who he used to wrestle with. Warwick University had a gymnastics club with a couple of guys at national level and a very experienced coach. Mike got us into the club and we’d train there once a week, I even bought the white Gymnast trousers. The rings were our main interest so we’d spend most of our time with that, there was also a set at school so we could play there too, I borrowed a book from the library so we could find out how to do the moves. The reason my shoulders are so crunchy today is surely due to those ring sessions. Gymnasts use timing and technique we used brute strength. An inlocation is when you hang on the rings then rotate your body forward through your arms to arrive back in the same position. It is supposed to be done by swinging the body then throwing your arms out to the side, this was before you tube so without video tutorial we performed the maneuver slowly without spreading our arms. Clunk click every trip. We eventually got kicked out of the club for dangerous behavior, doing one arm pull ups without warming up and rope climbing without a mat.

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Before getting kicked out the coach did teach us how to do full circles on the high bar which were surprisingly easy to initiate but very difficult to stop.

Training was more intense but still unsystematic however it seemed to work. Seeing photos of John Gill in Mountain magazine I asked my dad to get me the book and I read with interest. The front lever was the thing to do and thanks to my thin legs I did one first try, the one arm lever took a bit longer.

Olympic middle distance runner Dave Moorcroft worked at the school and he’d often go for training runs around the streets of hillfields. When you saw him it looked sort of unreal, people don’t normally run faster than the cars. At a Christmas buffet I noticed he didn’t eat much. He explained that if he ate too much he’d have to train extra hard to burn it off the next day. “It’s easier to starve than train”. It was a throw away comment but I caught it. Training without eating is a very bad idea but it seemed to make sense. Strong and light. Inspired by Dave I even started running, you get a sort of floating feeling when running on empty, euphoric for a mile then it all goes to pot and you still have to get home. I like food and found it difficult not to eat especially at a dinner party, getting home feeling guilty I’d make myself sick. Difficult at first but it gets easier. Strange the way the courses come out in reverse order. Lying in bed with hunger pains means you have succeeded. It never got completely out of control, disordered eating not an eating disorder, others got closer to the edge.

Bill and I didn’t do a lot of climbing during the first term although early finishing time meant that we could get to the peak for a route on a midweek evening and snatch the odd loose end like central wall direct finish on Raven Dovedale and Menopause.

In 1980 Stoney was the place to be not only for the café and its new route book but also for the climbing which thanks to Tom Proctor was some of the most difficult in the country, Four Minute Tiler and Circe being top of the pile. Everyone was trying Circe but it was proving difficult to repeat. A bunch of people were having a go, Mark Stokes, John Kirk and Steve Bancroft I think. I tied on the double ropes and Steve, still insisting on a waist belay held the rope. At the end of the undercut section I fell off right next to a runner, I should’ve fallen less than a meter but almost hit the floor. I had been so busy chatting that I’d only tied onto one rope. Later that week I returned with Bill and did it easily with both ropes attached. The floodgates were open. Geoff Birtles happened to be there and photographed the ascent. The real reason we had made the trip was to have a go at free climbing Menopause. There had been a photo of Tom trying it on the cover of Crags magazine but he couldn’t do it because his fingers were too big for the pockets. The first pitch looked chossy so we abseiled in to the belay ledge sneaking a quick look at the pocket on the way past. A wide span to the one finger pocket a quick pull and I was up. It was a significant ascent and it got me a headline in Crags. After Garotte and Menopause I had a bit of a thing about doing first ascents of cover shots so when the photo of Steve Findlay trying to free Pink Ginsane appeared on the cover of Crags I had to have ago so went down to Avon to steal it. Unfortunately I was too late and failed to do it anyway.

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Figure 46 Crags magazine headline!

I have often been credited with doing Menopause on sight and I have never corrected this however by todays definition it certainly wasn’t on sight, I looked at the holds from a rope. In those days the definition was a bit different, on sight just meant doing a route without practice, at least that’s what I thought. This was to cause some confusion on a trip to Buoux. Antoine and Marc Lemenestrel were quite impressed when I told them I’d done Pillier formis and Gougouse free on site, if I’d said with yoyos they wouldn’t have been. To the French “on sight” meant climbing a route with no prior knowledge, you weren’t even allowed to ask about the holds. I couldn’t believe it the first time I saw JB Tribout turning his back on Antoine as he led New Dawn at Malham, ridiculous.

My first trip to France was a result of a chance meeting with a French climber Alain Decang in the climbing shop in Coventry. The Javlin girl no longer worked there but the owner Eddy Hutchinson did.

He was very kind, giving me the odd bit of gear and telling everyone I was better than I was. He probably told Alain that I was the best climber in England or something like that and he offered to show me around Fontainbleau. Bill and I traveled there in my spitfire. I’d never driven abroad before so this was quite brave, the periferique was particularly traumatic as was the puncture but we arrived south of Paris a bit later than planned. Being French they had prepared a meal for us which went on all evening opening my eyes to the pleasure to be gained from an evening dining. There was one moment when cultural differences posed a problem, I needed to go to the toilet and was shown the way. Having done my business I reached for the paper and found the ceramic box used to hold the type that comes in individual sheets rather than a roll. The problem was that it didn’t contain soft paper but a stack of cardboard squares. I had been warned about French toilets, this must have been what they were talking about. I’d experienced Jeyes one side shiny the other side rough bog roll from school but never cardboard. How is it to be used? Scraping wasn’t very effective so I started to peel away layers that I made softer in my hands before use. Homemade boggers. It took time but eventually the job was done, I turned round to pull the chain and on a shelf was a stack of toilet paper in small packs, each pack had a square of cardboard at the back. I never told them what had taken me so long.

Fontainbleau (font) is a forest to the south of Paris with some of the best bouldering in the world.

The different problems are marked with different coloured paint depending on difficulty, white is the only one we were interested in, these are the hardest. We went to several areas and saw Gerard Depardieu in a café. The best area was Cuvier and I did some white problems including Charcuterie, which involves an undercut move followed by a long span, easy for me. There was also a lot of Charcuterie for lunch which was a full on picnic with rug to sit on cutlery and everything. The French

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know how to do it. There was soon a little crowd pointing us at problems which went well for a time but we soon ran out of steam. Time to go.

It’s not so popular anymore but Saussois used to be a popular stop off on the way to the alps. Bolted routes on shiny limestone. There had been some pictures of Livesey climbing there in a recent mag so we were keen to have a look. Free climbing in France was still an oddity so routes were done with rests, pulling on the odd sling etc. we were from England so climbed free with yoyos, put in a runner, lower down, put in another down again. How did we ever think this was free climbing? For this reason none of our “first free ascents” were to count. We camped by the river and drank beer in the local café where we met a man in his 30’s who asked us what we were doing. The next day he came to visit and invited us to his house. Bill was convinced that we were being invited to some gay sex party so we hurriedly packed up and left. I wasn’t climbing so well anyway and it turned out that the spots on my back were shingles.

Figure 47 Climbing at Saussois

The last time I climbed with Bill was in the lake district, I lead Pete Gomersalls new and highly rated route Peels of laughter but Bill fell off right near the top. Still following Steve’s rules that banned the use of a belay device, I lowered him the whole way down with the rope wrapped round my back. He was over 16 stones and I got a rope burn across my back. Should’ve pulled my anorak down. This isn’t the reason that we never climbed together again that was because he left Coventry to further his career with difficult kids. I never saw him again. But I did buy a belay device in case I ever did.

I didn’t leave home my parents did. Dad had been offered the position of General Secretary of the Free Church federal council. This is a bit like being the archbishop of Canterbury for the Baptists.

They moved South but bought a cottage next to Kenilworth castle for my brother and me.

Convenient for training, I used to go there every evening.

Tim had a little motorbike that would go almost as fast as my car, he then bought a Kawasaki KH 250 that was faster, I sold the car and bought a bike. Driving the bike back home from the shop I thought I’d call in on Dave Mathews. Racing past the window of his office I changed down but the gear didn’t engage. I tried again and again then released the clutch, the back wheel locked and I went skidding down the road, I’d changed from 4th to 1st in one go. Once he realized I was alive Dave had a good laugh. To be fair I’d never ridden a bike before and this was a beast. Dave had a track bike that he used to take on the road from time to time. He never got in trouble because no one could catch him.

I’d sometimes sit on the back and was blown away by the speed, I wanted to be like him. 12 accidents in less than 12 months persuaded me that I would never be like him and my biking days were put on hold.

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One of the problems with owning a car is that it costs so much to have it fixed, I’d had a couple of problems with the spitfire and found that by following the Haynes manual I could fix them myself but the best way to learn about car mechanics would be to build the car yourself, so I did. Even then there were plenty of kit cars to choose from. Coming from Coventry I chose a Triumph based kit the Spartan.

The idea of a kit car is that you buy and old car with a rusty body and transfer the mechanics to a new one. You start off with a beetle and end up with a Ferrari, or a car that looks like a Ferrari but is actually a beetle. Sheep in wolfs clothing. A Spartan looks like an old MG, not so wolf like. To collect the kit I borrowed the school minibus but wasn’t supposed to drive that far so I disconnected the speedo. When I got back I reconnected the cable and it snapped. Took me ages to find a replacement in the scrap yard. I bought the donor vehicle for £50 an old wreck of a spitfire. The reason that old cars are so cheap is not only just because the bodies are worn out the whole car is. This didn’t bother me at the time but it did later. In the 80’s the car industry was already in decline but everyone still either used to or still did work in the a car factory so there was no problem getting parts, everyone’s garage was an Aladdin’s cave of cables and blue boxes. I heard that someone once managed to steal a whole car bit by bit. The engine came out suspended between his legs, hidden by a long coat. Not sure how they got the body out so probably untrue. I also heard that someone once ate a whole car by grinding it into dust and sprinkling it on his food, took several years and probably also untrue.

(Michel Lotito, Monsieur Mange-tout, ate an airplane so maybe this one is true) I may have been top of the lab tech class at Leeds but I am no mechanic, the car worked but had lots of faults. Insurance was cheap as it was registered as a Triumph herald. I was foolish enough to drive it down to the South of France with Bill’s brother Pete, the man from Monsanto. The back wheels had not been aligned properly so I wore through a set of tyres, made some nice screeches on the way down the windy coast road, berk. The whole point of the trip was to attract women so we headed for the beach, cruising along the promenade we got a lot of attention but my attention was not on the road and I crashed into another car. No one had explained the give way to the right rule which I thought was ridiculous but the police didn’t. I definitely take after my mum in situations like this “that’s a stupid rule and you are a silly little man”. I spent a week fixing the car, got a new wishbone sent from England found a radiator in a scrap yard and glass fibred the wing back together all by myself. A local garage lent me the tools including an electric sander which I used to finish the wing repair. Sanding fibre glass dressed only in shorts isn’t a good idea, my whole body sparkled with fibres, I spent the night under a cold shower. The repair got the car as far about 100 miles and the radiator blew, luckily back then you could put the car on a train. After that experience I always take out holiday insurance. We didn’t speak to a single girl.

Figure 48 The Spartan.

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There were many other incidents in that car, the time a wheel fell off while driving down the road with Mark Stokes and the one night stand! Or the time I drove my heavily pregnant sister from Coventry to Cheltenham sat in sleeping bags because there was no heating. There would be more but it got hit by a Volvo parked outside stony café. I just couldn’t be bothered to fix it again so I left it there.

A night sleeping on windy ledge is not particularly conducive to hard climbing especially if you forget your sleeping bag like I did once. Luckily I had a big overcoat that I could wrap around myself, still didn’t get much sleep though. The coat was part of a cunning plan, I’d turn up at a crag dressed in my tramps coat and dads old trousers held up with string, climbing gear in a plastic carrier bag. I’d put on my climbing shoes and without a word start soloing around with a bored expression. Occasionally tie on and flash a route. I’m not sure what it was supposed to achieve but it was very cunning.

I’d been to the peak so often that I had got to know most of the local climbers, I never thought of asking if I could stay with them in Sheffield. My first night in Sheffield was in Mark Stokes parents garden, on the badminton court to be precise. I think they’d learnt their lesson and didn’t allow climbers in the house. That was even worse than windy ledge as there was no protection from the rain so I looked further afield. Sheffield is full of students and there were always lots of Parties. I’d latch onto Mark and his mate Ed Wood and we’d go on the hunt for a party and maybe somewhere for me to stay. I couldn’t stay with Ed either since his landlord, Chris Craggs didn’t allow dossers.

We’d simply walk around Hunters Bar listening for music, when we heard some we’d join the party.

Some mistakes were made like the time we were the first to arrive and Ed insisted on having some cheese. We’d often get asked to leave but there was never any violence, then again Mark and Ed were pretty big in those days. Ed used to have a nice leather coat, we were walking down the road one night and, without missing a step, shrugged it off his shoulders and let if fall to the ground. A few yards further down the road he turned to Mark and said “how’s that for coolness”. I hope his wallet wasn’t in the pocket.

Figure 49 Mark and Ed.

On one late night walk around the streets of Sheffield I almost bumped into someone I hadn’t seen for a while. It was Arnis’ girlfriend. Arnis had died in the Alps the year before and his ex-girlfriend had apparently moved to Sheffield. I didn’t say anything, I only knew her by sight. I found out later she was now going out with Al Rouse. Missed opportunity. As if there was ever an opportunity. I was on my way to a house where I had heard anyone could stay, 124 Hunter House rd.

I’m not sure who lived at 124 but it’s possible one was called Chipper. A lot of people in that generation had nick names a trend that was on its way out. Big Smeg, little Smeg, Kriklet. Llechtim, Strappo. Chris Gore tried to cultivate the nickname horse but it never stuck. 124 had a roof but was

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one step below the Stoke’s badminton court. There was a motor bike in the upstairs hallway and plates of moldy food all over the floor in the living room. There were also people there who weren’t climbers, scary. I may seem ungrateful but I am. After a couple of weekends at 124 I found 84, a much better proposition altogether.

After Menopause (sounds bad) I lost motivation and my climbing partner so didn’t do anything for a while. I even stopped buying climbing mags, something that would cost a lot of money later when I wanted a full set of Mountain magazines. I’d still go to the peak occasionally but just to mooch about.

By the summer of 82 a lot had happened, the Lee brothers had transformed Water Cum Jolly, The Prow was the hardest route in the world and Jerry had arrived. I first met Jerry in Stoney café although I doubt he remembers. I knew what he looked like from the photo in the magazine, it was definitely him. I went over and started talking but he wasn’t particularly interested, I asked if he’d done Menopause and dropped it out that I’d done the first ascent. The penny dropped, the tramp is Chris Hamper. Jerry had done menopause and also added a harder route Helmut Schmidt. Time for a comeback.

I never caught Jerry up but unbeknown to him I tried. My brother had started body building and spent every evening at the gym, I never got into it to the extent of drinking those supplements, liquid liver, liquid spleen and amino acids but did put in some hours. Everyone had seen what had happened to Mark and Ed, as they got bigger their climbing got worse so I learnt from their mistakes and didn’t eat too much, saved money too. The Gym was real hard core, in the cellar of Coventry Sports centre, like all sports facilities it was free as long as you didn’t pay. The sports centre also had a climbing wall but it was worse than the one at Warwick, the brick edges were all huge so you could climb the whole thing without any holds. OK for showing off on. For a time I climbed in some brightly coloured silk pants like Indian women wear but it never caught on. There was always a bit of an “antisport clothing” attitude to climbing fashion, the less you looked like a climber the better. Of course we all wore ear rings, the more girly the better. I had a single pearl (fake) on a chain. I think everyone just thought we were gay.

Figure 50 Fresh faced 28 year old.

The gay image was certainly helped by the fact that there were no girls, my partner at the time was Steve Callen. I mean my training partner was Steve Callen, I’m digging myself into a hole here. We would spend most evenings together and sometimes go to smart restaurants. We’d also invite people round for dinner parties and I’d cook extravagant meals. I’m beginning to understand why people thought we were gay. We’d also go on holiday together, alright, enough.

The first time I went to Buoux was with Steve. It wasn’t just the two of us though we went with another couple, Dave Wilson and Pete Billington. I was climbing about 7a and they climbed 6a so I’d lead and they would aid. I don’t know why they put up with me but we had a good laugh. In those

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days there weren’t so many climbers so it was accepted that you could camp anywhere, it was Easter and it got dark early but the wine bottle never seemed to get empty, maybe there was more than one? As Buoux became more popular the locals became less tolerant, it’s easy to blame the Germans but we all did our part in destroying the idyll. This was the first time I’d seen people from other countries climb. Some of the belaying was very interesting. How exactly do you stop a leader falling when you’re just holding the rope in one hand?

Figure 51 Me on the left, Steve on the right.

7a is nothing by today’s standards but at the time it was OK, we were on holiday and I never managed to perform particularly well on holiday. I wasn’t the only one who struggled to find form abroad Hamish Hamilton and Spider McKensie had the same problem breaking through the 7a barrier. They were a couple of well-known Scottish climbers who I always seemed to meet at Buoux and nowhere else. There were many other regulars like the Lancashire contingent including Jerry Peel and Mick lovatt, they seemed to be able to climb well even when on holiday and it was nothing to do with good diet and healthy living.

The bolts used on French free routes 10 mm diameter and about 4 cm long, the holes were drilled with a battery drill and the hangers were stainless steel and made for the job. The bolts used on British aid climbs were often 5 mm really short and had homemade hangers. We didn’t care, a bolt is a bolt. There is a well-known old aid route on High Tor, the cliff above Matlock, called Bastille. The bolts has hangers with eyes so small you had to clip them with a special karabiner. I once snapped one by simply hanging on it. Another old aid route, The Vision had a bolt that looked like it had been made out of a baked bean can. Often the hanger would simply rust away leaving just the bolt. No problem just hook a wire over the end and it was as safe as houses. Placing new bolts wasn’t really accepted, cementing pegs and drilling threads was OK. Strange ethics.

By 1982 grades had reached 8a and my arms had started to grow. I mean in thickness not length, if they got any longer I’d be eligible for a disabled sticker, I’d have to keep them in slings to stop my fingers trailing on the ground. In the mags it was Ron vs Jerry and Ron was winning, in fact as far as I am concerned Dominic Lee won the race, his route, Obscene Gesture being the only route from that year that I couldn’t do. With my new arms I was quickly in for repeats as was Chris Gore, he had new arms too. I got to Rooster Booster before him, the foot off climbing suited my style and I flashed it.

He beat me on Indecent exposure and the Prow. There were of course many other climbers in this race but it was only Chris that concerned me.

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The Prow was the hardest route in the world, it said so in High magazine so it must be true. High was the successor to crags, too many articles about mountains but still more tabloid than broadsheet.

Chris and Jerry had already done it so it was my turn. I’d been training hard and eating little. The first pitch was mainly the same as indecent exposure and I’d done that before. There was a difficult traverse but I was so light I didn’t need to use any strength at all, this is going to be easy. I set off up the pinch grips on pitch two and suddenly I died, absolutely nothing in my arms. It should have been obvious to a physics teacher: to do work require energy and you get energy from food. I learnt my own lesson, ate pasta for dinner the following Friday and climbed to the top on Saturday. I wasn’t totally cured though, having seen the lightness I wanted it to return and it did for a flash of two very overhanging but short routes the Storm and Rock Umbrella.

No point in being strong and not flaunting it so I developed some party tricks, there is a cave called Toms roof named after Tom Proctor its hidden up the hillside at Stoney Middleton with careful footwork it’s possible to climb across the roof of the cave, I did it with dangling feet. My other party piece was on Windy ledge. Windy ledge was a popular dossing venue because it’s away from public view and there is an overhang above the ledge so you don’t get wet. The overhang is about 2m above the ledge so you can touch it with your hands, it makes the start of routes like Our Father really interesting because you have to climb the roof before getting established on the wall. If you look up under the start of Our Father you can find a thin crack that you can get one finger in. It’s a full stretch but if you stand on a rucksack you can get a bit of bend in your arm, this is where I used to do one finger pull ups but only when someone was watching. This is the original Hamper’s hang. It takes the skin off your finger but it’s OK if you only do it at weekends. Tape wasn’t allowed in those days, still following Steve’s rules. If there were people around that I didn’t know I’d walk up in my tramps coat, stand on my carrier bag of gear and crank off a one finger pullup. You had to be careful on the way down, come down too fast and goodbye finger. This is how I met Bill Birkett.

I’d known of Bill’s existence for years, I’d even heard of his dad but then everyone had, he was a famous Lakeland pioneer. We didn’t talk on our first meeting, he was too stunned, but later I got to know him well, the first time we spoke was in Geneva on a BMC international meet. It seems that no one else wanted to go so I was selected, even got a week off work to “represent Great Britain”. I travelled there with two other people who I hadn’t met before, Andy Pollit and Alison Hargreaves.

The driver was Ian Parsons who I had met before. There were 4 in the car but Ian insisted on making coffee with a small plug in kettle using both hands while steering with his knees. Andy, easily recognizable in his trademark ski hat spoke endlessly about North Wales limestone and John Redhead. Alison didn’t say much, her Himalayan career hadn’t begun all she’d done was a couple of routes on high tor or so I believed. We stopped in a climbing shop in Paris which I thought pointless but the others were in the first stages of a long term plan so were talking business. Andy and Alison headed off to Verdon and I got dropped off at Saleve. Ah, I forgot to say, there were two trips, Bill and I were in the B team, we got Saleve they got Verdon.

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Figure 52 Andy Pollit

In Geneva we stayed in a nuclear fallout shelter with showers so powerful the jet almost made you bleed. The climbing wasn’t great but I impressed the Polish contingent by doing a one arm pullup on a door lintel which led to an invitation the following year. This was the time of solidarnosc and it wasn’t easy to get into Poland. Getting out wasn’t easy either, whenever you met polish climbers they would be carrying massive sacks full of Polish food, not because they didn’t like foreign stuff but they couldn’t afford it. They were all incredibly kind and generous, they had terrible haircuts Adidas trainers that weren’t Adidas and clothes that were a bit too big. On the last night in Geneva they bought out a bottle of homemade Vodka. “In Poland we drink like this”. “In England we drink like that too”… No we don’t.

The letter inviting Bill, Mike Meysner (Whose father is Polish) and myself arrived in a brown envelope made out of paper quite clearly manufactured from straw. Compared to today’s bureaucracy it wasn’t such a big deal and we booked our flights and got our Zloti. This was the first time flying for me so I was very excited. We had lots of baggage to check in, not full of food but climbing gear and shoes that had kindly been donated by manufacturers to give to our hosts who were particularly keen to get the shoes since they climbed in hockey boots (“Adidas”) with the studs cut off. We also bought a present from the duty free shop, a bottle of whisky in a metal box. Arriving in Warsaw I picked up my bags and swung the duty free bag over my shoulder, unfortunately I let go and the bottle smashed on the floor luckily the plastic bag contained the whisky but there was a small hole, there was only one thing for it. Drink the whisky. We tried to get the border police to help us but they refused and we ended up drinking the whole bottle as it squirted out of the hole. When we met our hosts we were completely ratted.

The train journey was interesting as was the whole trip. Our host, Jan Fijalkowski, refused to let us pay for anything since there were always two prices, one for Poles and one for foreigners. We didn’t buy a train ticket at all, we just got on the train waited for the ticket collector who was given some money to let us stay on. The train was very full and we sat on the floor passing fields where hay was being collected with horse and cart. We arrived somewhere and got a bus (more dodgy payment) to Podlesice the climbing area. By this time our numbers had swollen as several load carrying refugees joined the group. We were going to stay at “The Sheep” which was the name of a pub or something.

As we walked along the path through the valley the pub was nowhere to be seen. Eventually we arrived at a picnic laid out under a huge boulder that was just like the bow of a ship. Aah!

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The climbing was pretty good but they top roped everything, I did a bunch of stuff on sight or “od razu” as they say in Polish. I hadn’t prepared well for the trip and wasn’t happy with my performance. I felt bad that they had arranged all of this for me (us) and I wasn’t the real deal. Then my nemesis arrived, his name might also have been Chris or Krzysz. He was incredibly strong and climbed without a shirt revealing rippling muscles. I never climbed without a shirt, still not recovered from kangaroo features. He soloed some routes and asked me if I’d like to join him. Jan stopped me killing myself but there was a new line to do.

The route had been top roped but not led, from the ground it looked like a camming device could be placed under the crux overhang at 10 m so I climbed up and placed it but was starting to get pumped. Od razu would be good so I climbed on only to fall a short distance above the cam which ripped as I fell past it. It might have been better without the cam as it held long enough to pull me into a seating position. Landing half seated my legs gave way but didn’t break, my bottom took the full force and wasn’t so lucky. It must have looked bad, I could tell by the commotion. No blood but no movement in my legs either I would have started to panic but some one knew a doctor who arrived with a case full of medicine and injected me with morphine. There was petrol rationing at that time and it seemed that an ambulance was out of the question, luckily someone else had a brother who owned a taxi, this entitled them to extra rations so they had enough petrol to take me to the hospital. Bill and Mike waved goodbye as I set off on deserted roads.

In the hospital the doctors smoked and there were beer cans lined along the window sill. I had an X ray, the doctors argued and then decided I had broken my pelvis. Luckily nothing had come adrift but it was cracked. They decided I would have to spend the next 6 weeks on my back. No way was I staying there. Another relative was called upon, this time a doctor, or maybe the taxi driver was a doctor. More agreements and I was released, my new Polish friend Marek was given some ampules of morphine and was shown how to inject into my leg. The morphine was for when I had to be moved, there were also tablets for daily use.

I spent the next 3 days in Marek’s flat. It was a small flat with only one bedroom, I got the bedroom, Marek and his wife slept somewhere else. I couldn’t understand why but there was graffiti on the walls of the bedroom, maybe it was a child’s scribbling. I went in and out of consciousness. I couldn’t move to go to the toilet but felt very uncomfortable using a bottle that Marek’s wife had to empty.

They only had two English books but I read them both. 1984 and Animal farm. The year was 1984, the coffee and chocolate weren’t real and I was as high as a kite. I cried a lot and Marek was very kind which just made me cry more. They even bought me a slice of cream cake and some cherry jam.

Not wanting to be rude to my hosts I ate the whole jar of jam, I don’t think I was supposed to.

When I got back home the doctor prescribed paracetamol and told me to walk, I surprised myself by walking albeit with stiff legs but it took some weeks to recover from the morphine. Being disabled was an interesting experience and I didn’t like the way people looked at me. When you break your leg you are put in a cast and everyone can see you’re not disabled you’re only injured, I had no plaster so no one knew that this wasn’t permanent. I could drive OK but couldn’t walk, got some funny looks crawling out of my sports car into the pub. I could also climb a bit, well I never used my legs anyway. I’d crutch my way to the base of the cliff the crawl upwards. I only did easy routes which meant I had to find another climbing partner. I’d met an interesting girl at the Buxton conference, she climbed about VS so I wouldn’t normally contemplate climbing with her but now I was disabled why not? I think I might have said something along those lines and she wasn’t impressed so after seconding me up Alcasan the rest of the date didn’t go so well.

I had several other trips with Bill who had just started his writing career. His first project was a book about women in climbing so we went to France to interview one, Catherine Destiville. Bill drove all

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the way to the outskirts of Paris where Catherine lived with her parents. First day we went to Font and I once again fell for the trick of trying every problem as a group of Frenchmen (and a girl) took turns. At the time I thought she couldn’t do all the problems but she was just playing the turns game.

After that the skin on my fingers was so thin that blood seeped out of my tips. Catherine’s dad gave me some magic fish cream that was good but not magic and unsurprisingly smelt of fish, maybe it contained sharks liver and wasn’t for fingers at all? The next day we went to Saussois. I was very close to becoming famous with the first ever flash of the 8a Chimpanzodrome but it wasn’t to be, I fell off the final moves. I think our French hosts were impressed at how some random English guy could have almost flashed an 8a. Hey! I’m not random. Probably didn’t get a mention in her book either.

Every Easter I’d go to France with Bill where we would meet the usual crew. One year we picked up Steve Monks in Bristol for a trip to get photos for Bills next project a guide book to climbing in France. We travelled in Bills beloved camper van which broke down somewhere in the middle of nowhere, fortunately we had AA five star an insurance policy that provided you with accommodation a hire car and transport home for the broken down car. Quite a few climbers saw the potential of this and would drive over in a wreck, help it to break down and cash in on the free holiday. This was not one of those occasions, the breakdown was completely unplanned, however the hire car was rather more comfortable than the van. I never got my picture in his guidebook since he was always belaying me but I did get acknowledged for providing a million laughs even though nine thousand nine hundred and ninety of them were at Bill’s expense. I wish someone had explained about automatic cars before I took my turn driving along the motorway. Hitting the brakes at 90 miles an hour was a good test of the following car driver’s reaction time. He thankfully passed.

Like everyone else we’d stay at the camp site in Apt. The cafes there did a great plat de jour with wine included for almost nothing so we’d eat out most nights. You’d get a whole bottle for the table no matter how many people you were and some small families couldn’t finish it all, wow, more free wine. Didn’t do much for the climbing performance which I felt was always below parr but everyone was doing the same so why not enjoy yourself. Occasionally the darker side of alcohol would put a damper on things. Little Smeg met a couple whilst shopping in Apt, not climbers but seemed like fun so he invited them to the campsite, or they invited themselves. After one glass of wine the guy went completely bonkers, locked himself into a car with his girlfriend and started breaking bottles. When he got out a knife it was time to act. Rab would have sorted him out but he wasn’t there and away from the cliff none of us were really that tough. For some reason he saw me as the weak link and started taunting me, my friends stopped me being beaten up by holding me back but eventually something had to be done. Someone got him to the floor then for the second time in my life landed a “punch” on a drunk man being held down on the floor. If you ever find yourself pinned down on the floor watch out. The police were called and he was held down until they arrived at which point he started to bang his face into the gravel, sober up and start speaking perfect French. Luckily the police had met him before.

The lake district became the place to go at Christmas mainly because Chris Gore had met a girl there, Judith, who he would marry sometime later. Judith was a student at Charlotte Mason College, she had many friends and we had a place to stay, party time. The “getting off with one of Judith’s friends plan” never worked but I learnt that winning isn’t winning when you gamble. I never played cards but one night decided to join Andy, Chris and Steve Callen who had now been given the nick name Cove entry. I think they tried to take the new boy down but I won about £10 which all seemed to come from Andy. Andy no longer had the bus fare home so had to hitch. I tried to give the money back but he said it was mine. I’ve never played cards for money again.

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It’s rarely possible to rock climb in the lakes at Christmas time but when water freezes the wet cliffs turn to ice. Everyone was doing it, Ron was pretty good, even Andy had a go. They said if you can climb rock you can climb ice so I borrowed some gear and followed Bill up to Low water Beck. The first pitch was OK once you got the hang of it so he pointed me at the direct finish, grade 4. There were a lot of icicles and I wasn’t sure what to do with them, so I chopped them off. Once clear of them I progressed to half way where I tried to place a screw. Maybe I should have practiced this before. Half way in should be OK. 5 m above the screw the top was a rounded boss of ice. This was quite difficult to negotiate, the problem was that the ice over the top was horizontal so as I climbed my feet up the axes got lower and lower until I was starting to pull up on the shafts causing them to pop out, so I let go of the axes and tried to use my hands. Mantling with woolly mitts on ice doesn’t work so I began to topple backwards. Realizing I was going to die I got the axes back into my hands a wildly thrashed my way over the top. I think I cried but at least I got my picture on the back of the guidebook.

I made a couple of trips in the summer too. Once was to the bowderstone where Chris and Pete Kirton had been climbing some new problems. Shock horror, couldn’t touch them. This was a different sort of strength, Pete was seriously strong. Maybe a quick ascent of Hell’s wall would restore my confidence? After a show of complete incompetence I hitched straight back home. Not all visits were so depressing. On another occasion Bill pointed me at Sixpence a route that had been done with one resting point. I did it without quite quickly. Not exactly on site by modern definitions but not practiced. I thought it significant but recent guidebook writers disagree. I suppose replacing a rest with a yoyo was not a big deal. Watching Hazel Finlay climb it in a recent film bought back memories. Bill, who was the lake district correspondent for Climber a Rambler magazine, included a photo of me walking to the cliff looking ready to collapse. The caption read “Chris Hamper the exploding powerhouse of the modern gymnastic style”. I think it was sarcastic but I quite liked it anyway.

I was doing a lot of hitching but that wasn’t due to lack of car it was due to lack of money. I had bought an Alfa Romeo Spider that used so much petrol that I could only use it for short trips. The insurance was so high, especially after the wheel falling off incident, that I could only afford to insure it in the summer, this also meant I never built up any no claims bonus. I was trapped. It was a beautiful car, the same colour as the one in the graduate but with a different boot. The car was supposed to attract girls but it attracted climbers instead. There was no difficulty getting climbing partners with this car. I’d drive up to the peak on a Friday, stay at 84 Hunter house road and they’d argue about who would climb with me, no more sitting on the bench waiting to be picked. I don’t know why I thought cars would attract girls. You meet girls in pubs so they can’t see what you’ve got in the carpark until it’s too late. I tried pubs with beer gardens but they tend to be full of families.

Figure 53 The Spider

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With a car called a spider I inevitably spent some time cruising with spider Mackenzie, mainly around the Yorkshire dales where we hit a sheep which was really horrible, it’s horn filled up with blood and one of my headlights was damaged. When not hitting farm animals we repeated some of the new routes that had recently been done at the suddenly very popular Malham. This was a time when a small group of climbers started to realise there was money to be made from sponsorship and there was a lot of hush hush stuff going on. Chris and Basher were starting to build up their portfolio.

Basher AKA Martin Atkinson got his nick name because he used to be fat. I was never sure how being fat gets you the nick name basher, I’d have thought fatty would be more appropriate.

Aided and abetted by Eddy at the climbing shop I made a half-hearted attempt to join the pros. I got a free pair of Hanwags which I had to climb in for a while. Completely unsuited to my sloppy footwork however I did manage to tiptoe up Lord of the Flies in them. There is a move at the top that stopped me for a while. You have to smear with one foot and run your other onto a high hold.

Smearing in Hanwags just doesn’t work but I managed to hop. Luckily I didn’t fall off, not only did I have the wrong footwear I had the wrong nut, not very professional. After the Hanwags I got prototype Koflachs. Even worse. They were called super direttissima so I tried to repeat Basher’s new route on Malham with them on. I could imagine the headline. “Chris Hamper repeats super direttissima in direttissimas”. The pressure of all that potential money to be made put me off completely and I failed miserably on the route. Spider was very supportive “keep climbing in those boots Chris”. I also wrote a letter to a major gear manufacturer saying that I was better than the climber they sponsored and they should sponsor me instead. Maybe not the best tactic, I guess they told him. At the time I was looking for a way out of teaching, I even applied for one of those government sponsored courses to re-train as a systems analyst, I didn’t know what one was only that they earned a lot. It turns out that I am actually quite good at that sort of thing but the course was meant for people who were unemployed and I had a job.

Basher had made his name with some big routes at Gordale, one weekend he won the golden ticket and we travelled up to Yorkshire in the spider. He was also following the “train on grain” regime so all we had to eat was a bag of porridge that got soaked with petrol in the boot of the car. Sitting in the café watching John Dunne eat a whole plate of cakes was torture but at least we wouldn’t get as big as him, or as strong. Drinking wasn’t totally forbidden, a half of mild, the same as Ron, was thought to be OK. Bashers’ family live near Malham so we stayed there one night. It was after a day’s climbing so we were still dressed in climbing attire. Climbers were still following the “don’t look like a macho athlete” rule which in the 80’s meant looking like a ballerina. Two young men with dangly ear rings getting out of an Alfa spider dressed in pink tights raised some eyebrows in Barnoldswick.

Martin’s mum and dad were very progressive in their acceptance of their gay son and his boyfriend.

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Figure 54 Malham with Basher.

The reason for these new hotspots was that it had been decided that placing new bolts on limestone was OK, I don’t know how it was decided but it was. Maybe one day it will be decided that chipping is OK too. Pen Trwyn was another “bolt where ever you want” crags. Like Malham there was a café with cakes but this one was free, apparently it was all down to Prince Charming, Paul Williams. The Café owner liked him so much she even gave me free cakes, how do you work that one out?

Unfortunately she drew the line at allowing climbers to sleep under the tables so most people slept in a cave, now the bouldering mecca “Parissellas”. Always on the lookout for an upgrade I heard that it was OK to sleep in an empty apartment in Llandudno high street, someone had the key and it all seemed legit. Unfortunately it wasn’t, the police turned up, the owners got cross and I said sorry. On another occasion Andy Pollit told me that he’d once been allowed to stay at the outward bound centre Plas y Brenin for free. I translated that to mean anyone can stay there for free so I did, there were lots of empty rooms so who would know. A way for Pas y Brenin to pay us back for developing the sport they make money out of and other spurious justifications that I didn’t go into when confronted by the Director Dave Alcock the next morning. Some years later I met Dave again, I was teaching Atlantic College and his son was a student. “Haven’t we met somewhere before?” “Umm no I don’t think so”. Anyway we were never asked to pay so it was all worth it.

It can’t be the first time we met but I first spoke to Mark Leach that same weekend at Pen trwyn, it was soon summer, everyone was going to France, I couldn’t afford to go because of the new headlight for the Alfa. He was looking for someone to climb with and so was I. We arranged to meet in the peak, he wanted to try revelations which was one of the hardest routes in the UK and still had a massive reputation a year after it had been done. When I turned up he was already on the route but was having difficulty with the crux. If I remember correctly, some sort of pinch for the left and a pocket under a small overlap for the right then you had to slap up for a side pull with the left. The problem with the move is the pocket is under a little overhang so you can’t crimp it properly.

Crimping is when you put your thumb on top of your fingers to lock them in position. I first tried this on the Leeds wall brick edges but it was too painful, eek. I always use an open hand crimp which requires more strength. As a result the little overlap made no difference to me and I did the move first time. I also used a different foothold to Mark but he found it difficult to accept the advice of a well-known foot idiot. Once he tried my method he did the route very quickly. I didn’t but he promised to hold my rope until I did it, which took another 4 or 5 days. There were two problems, firstly there is a move where you reach up with your right hand into the bottom of a groove. Pushing

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against this you reach over with the left to a pinch and up with the left leg into the knee bar. When I pushed on the right arm my shoulder popped. I just wasn’t strong enough. The boots weren’t a problem, I was wearing the same boots that Jerry wore, Fires, the Koflachs came out only for the photos. The other problem was that I was still climbing English style so if I fell off I had to lower down without looking at the next move. Each new move was “on sight”. To fix the shoulder I went back to the weights room and after a couple of weeks could hold the shoulder press. I would get to the top wall many times before move by move I pieced together the sequence and completing the route.

To be honest it wasn’t just a question of ethics I was scared to climb above the top bolt to work the final sequence. This may seem strange, how come I wasn’t scared when climbing the route? Well, that was different. When you are on the lead about to repeat one of the hardest routes in the world you tend to be quite focused. Nothing else matters, all you think about is the bit of rock in front of you, no fear, no pleasure nothing. When practicing you’re nowhere near as focused. Is my harness buckled? Did I tie the knot? Will the bolt hold? Am I strong enough? It’s also more difficult to tolerate the pain when it doesn’t matter. Climbing hurts.

Figure 55 Revelations.

I’m supposed to be Chris the Flash but I certainly didn’t flash Revelations. 5 days over several weeks, it was starting to get boring. It would be sometime before I really got the hang of red pointing and by that time the boat had left the harbor. However that night something changed my life.

This was the time of Frankie goes to Hollywood the Pet Shop Boys and extended dance club remixes.

In Sheffield you could go to the Lead mill for good music or to Roxy’s and dance. Dancing was good it burnt off calories, but Roxy’s was dangerous, just make sure you don’t look at anyone. I was celebrating in the pub with Jerry and Andy and we heard from Steve Bancroft that a bunch of people were going down the Roxy. It turned out later that neither Steve nor the girls ever went to the Roxy, this was a set up. For some reason the thought that all “The young climbers” (Fresh face remember) liked to go dancing at the Roxy. So in order to meet them they’d go too. Steve (not so fresh faced)

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was the go between. I’d actually never been before. Resting after a couple of dances a girl I didn’t know (Trish Daley) came up to me a said “my mate wants to go out with you”. I should clarify that this was a 30 year old girl. The friend in question was Arnis ex-girlfriend, Hilary. I couldn’t believe it, woof I’m in.

Worried that this might be another “one night stand” I asked Judith for advice, Chris was still the only one with a girlfriend, she told me Hilary wasn’t like that, she wasn’t.

Hilary was also Al Rouses ex so knew all the older generation of climbers and mountaineers in Sheffield. I was certainly nervous when I heard that Paul Nunn and Jim Curran had called round for breakfast. I think they had come to check me out. Apparently Phil Burke had advised Hilary not to bother because I was gay, I guess I brought that one on myself. It was a whirlwind romance, people who know me now wouldn’t believe that I could do anything romantic but I did. Trails of notes around the house, chocolates hidden under pillows, bonkers letters. OK, well I tried. On the night I proposed in a wine bar I could tell she was going to say yes and she did. Good job too since her mum and dad had already agreed to the arrangement.

Throughout all that went on in Sheffield, France and the lake district I was still living in Kenilworth working at Sidney stringer. My Brother had moved out to live with his new wife so I was home alone.

Occasionally someone from my Sheffield life would come to visit. Chris Gore had been after he broke his wrist when a hold broke at Pen Trwyn. Jerry and Ben came down on their motor bikes to have a race with Dave Mathews (they lost). Whilst in Coventry they visited my 4th year class who thought they were pretty cool. Apart from Steve Callen all my friends were in Sheffield so there was no point in Hilary moving South, I was going to move north. My dad tried to pull some strings but I got a job on my own and planned to move at Easter. That Christmas Hilary came to dinner with my family, we ate pheasant and drank wine, things were looking good.

I got home from work on Tuesday 25th February 1986 and the phone was ringing. It was my mum.

Dad was dead. I cried in sadness for maybe the first time ever. He had been a bit ill but, him being a bit of a hypochondriac, no one took it seriously. He’d been having lunch on his own at a Greek restaurant when he thought he’d got a lump of potato stuck in his throat, it was a massive aortic aneurism, he died quickly. I couldn’t bear to think of him dying in London on his own. He wasn’t on his own of course, he truly believed that Jesus was there with him and it’s his belief that matters not mine.

Figure 56 My dad.

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The funeral was not something I remember well except that I laughed when the coffin went into the crematorium, the brain does some strange things sometimes. His obituary appeared in the Times and he had a memorial service in Bloomsbury Central Baptist church London. Many commented on his strong faith, capacity for hard work and commitment to all aspects of the ministry. He was also a great dad. He supported us in whatever we did even when he didn’t understand why we did it. He wanted us to have the best even though he sometimes didn’t know what that was. He was incredibly academic but was never disappointed that we weren’t. He saw the best in everyone, even Mental Nev. He was strongly principled and hoped we would be too. When he died I was only 28 and not quite there yet.

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Sheffield I moved up to Sheffield at Easter to my new Job at Thomas Rotherham Sixth form college, I would never teach small kids again. I moved all my belongings in the boot of the spider, I had none. The idea was that I would live with Chris, Basher, Andy and Jerry in 84 until we got married and could move into our recently signed for house in Springvale road. Living at 84 was fine Basher and Jerry were always abroad but it was a bit strange to be the only one working. Hilary was staying with Simon and Jill and I ended up moving there too. Hilary’s friends were very tolerant.

I still had the spider but that wasn’t the reason why Hilary was going to marry me, in fact she didn’t like it. Her friend Alix did like it but she also liked Andy. Feeling the weight of impending responsibility I decided to sell it and put the money towards the house. This was during Ben and Jerry’ motor bike era. I had been on the back of Jerry’s bike in the peak and was impressed, I wanted a bike like that, the problem was I’d never passes my test, a plan was hatched. Simon also fancied a bike so we both bought matching Yamaha trial bikes. I put in for a test right away and got a cancellation in Birmingham, rode all the way there, past the test then bought a Honda VF 500 red white and blue, full race faring. I was nowhere near as good as Jerry on the peak district race circuit but I wasn’t bad on sight. Translated that means I would sometimes go into unseen situations far too fast and get away with it. The final stage of the plan was that Hilary and I would go on our honeymoon on the bike instead of her Nissan micra. This was one of those occasions when I thought my idea was so good that no one in the world would think otherwise therefore there wasn’t any point in asking for anyone’s opinion and that included Hilary. Once I’d got the bike we went on a test ride to Leeds. 100 miles an hour through the sweeping bends, coming into Leeds required my full concentration so I didn’t hear the screams. After the burn up we needed fuel so I pulled into a petrol station and fell off, revealing that I obviously did not know what I was doing. Hilary got a lift home and never went on the bike again. We did go on our honeymoon in the micra and Hilary mentioned the bike every time it rained.

Hilary and I got married in the summer, my dad was going to perform the service so his absence put a bit of a damper on the proceedings. I had a stag night the week before but hadn’t realized I was supposed to invite everyone, luckily Steve Bancroft turned up so I wasn’t alone. Good old Steve. The day was brilliant and the party was like a who’s who of climbing except I was there and I have never been included in any who’s who that there has ever been. It’s always disappointing to be omitted again, at least I felt I was a who. To be fair, I didn’t really do that much, mainly thought about doing it. We went on our honey moon to the south of France with the climbing rope Ron had given me (us) for a wedding present. Unfortunately my Coventry climbing buddy Steve couldn’t come to the wedding due to a trip he’d planned to the Himalayas, I never saw or heard from him again. That sounds like he died but he didn’t we just didn’t keep in touch.

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Figure 57 Wedding day, obviously.

We headed for Cimai which is very near the coast so perfect for a combination of sun bathing and climbing. Hilary isn’t a climber but she has done some climbing and could hold the rope with a belay device so the idea was she would belay me. The idea was good but sometimes we sunbathed for too long prompting a German climber to tell me I looked like a “prown” (prawn). One day we tried a new beach and got there early, the next people to arrive was a family with one slightly strange teenage boy who appeared even stranger when he, and his mum and dad removed all their clothes. We thought we might give the naturist thing a go but to get away from family weird we’d start by swimming out to an island before taking off our swimming suits. We got naked on the rock but reached for our towels when we realized we were the first thing the tourists saw as they paddled into the bay. At least we tried.

Later in the holiday we drove to Verdon where we met Chris and Judith. It’s a strange place to climb because you start at the top abseil down and then climb out, for on sight you had to close your eyes.

Sometimes the abseil would end in space so you’d have to swing in and grab a bolt. Other times the rope would be too short and you’d have to solo down to the belay. I once abbed down 3 rope lengths with Norwegian climber Hans Christian Dosjeth. At the time I hadn’t realized just how famous he was but he seemed to think I was famous as he was going to take photos of me doing Fenrir. On my first attempt at the crux pitch I split a fingertip so we had to climb out pulling on all the bolts. I hadn’t taken a jumper with me, the wind blew up and my temperature fell. First you shiver then you stop shivering then you die. I got to the stopped shivering stage, by the time I got to the top I was off my head, I didn’t even recognize the friends who came to meet me but luckily they recognised me and got me back to the camp site. The strangest thing was that after getting so cold alcohol had no effect. If you want to drink someone under the table take your shirt off. The photos were still published in the Norwegian mag with the heading Fenrir: Verdons vansgeliste rute? Which means Verdons most difficult route. I’ve got a copy on my wall. World in Norwegian is Verden so most Norwegians would read it quickly and think it says. The World’s most difficult route, who am I to correct them.

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Figure 58 World famous in Norway

Wolfgang Gullick was a good friend of Jerry’s so I knew him too. He was ridiculously strong and extremely motivated. He’d often be in the gorge with another German strongman Kurt Albert who was a bit like a German Tom Proctor, very kind, wouldn’t hurt a fly but could kill a tiger. Germany was ahead of the game in terms of sponsorship and Wolfgang seemed to be a lot richer than anyone else and had plenty of free gear. One luxury item was a very long (200m?) static rope. They’d lower each other down the gorge then climb back out on a top rope this seemed like fun so I had a go. It wasn’t.

Firstly your belayer can’t hear you so don’t take in the rope when you want them to. The rope is static so if you fall off with a lot of slack it will snap. The routes are overhanging, let go and you swing away from the rock. It’s also very high up. I was petrified. Didn’t let on though. After the honeymoon it was back to work.

Thomas Rotherham sixth form college is a state school like Sidney stringer but that’s where the similarity ends. It used to be a grammar school and half of the teachers wished it still was. Sidney Stringer was pretty relaxed I use to wear purple trousers, have braids in my long hair, dangly ear ring and a surfing T shirt. TRC was a bit more formal so with Hilary’s help I bought some clothes that weren’t from a climbing shop. First day there and the head master calls me in. ”I hear you are doing well in the classroom but you really need to smarten up”. I’d never been so smart. What he meant was wear a tie, since when has wearing a tie equated to being smart? Since quite a long time ago apparently. TRC was certainly a new experience and I experienced some new things. I thought it might be fun to perform in the school play. They should have told me it was a musical, singing and dancing at the same time is not fun, especially when dressed as a lion. Fancy dress day was fun. It’s supposed to be for students, they come to class dressed up. I wore a Spiderman costume under my clothes and throughout the day would leave the classroom take of my clothes to reveal the costume and climb all over the stone walls of the school. Even hand traversed the stage during assembly. No one realized it was me but I overheated due to the double layer of clothes and got a migraine. It took a long time to be accepted by the staff but after everyone in my class got grade A even the maths teacher Lennie liked me.

At Sidney Stringer there was a tight bond between teachers, we had a common enemy, the kids.

There was no common enemy at TRC, the students were all there because they wanted to be so there was no discipline problem. This made the staffroom a bit boring so the Geography teacher and I decided to make some entertainment. One of the older members of staff always kept a packet of

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biscuits in the cupboard, one day he left them on the table. Every time someone came in we’d say “have a biscuit”. The biscuit man was furious to find his empty packet and everyone was quick to point out who had offered the round. Our next plan would have to be more cunning. Above the mailboxes there was a pile of catalogues for teaching supplies and cleaning materials full of adverts and offers. We filled out a pile of coupons requesting free samples of paper towels, soaps etc. and ticked the “would you like a rep to visit” box. All in the name of biscuit man. Every morning we would wait in anticipation to see what gifts the postman would bring. After a while everyone knew where to direct visiting tradesmen. Very silly but funny.

By getting married I had again opened the floodgates and soon enough there were other weddings.

Chris Gore married Judith, Simon married Gill and Basher married Fiona, another friend of Hilary’s.

Andy stayed single. With so many couples the dinner party scene was pretty full on. Almost every weekend we would either have people round or go to someone’s house, at least that’s how it seemed.

There were some excellent cooks around at the time and I tried to be one of them, Hilary doesn’t particularly like cooking so didn’t mind me taking over the kitchen. I’m not a dinner parties and barbecues only sort of husband though, I do all the cooking (except Christmas day which Hilary and Delia do). It wasn’t a competition, and I would hate to be put through the torture of Master Chef, but the winners were clearly Beth and Simon. Beth is American and at the time was with Bob, a climber of course. She is the most industrious person I’ve ever met. Returning to Sheffield after watching the sunset at Burbage early one morning a group of us called in to visit her. I asked if it was OK to visit so early and someone answered “It’s fine she’ll probably knit us breakfast”. Beth had a cookie jar that was always full, she never made the same cookie twice. Dinner parties with Beth and Bob were fine affairs, always three courses, following adventurous recipes, rich ingredients and sweet, sweet deserts. Simon worked in the film industry he was the first friend I ever had who’d been to a public school, Marlborough. This meant he didn’t like porridge. I think Gill also liked to cook but Simon wouldn’t let her, he was very particular about how things should be done. He once told Hilary “the reason you can’t cook is because you’re just not careful enough”. I sometimes cooked with Simon but it was quite intimidating. Maybe people were just being kind but I think I was the king of deserts.

I started with the old classic pavlova but soon graduated to more complex recipes. Each time we visited a French town I would go on a tour of the patisserie windows, checking out what the real thing looked like, to see if my creations were up to scratch, only looking you understand, I knew what was in those innocent looking treats. It might seem strange that a disordered eater would have such an interest in patisserie but believe me, this is typical. I had bought the Roux brothers cooking books, we got them free as members of the Sunday Times book club, seemed like a good idea at the time but now we have a whole bookshelf full of second rate cookery books. We joined the wine club as well but don’t have any of that left.

Tarte de pomme Normande. An early favourite with buttery sweet pastry and almond filling. Two important things with this one, the pasty must be crisp and the filling almondy, blind baking and proper almond essence is the answer.

Framboise. Same filling and pastry as the apple tart but with rasberries, then the whole thing covered with icing sugar. An attempt to copy something they sell in the bakery at verdon.

Delice au cassis. Takes three days to make and uses half a bottle of cassis. Not sure what it is supposed to taste like as I’ve only eaten my own.

Bavaroise Enrubanee au chocolat et grand marnier. OK now it’s getting silly.

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Restaurant deserts are always an anticlimax after living with the Roux brothers Wolfgang and Kurt once came to dinner and said it was one of the best meals they had ever had (or was that best meal in England?). Things didn’t always work though. I made vegetarian tortellini for Basher and Fiona. I now know that these are tiny pasta parcels but the photo in the book didn’t have a scale, mine were the size of Cornish pasties. Hmm, a plate full of pasties. No matter how much I tried Andy was never impressed, he just didn’t see the point. “What’s wrong with boil in the bag”? In Andy’s book he writes that Chris Gore was an excellent cook and I used to always burn him off, maybe he mixed up the Chris’s?

During my early days dossing in 84 everyone would go to the poly gym to train. This wasn’t a weights room but a gym as in “school gym” with ropes to climb and those slippery wooden beams that lower down from the ceiling. I have no idea what these are supposed to be used for but someone had screwed some bits of wood onto them making a crude finger board. Jerry, Chris and Basher used to go there to train I used to go to show off. It was nothing by todays youtube standards (I would’ve loved youtube) but I was better than most. I could do one arms on all the edges, traverse the beam back and forth with a half turn between each hold and of course the levers. This was enough until Tim Freeman came along and then I stopped going. Jerry of course trained himself way beyond my tricks.

I once spent a week with Jerry in Fontainebleau, we spent every day at Cuvier practicing the whole white circuit. The idea was that when the Parisians came at the weekend we would pretend we’d just arrived then effortlessly cruise all the hardest problems. We weren’t stupid though, we’d take alternate problems, clever eh? Carnage was one of my problems. This starts from an uncomfortable little finger pocket, with feet on some shiny stuff in a little corner you stretch across an overhang for a good finger hold which you hold onto whilst moving the feet up to better holds that enable you to release your left hand to get it on the next hold. Some sloping stuff is quickly slapped and the top reached. I never could get my feet to stick to that slippery stuff so I would simply hold the first hold and jump straight to the finger hold over the overhang. Pull up on one hand to the next hold and slap to the top. Some years later I was trying this method again and a French guy came and told me that I should use my feet. “I always do it this way” I protested “You are not strong enough” he replied in a ridiculous French accent. He was right of course and my reply “Well I used to be” was rather pointless. The weekend came but no one had invited the Parisians. Good job too as we’d destroyed our finger tips and Jerry’s remedy of espresso and paracetamol didn’t seem to work.

A “proper climbing wall” was later built in the gym, maybe it’s still there? It was a wall like the one at Leeds with stones set in brick. I had an accident there once. Jerry had inspired a whole new generation and there were a lot of new kids on the block, Jason Myers was one of them. I was from the generation above Jerry so to Jason I was certainly a has been and he let me know it. I showed him my flying mantle, a trick I’d perfected on the Warwick wall. Find a flat topped hold about the size of your hand and close enough to the ground to catch with a running jump. Catch the hold with your left hand and hook it with your right palm. Without losing momentum press into a mantle, release your left hand and catch a hold at full reach. ”Just a trick” he said “It’s your long arms”. “Things have moved on since your day”. He showed me a hideous undercut problem that used a deep finger slot and a slate foothold. I tried too hard, my feet slipped, my finger locked itself in the slot and I split my chin on another lump of slate. This all happened a week before the annual Easter trip to Buoux where I spent a miserable week walking around with a very visibly taped finger. Things had moved on and I spent a lot of time watching people on Chouca and the Rose, one of the first 8b climbs and one with a famous move where you have to reach from one hold to the next by twisting your body so you ended up facing outwards. Even though I was injured I still had a go at the “Rose move” but was horrified to discover that the hold isn’t a jug and you really do have to use your feet. I of course used

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the injured finger excuse. For my whole climbing career I had managed to compensate for poor footwork and lack of flexibility with long arms and thin ankles, this was no longer enough. I never got beyond 8a+.

Most of our friends lived in Nether edge or hunters bar but we lived in Crooks which was miles away, the road was steep with nowhere to park the car and we didn’t have a garden. We did have a small back yard which we thought we could transform into something exotic, we even bought beautiful backyards by Roddy Llewellyn for inspiration but never got inspired. Every weekend we’d get the property post and plan our route around all the houses we were interested in. There are some beautiful houses in Sheffield but they were all out of our price range, we saw some disasters in interior design but it gave us something to talk about at dinner. After only about a year living in Springvale road we found something we thought we could afford and moved to Rundle road. As we handed over the keys to the new owner of Springvale road we wished him well and hoped he would enjoy living there. “Oh, I’m not going to live here it’s for my son, he’s at the university” that put us in our place.

The house on rundle road was a bungalow and since Hilary was pregnant we would be needing more space so thought we’d convert the attic. Adrian Cooper AKA Noel was now living in Sheffield with his wife Wendy, the same girl kept hidden at university. He moved to Sheffield for the gritstone and a teaching job. One evening soloing at Stanage he fell off Flying buttress overhang sustaining a head injury that changed his personality and made it difficult to continue his job as a teacher. He had always done building work in the holidays so started his own building firm. His first big job was our attic conversion. As always it was a bigger job than we had thought, the joists had to be strengthened, the roof slates replaced etc. etc. We spent the summer in a tent in the Garden but had to move back inside when the weather got cold. By Christmas Hilary was very pregnant and we were getting desperate and then the arguments started. I’m not sure if there could have been a way to avoid the confrontation but I wish we had. Adrian packed up and I finished off the skirting boards and paneling. Stupidly I never spoke to Adrian again, he died of cancer a couple of years later. Friends are very important, money isn’t. When we built our house in Norway I made the decision that whatever happened I would not get angry with the builder. I didn’t. Thanks Noel.

Gritstone is convenient but you can’t always find someone to climb with, during my Sheffield years I did a lot of soloing especially on Stanage, Tippler direct, Censor, Desperation, Constipation and Asp. As Jerry famously said “if you don’t let go you can’t fall off” and when soloing you have no intention of letting go and soon get very relaxed about the whole danger thing. Crossing a swimming pool is dangerous if you can’t swim and climbing a cliff is dangerous if you can’t climb. “But what if you fell from there?” Why would I let go there? In all the days soloing I only remember one frightener. It wasn’t a difficult climb, Overtakers Buttress HVS I think. Got my hands on the sloping top, went to move up and started to topple backwards, slapped wildly and caught a hold. It was just like the feeling that winter on low water Beck. Recurring nightmare. People often use the expression “I hope your dreams come true”. I hope mine don’t, if they do I’ll never be on time for trains or planes, always be forgetting baggage and sitting exams I’ve not studied for.

Unless your name is Ron Fawcet, soloing the same routes over and over again can get quite boring but climbing harder and harder ones becomes quite dangerous so to fill the need I’d concentrate on bouldering and so did a lot of other people. I remember the first time Martin Veale, a well-known boulderer, showed me a sit down start. This sounds strange, and I thought it a bit silly at first, but it’s when you start climbing from a sitting position. It’s most beneficial on overhanging boulders, giving you an extra meter of climbing. I don’t think it really caught on until bouldering mats (portable crash pads) were introduced, it’s quite painful landing on the ground on your bottom even from 1 m. This was the time of the plantation, the business boulder and Jerry’s traverse. I tried play with the big

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boys even getting one move away from doing Jerry’s traverse but normally I’d be at the other end. I spent so long hanging on the sloping traverse at apparent North that it developed a permanent white stripe of chalk and got named after me. I certainly didn’t call it Hampers Hang, Steve Bancroft wouldn’t allow it. Jerry had his traverses I had my hangs. Unbeknown to me the holds on Joker used to be one of them. I did clean the holds but I don’t think I ever hung on them. Maybe I told Jerry I thought I could hang on them or something like that.

Josie was born on the 9th of February 1989. Judith Gore had Sam a couple of months later. Floodgates opened again. We were very keen not to be annoying parents whose life centred around their new born baby but we failed. To show that having a baby hadn’t restricted our social life we took Josie with us everywhere. When someone sat on her at a party we realized that maybe a climbers party is not a safe environment for a baby and getting told off soloing with her on my back put a stop to that (it was only a diff). Before having Josie I was quite afraid of babies. I am uncle to 7 but not a very good uncle and was always frightened to pick them up when they were babies. It’s strange how you love your own children more than anyone elses but throw them around like they are made of rubber.

Luckily they are made of rubber, something I proved by sitting on Josie when attempting to propel her down a waterslide. One of Josie’s favourite things was to be thrown in the air. I’m quite strong and with my long arms could whip up quite a lot of speed if I started really low, It was only when I saw the photograph that I realized just how high I was throwing her. I wonder if grandchildren are made of rubber too?

Figure 59 Dr Josie Hamper always was a high flier.

With all the extra expense of having a baby, baby minder, car seat and cuddly toys plus the extended mortgage we didn’t have a lot of spare cash. Saturday morning was spent shopping in Sheffield market for cheap vegetables and fish that could be whizzed into baby food. Shark and potatoes became a clear favourite. The car situation had hit rock bottom, the Micra was too boring so we sold it and bought a specially converted XR2 convertible which I crashed. We then went completely down market to a Renault 4 which we managed to part exchange, just before the floor went through, for a

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Citroen GS whose suspension tested the limits of my ability as a car mechanic. With no money it was difficult to justify an Easter trip to Buoux but I had a plan.

I used to take students at TRC climbing on Wednesday afternoon and there were two boys who were very good, Rob Scaiffe and Jonathan Luddit, it would be great to take them to buoux. The idea was to sell the citroen buy a cheap VW camper van, do it up with the help of the boys and drive it down to buoux. If it didn’t make it we’d use the AA five star to get back. We bought an old wreck but found out it was too old for the AA to insure it so had to do it up properly. There was quite a lot to do but working on a VW is easy and the boys would visit on Saturdays to help. New exhaust, clutch, brakes and heater cable were not too difficult but I had to use the metal work facility at TRC to fabricate parts for the sliding door mechanism. The plan worked and we got to buoux although I never really got into camper van living. Having to clear up after breakfast before driving to the crag was a pain.

First route was TCF 7a. I led up with Rob belaying. Got to the top clipped in and let go. I dropped like a stone for about half the length of the route then suddenly stopped. This time I did swear. Rob hadn’t realized what the procedure was and I hadn’t explained it. He had only climbed routes where you stop at the top and bring up your second. When I got to the top he stopped holding the rope.

Luckily there was a French climber who saw it happen so grabbed the rope. I was very shaken and gave Rob a severe telling off. He didn’t climb again that week. He felt like he had almost killed me and I had been close to death but It was my fault entirely. To climb hard you need to switch off the danger button and that can be dangerous.

Another project I did with the Rotherham lads was to build a training board. Andy had one in his garage. The era of 84 was over and everyone, except Andy, had bought a house. Andy lived in the Attic of a house with people he didn’t know but it had a garage for the board. He might have still been with Alix but it’s difficult to say as they kept splitting up. The board was made of chipboard which is cheaper then plywood. It was suspended by ropes so swung about when you climbed on it.

The garage was on the road so anyone walking past would look in, this was made worse by the fact that you had to keep the door open. All problems started sitting on some old mattresses with the feet on the back wall of the garage, you’d pull up pinch a block between your toes and reach the top.

Andy may have used it systematically but when I was there we played. The wall was badly made and I didn’t like the way it moved so I thought I’d make a better one.

Figure 60 Me and Andy on a night out (with our girlfriends).

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There was an old storage room at TRC that contained a load of rubbish and some gym mats. With the permission of the principal I got rid of the rubbish by selling it to Bashers wife Fiona whose family owned an antiques business (Green Antiques). With the proceeds of the sale and some money chipped in by the boys, we bought the materials to build a board. It had three sections each one plywood sheet big. Staring with a horizontal roof to an overhanging board followed by another horizontal roof. It was completely over engineered, didn’t wobble and we had a proper mattress.

One of the amazing things about bouldering is the progression. You start not being able to use a hold at all but after adjusting body position and finding the exact place for fingers you can not only hang the hold but move off it. I made all the holds in the woodwork room and as is often the case I overestimated my potential and made holds that we never got strong enough to use. However we did get strong, stronger, very strong, clunk this time a shoulder.

Competition climbing had just begun, I saw my first competition in Leeds a year or two before the big one in ‘89. It was on a narrow free standing structure, I was injured so didn’t compete. I think Mark Leach won and I remember thinking how easy it looked, climbing on a wall where all the handholds stuck out so obviously. When it was announced that the World cup final event would take place in Leeds I was keen to try. Josie was only a baby so I didn’t want to go out climbing but Chris Gore gave me a resin finger board. It was the sharpest, roughest most evil finger board ever made. The first weeks were agony but as fingers got stronger it became tolerable and after a while I was doing micro traverses and mini problems swinging about in our hallway. For the first time I trained systematically.

To help with motivation and build a bit of core strength I joined a Gym in Rotherham called peppermint pineapple or something similar. They were impressed with my pull ups but didn’t understand the pink tights. “That’s what you wear isn’t it?” “Yeah the girls”. I mention motivation because I found that paying the annual subscription meant that I’d want to get my money’s worth so would go there every day after work. I also bought some running shoes.

It was a bit of a stupid idea but to prove a point I wanted to show the other teachers at TRC that I was fitter than them even though I smoked (about 20 a day). There was an annual fun run that went through some woods then back up along the road. Every lunchtime a small group of teachers would do the loop to keep fit. First time out was worrying but I got used to the pain and at least in my memory beat all the teachers. I wonder if smokers burn more calories when running than nonsmokers, it’s certainly harder. I’m not sure what I was trying to prove, maybe that smoking isn’t bad for the health or something, it didn’t prove that but it made me cut down and I lost some weight.

After a couple of months on the finger board I was ready for the competition. All the big names were coming, Edlinger, Glowac, Kauk, Tribout and the Brits, Moffat, Nadin, Dawes and Edwards. Not being a who’s who I had to qualify which meant taking part in the GB round. Isolation was a strange experience in a room full of food you couldn’t eat and problems you couldn’t do, lots of friends to catch up with though. The GB route seemed quite slabby, started easily over a bulge which judging by the applause I got most had fallen off. The top roof was a bit more difficult to a poor hold and off.

Seems like if you start with the correct hand on move 1 everything unfolds, easy. Andy who was a who’s who but had been away for a while had to qualify too and came first. Tony Ryan who like me probably wasn’t a who’s who came 2nd I came 3rd or maybe I was pushed into 4th by flash in the pan Malcom Taylor. Getting through the first round meant I had qualified to take part in the qualifying for the world cup. World cup qualification was a bit harder but I made the cut by using a hold on the E of Entreprise. I was in the world cup! My mum was right.

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Figure 61 I think this is the semi-final, Graeme Alderson is the judge.

All the stars now joined so isolation was more interesting and I couldn’t resist doing some foot off problems for a warm up. No one was interested in my poor showing off attempts they were all busy listening to music on headphones and reading books. Antisocial. I fell off quite low down but did OK finishing about 24th IN THE WORLD. Sorry for shouting. Quite a few of the famous bunch were behind me. Edlinger tied himself in a knot low down, Johnny Dawes bounced off the first hold and Mark Edwards grabbed a sling then had to be pulled off because he refused to come down. Jerry won of course. I quite enjoyed the whole experience and found that the pressure actually enabled me to blot out all thoughts of falling, unfortunately no one noticed and I never got the call up for the British team.

Andy was spending a lot of time in Australia where he did a lot of climbing which was often reported in the UK magazines accompanied by Glenn Robins photos. People had been thinking I was gay for years but Glenn was the real thing. It was the first time I’d met anyone admitting to be gay and his stories were an eye opener for me. Glenn wasn’t, as far as I know, a climber he was a climbing photographer and followed Andy back to the UK to take photos. Glenn had seen photos of Stefan Glowacz on a route called Isis (a name with other connotations today). At the bottom of the route there are boulders that look like pebbles so it messes up the perspective making an interesting photo. Glenn wanted to recreate the photo and needed models, Andy and I happily volunteered.

After the event it might appear that this was a “we’re going to come and do all of your routes and say how easy they are” sort of trip but it wasn’t. It was a “we’re going to come down and have our photos taken” trip, that and a family holiday.

I already knew Mark, Hilary and I had been to Cornwall before with Basher and his future wife Fiona.

That time it was a “we’re going to come down and drink cider a mead” sort of trip with a bit of climbing. We stayed at Compass west got to know Mark and his family. Mark didn’t climb much outside Cornwall so was always keen to meet visiting climbers, he’d recommend routes and show us around but didn’t join in with the mead drinking.

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On the trip with Andy we had certain routes we wanted to try, Rats in a Rage and The Rose, I didn’t know much about Rats but I knew the line of the Rose and it looked great. On the first day we abbed down the Rose to find it had been chipped, Mark says it wasn’t him, we’re not sure we believe him, I write a cryptic article for high and the whole controversy explodes. The reason I wrote that article was as a vehicle for Glenn’s photos, which were superb. Although being made to wear the same colour coordinated t shirt and tights every day might have ruined it for the others. I’m glad Mark still speaks to me, on face book at least, friendship is more important than a bit of rock.

Figure 62 Rats in a rage.

We weren’t alone in Cornwall the Carringtons and Boysens made up the full set of happy families. So I got to know my childhood hero, he still wears those glasses has velvet feet and putty hands. As for Rab all I can say is that some of those stories might be a wee bit exaggerated, he’s not quite as ferocious as I had been led to believe.

Limestone continued to be my rock of choice but due to fear of falling I still couldn’t get into the red point method. I didn’t yoyo anymore but didn’t work routes either. Mark Leach on the other hand had got well into it and had been pushing the grades in Yorkshire with his 60 day ascents of some mind boggling lines. I probably wouldn’t have been able to get up them anyway but I wasn’t interested in spending 60 days on one route so 8b and 8c remained out of reach. Climbing mainly with Andy I did some quick repeats in water com jolly that were close to the flash point of the day but nowhere near the cutting edge. My hardest flash being Disillusioned Glue Machine 8a and got a retro flash when I fell off due to loose rock above the new anchor on Inch Test 8a+ (my rules).

Before I left Sheffield Gritstone bouldering had made its come back which fitted in nicely now I had responsibilities that made me think twice about soloing. I kept just behind the pace for a while doing Westside Story and had some futuristic plans concerning the holds that would become the Joker but soon got left behind. Long arms and thin legs didn’t seem to be enough anymore. At the same time the financial pinch was starting to hurt, Andy had moved to Australia. Basher had moved to Switzerland, we had VW bus with a rotten chassis, I worked most nights doing evening classes and private tuition, Hilary worked full time but it all seemed to go on the nanny, the roof leaked and we

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wanted more children. An insurance salesman came to visit and asked “what savings have you got?”

None “where has your money gone?” Holidays?

I sat on the toilet seat with Josie in my arms and cried tears of despair. I may have been good at climbing but I wasn’t good at being a husband and dad. How was I supposed to get us out of this. For the first time I felt the feeling of responsibility, no one else was going to solve this for me. For years I was working to climb. I was a good teacher, my students liked the class and they got good results but I was doing it in my sleep, waiting to wake up when I got to the crag. I got good holidays and up to that point enough pay. Hilary had a good job working in FE but if we had more children she’d have to stop for a while. I didn’t normally bother but I bought a copy of the Times Educational Supplement on the off chance that something would appear. It did.

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Atlantic College Atlantic College is a very special school, one of a chain of schools called United World Colleges. When I worked at Sidney Stringer I used to take kids there on week long residential courses. They’d do a bit of rock climbing, kayaking sand sledging and various team building stuff. The most impressive bit was the instructors were students. My students were good but these were unbelievable. At night I’d take my students to night clubs in Bridge end then get back for breakfast, scary on many levels. Atlantic college is a residential school so staff are provided with housing, if we lived there we could rent out our house, problem solved. I wouldn’t have bothered applying if I didn’t know that this wasn’t just some posh school but that they valued other qualities. I’m not sure what other qualities I was thinking of but rock climbing must count for something. As it turned out the actual rock climbing was quite irrelevant it was the passion for it that got me in, either that or the interest in foreign cultures and languages as illustrated by my O’level in French (I lied).

Figure 63 Atlantic college.

Wives were also invited for interview at AC so Hilary and I drove down in the camper van dropping Josie at my mums in Kenilworth. I knew what to expect but Hilary was blown away by the castle and sea front, TRC was impressive but this was another world. We got shown round by two students who oozed confidence then we met the other applicants in the common room. I was dressed in my usual scruffy work clothes they had on suits. I was introduced to Dr this and Dr that it wasn’t looking good.

The vice principal arrived straight from the seafront in T shirt and Jeans, things were looking up. That evening I researched the history in preparation for the interview and unpacked my suit (not the green one that was long gone). Learning from their previous dress error my rivals turned up in jeans, the principal wore a suit, gotcha. The reason I got the job was obviously nothing to do with my choice of clothes but they gave me confidence. The principal was impressed with my climbing achievements and thought I would fit in, he was right, I did.

The staff was overflowing with passionate individuals who inspired their students to be the same, there were concert pianists, runners, mountaineers, kayakers, footballers, sailors everyone had something apart from their teaching. I was taking over from a teacher who would later be awarded physics teacher of the year so it wasn’t going to be easy, some of the students I was going to teach had won national physics competitions in their home countries, frighteningly clever. The school is an international school with students from all over the world, most of them on scholarships. Most of my typical physics teacher word play jokes fell on stony ground so I moved to slapstick. I once pretended to that I could break a glass with my voice if I breathed in Helium. I set up a safety glass screen and everything. When the moment came I hit the high note and broke the glass with a hammer.

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After years of looking at houses we’d developed a taste for houses with character so plumped for the tiny stone gatehouse on west drive. We really were living in a castle. The house was fine when we only had Josie, who once again proved she’s made of rubber by falling down the stone steps, but when Rowan arrived we moved out to be house parents.

Being a house parent meant living in a huge house with sea views which was attached to the dormitory block for 50 students. It was an honour to be a house parent and we had got there in one year, we became part of the inner circle, my salary had double and we lived in a big house with a garage. You don’t get anything for nothing, I worked every day and every night including weekends.

We had to check in all our students every day at 10 in the evening 12 on the weekends. I was also head of the physics department. Hilary also was expected to muck in, we did check in together and every week she’d hand out money at housebank for which she received an allowance. It was demanding but most of the students were great and we loved it. We were a pain to be with for a while with all our student stories. Name a country and we know a student from there.

It was a great place for children and there were many of them all of about the same age so we had another, Florence. This meant we needed to change from the fiesta, that we bought the minute I’d got the job, to a Renault Savanah but by now I had totally lost interest in cars. Living on campus I didn’t have to drive to work, I’ve never driven to work since.

I partially got the job because of climbing and the principal had me down to join the coastguard unit.

Believe it or not the students at AC manned the Coastguard station, rescuing people stuck on the cliffs and retrieving suicide cases from the bottom. Even more impressive than that they manned the lifeboat (boys and girls). If the klaxon sounded the students would rush down to the seafront get into their dry suits and launch the boat into the stormy seas. They saved quite a lot of lives but more often than not they were bringing back corpses for burial. Apparently only a doctor can say that someone was dead so if the picked someone out of the water they had to perform resuscitation, some of them had been in the water a long time and would fall apart.

I was in Coastguards for a couple of sessions but convinced them that using a walkie talkie was not one of my skills however my physical fitness might come in handy with the surf life-saving team. Not helped by my previous smoking habits, now down to the occasional secret one on the beach, I was not a good swimmer. However I was motivated to try. One of the factors was an annoyingly fit upperclass Swedish student who would always look mockingly round as he passed me on training runs. I wanted to beat him It was surf lifesaving in the true sense of the word, saving peoples life in surf. This meant attaching a rope to your back, swimming out through the waves, grabbing the drowning person then being dragged back to land. Not easy and not pleasant especially in winter. The team also used kayaks so that was something else to master.

The first kayak session was literally in at the deep end. Although a member of staff, I was treated as a beginner so had no responsibility, the students were the instructors with a supervising teacher lurking about in case it all went wrong and it did. The waves in the Bristol Channel can get quite big, on this occasion the swell was well over 2 m. one instructor launched and the other launched the beginners timing them nicely so they wouldn’t get pummeled by a breaking wave. We all got out but what now? As we drifted East the swell took us up and down. When down you were on your own only seeing the group when lifted by a crest. Nobody….there they are……nobody………….ones capsized………nobody………….two capsized. One by one they all went over. I was most impressed by a a Russian boy who had been told that if he capsizes he should wait underwater with his hands on the side of the kayak until someone came to get him. It took some time for anyone to notice him and

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longer to get to him. At the last moment he popped out with an “I’ve been had” look on his face “why you not save me”. The end wasn’t pretty with all the kayaks strewn along the rocky shoreline but nothing got broken. They don’t do that anymore.

After that experience I had to learn some skills so decided to take a kayak on holiday. We were going to the Dordogne so it was the perfect opportunity to try out a river kayak. I should have read the bit in the book about leaning downstream, several capsizes and I got the hang of it. Have a go Hilary. I should have passed on my new knowledge to Hilary, I also should have told her how to get out of the kayakbut I didn’t want to be patronizing. At the first rapid she went round and got pinned under a tree. In the mean time I had driven down river to meet her so had no idea what had happened.

Trapped in the kayak she panicked, panic is sometimes a good thing and she popped out of the kayak. I had a long wait downstream with 2 babies as Hilary waded the length of the Dordogne.

Better to be patronizing than sorry.

Never one to learn a lesson I had a narrow escape a week later when I launched out into a glacier river in the alps. After about 2 seconds my spray deck burst off and the kayak filled with water I managed to get to the side in an eddy. Deciding that was enough for the day we drove off downstream past a massive waterfall. Now I had learnt a lesson, I enrolled in a Kayak course.

I learnt how to scull for support with my ear in the water, keep in a straight line with a rudder stroke and most important how to roll (I never trusted students enough that I’d wait for a rescue). I also passed all the lifesaving exams RLSA and SLS and sometimes ran along the beach with a multicolored skull cap. I never beat the Swedish guy, he was training too.

There is climbing in South Wales and I even had a friend to climb with. Eugene Jones had moved close to Bridgend the previous year from Coventry. Him and mate Duncan Bean had taken over my crown of “best climber in Coventry” whilst I was away at university, soon put that right when I got back. The problem wasn’t the partner it was more the time, and the rock. I had a look at Ogmore but I had been softened by years of bolt protected, solid routes with chains at the top. Ogmore has no bolts isn’t solid and has a grassy bank at the top. I couldn’t believe how desperate “easy” routes felt. I only went there once.

The gritstone of south wales is sandstone and although the routes are bolt protected and some quite good they are up in the valleys some of which are scarier than Ogmore.

“Mr Ogmore it’s time to inhale your balsam” (Under milk wood) The place that kept me climbing sane was the Trench. The trench is a gulley in the limestone pavement that forms the fisherman’s ledges at Ogmore by sea. I knew all about it because when I took the kids from Sidney Stringer on the course the climbing was done there and whilst they climbed I bouldered. In the time before pads the sandy landing made a difference but now I guess it is irrelevant. The rock is water worn limestone like those perfect scalloped bits at the top of Verdon but without the sharp pockets. Friction is minimal especially when the limpet population is at a peak.

I’d go there whenever possible almost always on my own. I once got Martin Veale down there but he didn’t like it, like oyster it’s an acquired taste, slippery too. Some of the routes took a long time to work out others took a long time to name but both processes were rewarding.

The Dartford runnel Scoop Dragon Silence of the Clams

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I am as pleased with the names as I am with the problems. I tried to tick over as a climber but it wasn’t easy so I decided to go to Rotherham for the board. I borrowed a minibus from the school, no need to disconnect the speedo this time and drove up to get it having convinced the caretaker I wasn’t a thief he helped me take it down. Actually I was a thief, what I didn’t realise was the Rotherham lads were still using it I thought they’d left. Once installed in the garage I had something to train on and so did our children and the students.

All of our children were introduced to the board, I’d take them out in their pajamas and they’d hang on the holds, some of them had names (the holds as well as the children) and I’d tell them what the words said (educational). The board was about Rowans limit as far as height was concerned but Josie was fearless. I made her a harness out of nylon tape but she went upside down when she fell off so I had to buy her a proper one. Apparently a child’s heads weighs so much that they have to use a full body harness. Seems to be true.

We continued with climbing holidays for a while but it became more difficult to arrange to meet partners and I felt bad leaving Hilary with the kids all day although I should make it clear that she didn’t make me feel bad. I’m a climber, that’s what we do. Bouldering was more child friendly but summer isn’t the best time for Fontainbleau! We had a long summer holiday and would go Eurocamping, to be more truthful it was Eurositing which is a cheap version, unfortunately it meant that we could never stay exactly where we wanted to be which resulted in some long drives to the crag. Our children sometimes suffered from the “parents not getting it right syndrome”.

Chris Wiggin taught design technology. He is from Cardiff and had attended AC as a scholarship student, he played rugby and was really good at surf kayaking. Surf kayaking is surfing in a kayak, at a basic level you paddle the kayak in front of a wave it pushed you to the shore in a straight line until the wave broke and you’d go the rest of the way sideways trying to dig your way out of the white water. If the wave was steep it would throw you over, Chris used to play with this it’s called a pop out. As the wave begins to break and the kayak starts to rush down the face stand on the foot pegs and lean back. The nose of the kayak dives under water. Archimedes says that the buoyant force is equal to the weight fluid displaced so as the volume of kayak under water increases so does the upward force which gets bigger than the weight of the kayak and accelerates it up into the air. The result is impressive, difficult to believe that people do this for fun. But Chris did and so did Paul Belcher.

Paul was the head of maths. He has an almost expressionless face that is impossible to read and makes him look as hard as nails. He is as hard as nails. He was into triathlon at quite a high “super veteran” level. In a kayak he was quite insane but extremely safe, and would be able to get anyone out of any situation he put them in. I was in awe of this guy and trusted him with my life. His other hobby was embroidery.

I mentioned being motivated to be a better swimmer but the Swedish guy wasn’t my only motivation. When we first moved to Wales we were walking along the beach at southerndown with the Gores who were visiting our new home. For the first time I kept in contact with friends after moving. The Gores and Atkinsons remain our friends to this day but I think it has a lot to do with wives being friends too. Since all of my holidays involved climbing I’d never been to a surfing beach before so hadn’t seen surfers in the flesh, or more like in the neoprene. I wanted to be like them, eventually I was but it took a long time.

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Figure 64 With Chris Martin and Mark Leach in Spain. I am the oldest but still fresh of face and hair.

Wiggie was a kayak surfer, well sort of. He surfed a thing you sat on that looked like one of those roof boxes they sell in Halfords, called a surf ski. He had tried surfing a board but wasn’t so good, we decided to teach ourselves how to surf. We could have asked one of the many surfers for some lessons but they didn’t look so friendly and most of them were quite a bit younger than us. Waves look huge when they are over the head of the surfers until you realise the surfers are only 3 foot high. Wiggie dug out his old board which was a moldy green affair poorly repaired in many places. I bought a pink board with yellow stripes like the one on my famous tee shirt. I thought it looked great but it had been in the shop a long time for a reason, everyone else had white boards. If you want to learn how to surf then you should start on a long board, this one was short and fat, very difficult to catch waves with. The first time we went out I managed to catch a wave stand up, turn and go along the wave. We’d been practicing with the college foamies and knew the basics. It was a complete fluke and wouldn’t happen again for ages, it lit the fire though.

There is something very special about surfing, it may even be better than climbing. I remember meeting the keenest climber ever, Paul Williams, at the climbing wall in Bristol. We were chatting and he said. “Isn’t climbing just the best thing ever” no, surfing is. I’m not sure what it is but it’s got something to do with the once only nature of a wave. When you see a wave forming and prepare to go for it you know that wave will only exist once, once it breaks not even all the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men will be able to put humpty together again. It’s all to do with wave particle duality. It’s what makes surfing better than football. (so an egg is a wave not a particle hmm). This also adds to the pressure in the lineup. (I don’t understand that bit either) The lineup is where all the surfers sit waiting for a wave, there is an awful lot of waiting so you have to learn how to sit on the board which is like sitting on a bar of soap (a big one). There’s not a lot of talking in the lineup, everyone is concentrating on the horizon, looking for lines. When you see one you start to paddle as does everyone else, first one up owns the wave but you have to be nearest the curl. The wave of the day is coming through everyone paddles but luckily you’re in the right place and everyone knows it. Up first with a quick shout of “mine” just to make sure and the others back off and watch. The takeoff was good, you bottom turn and whoops you slip off. All those gnarly surfers that backed off shake their heads in disbelief. You don’t get another wave all day. I had lots of days like this.

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Climbing muscles are the same as surfing muscles so I was always good at paddling, this was a good thing as there are some strong currents on that coastline so you often had to paddle just to stay in the lineup. It also meant that once I’d learnt how to duck dive I could get out in any conditions.

Getting out means getting beyond the point where the waves break. Sometimes I’d get out on days when I really shouldn’t have been there. There are not many things more terrifying than sitting beyond the break watching huge plumes of spray being thrown off the backs of barreling monsters.

Even worse when alone as I often was. There are two ways back from beyond the break, ride a monster or get eaten by one. Luckily most don’t have any teeth and they spit you out on the beach.

From day one I was hooked on this sport, I really wanted that feeling of flying up and down the wave.

Wiggie and I would surf at every opportunity and were very grateful for something called Global Concerns. These were days when classes were cancelled so students could discuss religion, politics and stuff like that. Let them get on with it, surf’s up. It was on a global concerns day when I got my first, and only barrel.

When a wave suddenly goes from deep water to shallow its speed gets less and amplitude bigger, this causes it to get steeper and the fast moving water on the peak gets thrown over forming a pocket of air called a barrel. The best barrels are formed on reef breaks where a rocky shelf causes a sudden change of depth. Surfing above rocks is not for beginners but after some years we were at that level. Monknash is a superb reef break a shortish walk from AC. It’s a “secret spot” so I shouldn’t really name it here but just promise you won’t go there. There are three problems at monknash.

1. The current is so strong you can be taken for an involuntary ride along the base of the cliffs if you don’t paddle against it.

2. It’s Shallow. When a wave peaks it sucks up the water in front of it and you can see the rocks a few inches below the surface. It’s perfectly OK provided you don’t fall over.

3. The other surfers. When monknash is firing the local pros come from miles and when they are in the water you won’t get a look in.

My barrel day was perfect, the tide was coming in and was about half way up so the rips hadn’t started. The wave wasn’t massive so not too intimidating, slight offshore wind and sunny. It was midweek so no one else there. I was had sneaked off early so was in the water alone, Wiggie had just arrived and was watching from the cliff. I took off and went right as the wave peaked, crouching down, as always tend to do, the wave went over my head. You can tell from the sound that you’re in a barrel, it was long ago and it only happened once so I can’t describe it but definitely strange. After 4 years of effort I’d achieved my goal and that what makes it so special. The first law of thermodynamics: The more you put in the more you get out.

During the surfing period family holidays focused around surfing beaches. At night the land cools but the sea doesn’t, warm air above the sea rises causing an offshore sea breeze that steepens the waves and makes them glassy. The best surf is often early in the morning before the children are awake, perfect. We’d find a Eurosites campsite near the beach, I’d get up at 5 surf for a couple of hours then buy croissants on the way back to the tent. I was then happy to do holiday stuff for the rest of the day.

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Figure 65 Family holiday.

To find surfing beaches you can use website like “magic seaweed” in those days I relied on a book, “The Stormrider Guide to Europe”. Here is my stomrider guide: Monknash: A secret spot, don’t go there.

Llantwit: Lots of kids and locals, some not friendly. Very difficult to stay in the lineup due to currents.

You can always try to surf the beach on the right if there are too many people in the water but you won’t catch anything.

Southern down: Beach break, best after low tide coming in. Water looks incredibly dirty but it’s just sand.

Ogmore river mouth: The water look very dirty here too. This is because of sewage so keep your mouth shut.

W wales: Lots of beaches here, much cleaner than the Bristol channel NE England: Only went here once, mushy waves, didn’t catch one.

Devon: Many excellent spots and nice placed to stay. Had a frightener at Bude. The surf was huge and very windy, early morning as usually one other surfer in the carpark but he didn’t go in. I gave battle for an hour then gave up. Shouldn’t have gone in really Cornwall: I was getting a bit cocky and surfed a wave that broke into a narrow gap between two boulders. Why? Hosssegor: Closest I’ve been to surfing death. Got talking to a really good surfer from west wales and made him think I was better than I am. He had heard it was pumping down the coast so we shot off in the car, he excited me apprehensive. Got there and only one guy in, wearing a yellow wetsuit getting barrel after stand up barrel. Duck dived my way out, so far so good. That one’s yours he said so I went for it. Like going over the Niagra falls on a tea tray. Tumbling under water I had no idea which way was up so waited for Archimedes. Air had been knocked out of me by the impact so I was soon desperate. Surfaced as lungs about to explode, deep breath and booff. Hit by another one.

Eventually I get out and I’m on another beach. Went back in for more.

Biaritz: Nice main beach but very crowded. Almost went out alone during a storm. Got suited up but changed my mind. Nutter.

La corunya: Surfing right outside the hotel. Went there on a course and took my board with me.

Ireland: Went to many beaches but caught few waves, changed my board soon after.

Fuertaventura: Chose the hotel because it was near a break called Spew Pits. Big mistake. Couldn’t get to sleep because of the sound of crashing waves. Big board snapping potential.

Portugal: Supertubos wasn’t so super when I was there, thank goodness.

Norway: Not as cold as you might think but beautiful and very clean.

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Living at AC work and play became one and the same thing but sometimes this was used to the, mainly male, teachers advantage. Project week is a week when students and staff go on trips to do various activities. Paul Belcher would always lead a group surfing in West Wales, Wiggie and I would tag along. One evening Wiggie came back from phoning his wife and Paul wasn’t pleased. “Why did you do that, I told my wife there wasn’t a phone”. As play became part of work so work became play.

The students at TRC were clever but at AC they were interested. At TRC I would ask a question then answer it myself, here they would not only answer the question they’d reply with another. With such fantastic students it’s not difficult to enjoy teaching so much it becomes a hobby. They weren’t all fantastic of course, that couple always giggling on the back row, we knew what you were up to.

The International Baccalaureate diploma programme is equivalent to A’ levels but students take 6 subjects 3 at Higher level and 3 at Standard level. They also have to do a wide range of activities that include elements that are Creative, Active and something with an element of service (CAS). That’s where all the saving of lives comes in. They also do TOK which is too difficult to explain and the extended essay (EE). Doing an essay in physics is quite a task, we normally do maths and lab reports but not essays. That’s one reason why I took the subject, I didn’t like writing (things change). Many physics teachers try to dissuade students from writing their EE in physics I encouraged them. They would call round our house and the children would sit with us at the kitchen table discussing, what forms those haloes round street lights? Why does double cream curdle so quickly? Why can’t you charge a deflated balloon? And other interesting problems. This was also the start of the PC era and I was quite quick to adopt the new technology into the classroom using interfaces for measurement, Excel for drawing graphs and Interactive Physics for animations. I could see the potential and looked forward to a time when we would be able to project these moving images onto a screen.

We still had a house in Sheffield but couldn’t stay there because we’d rented it out. I’d dossed at so many houses I was keen that a group of climbers would rent our house and for a while this was the new 84 (thank goodness it wasn’t the new 124). The people who paid the bills were Dave Thomas and Al Williams (I think) but many other people lived there including Ben Moon’s girlfriend, I think the house got a mention in his biography, cool. Or maybe not so cool, we ended up selling the house at a loss in the dip between two housing booms.

Having almost given up smoking meant that my lungs could absorb more oxygen and inspired by the active runners on the staff, Wiggie and I started to run, 10 km was the standard distance. I always ran against the clock and was very competitive with my own times. I would’ve been competitive against the others but Paul and music teacher Chris Davies were way better. They would play around running slightly too fast for me, dragging me along until I puked. Puking due to exhaustion is one of the worst types of puking but better out than in.

AC changed my life in that I now had a career and not just a job. Not doing a lot of climbing but surfing whenever possible and three children who were all healthy and happy. Rowan was the happiest, he lived next door to his best friend Erlend, son of Inger Johanne and Arne the Norwegian teacher. He once drew a picture of the two of them living together when they grew up. I think Rowan’s psychic.

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Norway It takes a lot of planning to open a new school so even when we first joined AC there was talk about a new college opening in Norway but it took 5 years before the partnership with the Norwegian Red Cross and UWC was to give birth to the Red Cross Nordic United World College (RCN). The year before opening we went on a family holiday to check it out.

We had previously done something we don’t often do we bought something that was actually a bit cool, the Taj Mahal. It’s a triple dome tent. The central dome is so high you can stand in it and the two wings were big enough to sleep the whole family. When we put it up on a campsite other campers would make a detour to have a look. The first trip was a bit of a disaster due to high winds but when we learnt how to batten down the hatches it would withstand force 10, well maybe 5. We packed the Taj and set off to Norway. We’d bought a Renault Savanah because with 3 kids we needed 3 rows of seats, not true you might think. It is true if the children mustn’t touch each other. Rowan would have to sit back in the back to avoid contact with his sisters. We also loaded up a kayak but lakes only this time.

Figure 66 The Taj in Norway.

We did Norway in and out of the nutshell taking in the capital city Flekke. We were blown away, might it really be possible that we could actually live in this beautiful place. I was particularly taken by the rock, it was everywhere. There was a superb bulging wall that overhung the road, boulders actually on campus and a cliff that looked like the East Buttress of Scafell but bigger only 20 minutes away. Unfortunately the bulging was later dynamited so the road could be widened but there’s plenty more. We were impressed with Norway and decided to move there. Just one thing, I had to get the job. I was so nervous the days before the interview that Hilary sent me to a sensory deprivation chamber. It was like a tent in the back room of a house in Devon. Inside it’s totally dark and you lie in a pool of water that is at body temperature and contains as much salt as the Dead Sea. You might think that it would be silent but the sense of hearing is deprived by listening to new age music. All completely legal but weird. It didn’t work because I had a panic attack trying to find the station, I got the job though.

Moving to a new school is the ultimate for a teacher, you get to make the traditions and fill the cupboards. I basically went through the catalogues picking out everything I’d ever wanted, Teltron tubes, ripple tanks, interfaces lap tops and a PC with a huge screen for showing

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animations. I told Jelena, the Biology teacher my strategy and she went over the top buying a class set of Leica microscopes. All the science teachers were women which was strange for me, I’d only worked with men before. They would often give each other and me a hug when returning from holiday. I must’ve flinched or something because I got a reputation for not liking to be hugged, I’m no longer sure if I do or not.

Josie had already started school in Wales and could read and write, in Norway they didn’t start until 6 years old so she had to pretend she couldn’t for a couple of years. It’s not good to stand out in Norway. They all learnt Norwegian in 6 months but Florence who was only 2 didn’t realize there were two different languages just that things had different names at the nursery.

Figure 67 The kids at Haugland

Hilary and I took a bit longer to learn the language but were spurred on when we overheard another teacher say that we would never be able to learn Norwegian because we were English. He was almost right, not because I am English but because my experience trying to learn French at school had given me a mental block, I couldn’t stand the lessons. Just couldn’t see the point in counting windows and reading of peoples conversations at bus stops about lost library books. I stopped going to the classes but started trying to speak using the few words I’d picked up. I’d force myself to learn by putting myself into situation where I had to. Doing the hunting course gave me insight into what it’s like to study in a foreign language. I passed by learning the answers to the question without understanding either. People in our local area, Fjaler were very helpful although there have often been misunderstandings. I found that if I was always the one asking the questions then I could control the conversation, in Norwegian I’m quite a chatterbox. Old people are easiest to talk to because if you get lost you can change the topic without them realizing. A lot of the time I am living in a virtual world of misunderstanding but so far, no harm done.

There may be rock everywhere but it’s not all good, in fact most is choss so I started my new hobby, looking for climbable rock. Driving in Norway is quite dangerous, the roads are narrow, our steering wheel was on the wrong side and there is all the scenery to look at. Looking for rocks is best done in the winter when the trees have lost their leaves but driving in winter has its problems, it snows. You wouldn’t dare to drive on the sort of conditions that everyone takes for granted, deep snow, wet slush and sheets of ice are no problem but then we do have studs in our tyres. The studs don’t solve the problem though as I found out trying to follow a bus along a perfectly straight bit of road, sometimes you need chains. First time I used them was driving up to our local ski lift. I got to the car park and could sense some not so polite sniggering. I’d put the chains on the back but the car was front wheel drive, worked OK though. Not only could I not speak the language I was completely stupid.

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One of the pros for moving to Norway was that our children would learn to ski and they did. I thought it was also a pro that I would learn to ski but this turned out to be a con. Norwegians are all brilliant skiers, compared to the average skiing Brit. I’m talking about cross country skiing of course.

We bought all the (cheap) gear the first winter and went on a skiing holiday in January. No one skis in January, it’s too cold an there was no snow on the tracks for our new skis. Eventually I was able to glide along the tracks but go off piste and I had no chance. Realising I would never be able to ski even with Kåre the music teacher, I gave up. Sometimes you just have to give in. Snowboarding was another matter, after surfing this was easy.

I bought my first board second hand, it’s too short but who cares, probably a collector’s item. Always wear a helmet and wrist guards when learning, those snappy rail catching falls really hurt. Once you understand what the edges do you can relax and try some tricks. It must be some sort of law that you always crash when you jump the furthest, which like most good laws is sort off obvious. I was only in my late thirties but my body didn’t bounce like the students, every season ended in tears.

Figure 68 Me getting some air

No snow in the summer but there is fishing. I did a bit of fishing when I was a kid and still had the antique wooden reel so bought a second hand rod to go with it. Before leaving for Norway I would try to cast the beast in the outdoor swimming pool but no one could cast with that stick. Before buying the book and watching the video I was fishing with a fly rod antique reel ordinary line and a spinner. Only fisherman would understand but that is serious idiot behavior. I actually caught a fish.

In Britain salmon fishing is a bit of a posh sport, it costs a lot of money and you have to wear cloths made of tweed. On the west coast of Norway everyone does it, I wanted to as well even If only to make my friends in the UK think I’d gone posh. First make your fly, these come in a variety of patterns created by English/ Scottish Lords and Doctors, they have names like General Practitioner, Medicine, Jock Scott and Butcher (a surgeon?). Flies are traditionally made out of exotic birds feathers plucked out of Victorian women’s hats. They are rather difficult to make, something like a jock scott would take about an hour, and you need lots of different feathers. You can get anything on eBay so I started to order. My user name is still Laksfisker which is Norwegian for Salmon fisher spelt wrong. I bought lots of feathers and learnt how to do it from the best in Fjaler. I now stick to two simple ones, the Medicine for sea trout and Thunder and lightning for Salmon. Rowan learnt too.

Casting is just timing and practice, it took ages to get it right but eventually I got the line out straight and started catching fish.

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Figure 69 A small salmon.

There is something special about fly fishing, when you hear a splash or see a ripple everything focuses in on the fish. You don’t have to think about what to do it just happens and the fly streaks out. I don’t have much of a killer instinct but when I land a Salmon that fish must die (unless on a catch and release river of course). The reason for the violence is that the fish must go home to feed the family. It really isn’t anything to do with justifying all the money spent on tackle, one salmon a year wouldn’t come close. No, it’s about food. Seeing the excitement after all the disappointments, dads got a fish. Our children never complain about bones in their fish.

I did catch a salmon on my home tied fly. 6 kg although Rowan remembers less. I waded out to a small Island, almost got swept away in the flooded river. Cast into the tail of the pool and thunk thunk, swish. Missed it, cast again, same spot. Thunk – strike. A 6 kg fish on a single handed rod isn’t easy, especially without a net but the fish was landed, wading back was exciting. My best day wasn’t the salmon though, that was the day two local sports fishermen were fishing below our house. They weren’t having much luck but I went down anyway, tied on a Medicine and cast it out, splash (Salmon go thunk seatrout go splash), then another. They soon came over and asked if they could buy one of my flies. Idiot no more. Rowan was only 6 when he started fly fishing, maybe a bit too young and he soon lost patience. At 24 he picked up my rod and cast first time. Watch out salmon.

It’s always worth planting seeds.

Figure 70 four rather rough medicine flies.

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Hidden along a wooded path lies a 60 m cliff with an overhanging section at the bottom. It’s not visible from the college but the first time I drove on the opposite side of the fjord I spotted it. The rock isn’t all great but bits are and the overhanging bit dries out quickly after rain, perfect. My first attempts on trad gear didn’t get anywhere so the college bought a drill. The deal was for every route I drilled for myself I’d drill one for the students but the deal was only with myself. Final score: Below 6b – 19, above 6b – 12. I was obviously being generous.

Preparing a whole new cliff is quite a responsibility especially when for student use. How do you know it won’t fall down, are the bolts properly placed, was the glue mixed properly. I’d have nightmares about huge blocks falling off, then they did. Thankfully no one was there but it was a major rock fall would have killed everyone. That part of the cliff is now closed. During the early years there were only students to climb with but there was always someone more into it than the rest.

Difficult to trust a beginner so I got into the habit of grabbing quick draws before falling off.

Figure 71 A 7b+ at the local cliff.

During the first year Julian from Belgium held my ropes. He has climbed before and was quite competent with the ropes. I climbed new route up to 7c with him on the end. Grading was quite difficult because there was only me but the routes aren’t overgraded. This was a whole different approach to climbing no more competing for early ascents, no more magazines, no more climbing partner. Sure, I had the students but it’s not the same.

With no climbing partner I naturally turned to bouldering. There are boulders everywhere and I found some classics. Again difficult to grade since I was alone but visiting ace Norwegian boulderer Klaus Sandvik put things into perspective and the top level was set at 7b. if it was less than 6 it wasn’t worth it, although some boulders did get downgraded due to familiarity.

If I managed after a few attempts 7a, many 7a+ a year-long projects 7b. Occasional trips to Fontainbleau proved I could still climb 7b so not far off the mark. Students never came bouldering partly because I’d become a secret smoker and this was when I did it. Some of the boulders were obvious like the one in the middle of campus, with its white rock and sharp crystals. Or the erratic on the island called the jewellery due to the red garnets. Some were chance discoveries like Igletjøn a wonderful barrel of a boulder found whilst following a small stream looking for fishable pools.

Igletjøn really is a class boulder unfortunately the barrel doesn’t have any holds that I can use but there are still some classic lines. I built a ladder out of scrap wood and started brushing.

This was climbing only for the sake of movement but I also got more and more into the boulders themselves, the patterns in the stone and the shape of the holds. When driving we would often have to stop to check out a boulder I’d seen in the trees. Lots of bad boulders around but also there are gems.

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Figure 72 Per on Bonder romantic.

Slope John paul 3rd : The limit of slopey slopers (3 of them), couldn’t hang the holds at first. the slottery: Join the slots on a bolder that never gets wet.

Benny sit down: A whole summer of effort. 20 minute walk from my house. I made the landing nice by carrying in bags of wood chips to spread on the ground. I got to love those slopers.

The crown: Very low start which makes it hard for tall people, crimpy and steep.

The professor: finger cutting crystal. Why didn’t I use tape?

Salvador Dale: The boulder looks the head in the Dali panting sleep. The local town is called Dale which is pronounced like Dali with an uh at the end instead of an eeh. Other problems on this boulder are Thor Heyerdale, Roald Dale and The Dale lama. I’m just waiting for someone in Dale to get a lama so I can drive by with visitors and spontaneously say “Oh look the Dale lama”.

I wasn’t climbing 7b boulders without training. The first day of term the new teachers were shown around the empty buildings including the storage area under the auditorium. A small cave of room with and steeply angled concrete ceiling. A bouldering room. Originally I simply drilled into the concrete and screwed in holds and we swung about above the concrete floor. The maintenance crew Vidar and Svein Øve added the plywood at a later date. Svein Øve was also the person that taught me how to fish and tried to teach me how to shoot. 20 years later I am still enjoy climbing around that room but spend more time on the a mattresses than I used to.

Full of enthusiasm for the new school I started collecting responsibilities. I didn’t like the timetable so set about making one myself. Bouldering and physics is all about problem solving. You see a problem that you can’t solve right away but you know that you have the right skills and have the confidence that if you start applying what you know you’ll get there in the end. Sometimes you fail of course but you always have a go. I had no idea how to make a timetable but I knew what the end result should look like and that I was as clever as other people who had managed the problem. I needed a new skill so taught myself how a database works. So, I not only created a time table I created a complete school administration system 113

(that’s when I realised I could have been a systema analysr). With the skill to make lists I was soon responsible for not only the timetable but the student reports, student grades, the calendar, students activities, project week, ski week, I had become an administrator which was strange since at home it was Hilary who organised everything. It was a good move by the principal who had spotted my skills and was exploiting them but it wasn’t where I wanted to be.

Whilst I had been digging out new boulders a group of young climbers had got together in the nearby town of Høyanger, a place with an abundance of hydro-electric power so the site of much Aluminium production. I was first made aware of this group when I saw a photo of a one legged climber on a superb looking granite wall jutting out of Sogn fjord. I went to investigate and met a young climber called Jomar. He had long dreads and tattoos but was very friendly and extremely enthusiastic, his mates were not so extreme but then I don’t know anyone that is. I think Jomar knows every hold on every famous problem in the world even though he hasn’t seen them. He is a font of knowledge (sorry). They were all in their teens and I in my late 30’s, they were having fun and probably wouldn’t want dad to tag along and spoil it so I kept my distance.

Figure 73 Jomar

We would often go driving around the countryside with the children at the weekend. Hilary was the school nurse and was being continuously asked to look down students throats so we needed to get away. On one drive I had spotted a superb ships bow of an overhanging crag on a hillside near Leirvik. I scrambled up to have a look and it was quality but too much for me to take on. The Høyanger boys had also seen it and got busy with the drill, too busy. Living away from the climbing scene they didn’t realise that drilling holds was an offence and some crimes were commited which they are now quite embarrassed about but it was their cliff and it was too late to start making a fuss. In my continual search for new boulders I often spot a superb looking overhanging shield of rock that on closer inspection is holdless. It’s always disappointing but it’s the boulders you can’t climb that make the ones with just enough holds so special. I have a really nice boulder in my garden with a classic line I’ll never be able to do. It’s above the septic tank so I’ve called it Brad Shit (I occasionally swear these days). It’s very tempting to chip it, what’s the point of owning a boulder you can’t climb? But I can’t.

I’d rather just sit on the tank cover and just look at the holds I can’t hang on. The unclimbed boulder means so much to me that we are going to considerable expense to move the septic tank. Myabe I should get the young lad from Bygstad to climb it for me. I was hoping that Ben Moon might do it for me when he called in one day. Yeah, Ben Moon just dropped by.

Living away from the scene you get a warped view of what the top climbers are achieving.

Ben thought that some of my projects were impossible and anyway it was raining.

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It’s no good having impossible ambitions. We once had a speaker at the college giving a talk entitled “making the impossible I’m possible” He had no arms and had done some truly amazing stuff but he hadn’t done anything impossible just things that other people thought were impossible. Impossible things are called that for a reason. I once bolted a blank wall so that I would be more motivated to train. There were some holds but I couldn’t hang them. It was too hard and I just gave up. When listening to the likes of Chris Sharma and Dave Graham I realise that maybe I’ve got the wrong attitude, neither physics nor climbing would have progressed very far with people like me who give up on impossible dreams.

Once the Høyanger boys had done all the hard work of cleaning and bolting I visited what was now called Myggvegen with the year’s best climbing student Samuli from finland. There was an 8a I wanted to have a go at, it’s a beautiful looking roof, crimpy, contorted and reachy.

I set off but fell after 15 feet. The boys had got good. After returning to the ground Samuli went to fetch his lunch and Jomar approached me. “How long has that guy been climbing?” “ He can’t belay.” “You’ll die climbing with him, why don’t you climb with us?” This was a big turning point.

When you live away from other people it’s difficult to know who is available to climb at least that was true before the mobile phone. Our first mobile was a Bosch but I don’t think we ever used it. The second was a Nokia and you could send messages like “I’m at myggvegen”. I’d receive regular messages from Jomar and his mates enabling me to meet up. This was around the turn of the century and the children weren’t babies anymore, anyway Norway is a safe country so they could be left on their own, time for a come-back.

There was an indoor wall in Sogndal, the climbing club there organised a competition and some of my new friends persuaded me to enter. I dieted for a couple of weeks and went along.

I was by far the oldest, probably about the age of some of the dads but I did the first round route with ease and fell off the last move in the final winning by a mile. I felt a bit embarrassed since I had previously competed at international level, but I won a new pair of shoes and I wasn’t giving them back.

I climbed mainly with Ole Johan who had just returned from University in Trondheim and was developing a new cliff in Guddal. The routes are overhanging and pumpy unlike the short, boulder routes I was used to. I started to redpoint properly, worked routes efficiently, drank sports gel and at 54 was climbing 8a without having to use siege tactics. However the Høyanger boys were growing up, having children, moving to Bergen no longer available. This is when Per arrived.

Per first appeared as a lodger in one of the staff houses on campus. He worked in the Rehab centre as some sort of physical activities instructor and he was a boulderer. When he first visited I took him to the “always dry boulder”, it was raining again. The problems on this small strip of rock are not very friendly and maybe I wasn’t either because I didn’t see Per for about a year. He’d visit his girlfriend every weekend so was never around, luckily they split up and after realising that I wanted to climb with him and he wanted to climb with me we got together.

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Figure 74 Per

Per and I are the only members of the climbing club “Fjaler fjord and fjell”. We train together, climb together discuss important world issues together. Like most Norwegians Per speaks perfect English but from the first time we met I decided that I would only speak Norwegian with him and that’s the way it’s been. Working in an English speaking environment I don’t get a lot of practice speaking Norwegian so Per is one of the only people I speak with. He has learnt to understand what I say and has been following my backwards sentences with made up words for so long that he has started to speak like me. When I started climbing with Per it is safe to say that I was better than him, but he is physically fit and can use his feet so in time managed to climb 8a and repeat (almost) all of my boulders.

I continued to encourage the children to climb, Rowan continued to be afraid of heights, Josie continued at a reasonable level with little effort but it was Florence who for a while was the star. Totally fearless climbing adult boulders at Font when only 6, then top roping harder than any student at the time (grade 6b) when only 9. I still point this out to students who struggle on that route now. “my daughter did that when she was 9”. There wasn’t really an scene for young girl climbers in the local community, an evening bouldering competition in Høyanger proved that, so she naturally drifted away.

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Figure 75 Florence aged 4 at Font.

With more free time I continued to spear head the development in the major climbing area that is Haugland. Occasionally we get a visitor but mainly we are left alone. I have made a website to publicise the area but it gets few hits, who cares? This is climbing for the sake of it.

At about the same time there were also big changes at work. Developing databases is interesting, entering the data and running the queries isn’t. I had reached middle management and had to make a choice, stay there, move on up or do something else. I decided to do something else. I still had a full timetable of physics classes and enjoyed teaching them, this was in fact the only bit of my job that I enjoyed so I decided to only do that bit. Spending more time thinking about physics I started to take more of an interest in online forums but there weren’t many contributors, I soon made a name for myself on the IB forum but had the feeling for the most part that I was talking to myself. Having become good at talking to myself I started a blog.

The blog was rather like this book, some physics some climbing but mainly nonsense.

Readers were mainly students and I started posting for my audience, I also learnt the basics of using a rich text editor.

With all the extra free time I could do more climbing but also prepare properly for class so I wrote worksheets, tests and other resources for my classes. My students weren’t particularly appreciative so why not share it with people who might appreciate all the hard work that has gone into it, other teachers. I made a website. The original idea was to share for free, but there is a limit to what I will do for nothing.

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Figure 76 Me with some of my students.

My activity on the web attracted the attention of freelance publisher Jane Mann who contacted me about writing a text book. “who, me?” That certainly wasn’t planned but I took up the challenge and the book is now in its second edition. Writing a book is a big project, it took me a whole year of afternoons, evenings, weekends and holidays. When teachers complain about having to write student reports I laugh. “One day’s work, that’s nothing”.

Figure 77 My book

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Parkinson’s A chance meeting with Richard Van der Laagermat, the owner on InThinking, led to a side career as a leader of workshops for teachers. At one point I was doing 8 a year. This was pretty tiring and whilst writing the second edition of my book I had some shaky moments.

Sometimes I couldn’t add two small numbers together. I’d take a break for a day and OK again. Got used to the cycle, 5 days on – crash – 1 day off- 5 days on….. 6 months. I’m really good with deadlines, set my own that are before the real then beat them too. With all deadlines beaten and the book published I looked forward to the life of Riley but started having problems in class. First slight moments of blankness, I ask around and it seems I’m having and old age moment, but those I ask are older than me. I teach smart kids and so I have to be smart too, sometimes not feeling so smart. Students challenge my explanations, I lose confidence and use my authority in defence. Leaves a bad feeling. I’m used to adlibbing now I’m just following a script. I never go to the doctor, never been sick, not allowed to be, so many nurses in my life, but there are lots of small problems maybe they are connected so Hilary makes me an appointment.

I had only ever been to the doctor once, I thought I had a hernia but it wasn’t. Made the mistake of looking it up on the internet. They have to show the extreme cases I suppose but I sure didn’t want my small lump to pop out into one of those gross protuberances. Turns out it was just my body changing shape due to temporary weight loss, why is it always temporary?

That was a long time ago so I didn’t know what to expect but flicking through the Norwegian equivalent of Hello magazine I wondered what I was doing there. Everyone else was properly sick and keen to show it, sniffs and groans all around. In Norway you have to pay to see the doctor, not much, about £20 but every bit matters. This was going to be £20 down the drain, why did Hilary have to book me in?

There was nothing wrong with me but it wasn’t a waste of £20 it was a waste of £40, by the time you add on all the blood tests. No, not really a waste, the doctor used a lot of time, more than my 20 quids worth, listening to all my ailments noting them down for future reference. I also got a questionnaire to fill in about urinary problems. Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention that.

Class wasn’t going so well but climbing was OK. Fjaler fjord of Fjell had gained a new member Luis from Spain. He was a volunteer who moved to Norway after seeing my websites about climbing at Haugland. Yes, he moved from Spain to Norway to climb. Not quite the whole story, he had bigger plans, to learn Norwegian then get a job as an Architect, a good plan and he succeeded. There was also Espen, Danish, looks like a hipster but says he isn’t I believe him my kids don’t. Winter in the bouldering room was good as usual I even made some new volumes.

We never “train” in the bouldering room we boulder. Some one thinks of a problem we try it for a bit and if I feel I can’t do it I find a new one. I don’t know why but everyone else’s problems are rubbish mine all turn out to be classics. Most of my problems are the same, take a hold for each hand (I hate matching) and a good high foothold. Pull up and get a foot on the hold, lock off and reach long for a sloper. The Hamper move. The ultimate sequence, for me at least.

Foolishly I tried one of Per’s problems, always designed for specific use of feet, very difficult without. Per never tries my beta, he thinks I am too slappy and he wants to be smooth. Once or twice he has done a problem my way but he never considers it a proper ascent. I’m always conscious of him tutting as I swing my feet. What’s the point keep them on that rounded blob when you can do it without. Why is eliminating handholds seen as superior to not using the feet. Train power not technique.

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It was my fault, I never should have made those volumes. Thought it would be an interesting project, use some of the plywood that’s been hanging around in the garage. Nasty crimpy things, no use for the Hamper move. It was Per’s problem undercut with the left feet on chips up to a hold in the roof and pow! My left hand explodes of the undercut, just like that. I may not like the move but I’m not that weak. The sudden release leaves me with a painful tendon in my left arm and strained finger on my right (from trying to hold the swing). I’d injured the tendon a year previously so this was aggrevated.

At Christmas Karsten comes to visit. I used to climb with him in the summer holidays, then I was better than him but that has changed now. He comes to the bouldering room but there is no point in playing with him. He hangs on things I couldn’t touch even when I was strong. I leave him there and get a text, happy Christmas, I’ve left you a present on the wall. A couple of days later I have a look. He has left some stickers with my name on mapping out the holds for a problem. Well, at least he still thinks I can climb. I am nowhere near to doing the problem.

February and I’m in Barcelona running a workshop. My good friend Geoff Neuss is there too, he taught at AC and climbs mountains, we understand each other. I’m feeling a bit out of it at the welcome party, keeping to the edge of the group, not wanting too much social contact. I normally try to avoid occasions involving lots of people. I never eat in the school cantina and never join in with “name games” of any kind. Geoff comes over after the event and tells me I look like an old man. I was beginning to feel like one. Shocked by my reflection in shop windows I try to straighten up but it feels false, luckily there aren’t many shops where I live.

Tendon injuries get better with time but not this one, I’m fed up with waiting and decide to go for another pleasant chat with the doctor so I take out some cash and make an appointment.

My doctor is away so I get the trainee, cheaper at least. I explain the problem and he asks me to do something strange. He does a crab impression with both hands and ask me to copy. Is this really necessary? I pinch away but only my right hand moves. My left is for some reason paralysed. I try really hard and it moves for a while and stops. The harder I try the worse it gets. How about this one? Hands on knees, flip them over and back as fast as you can. Even stranger my hands go out of control shaking and slapping about. I get booked in for some tests but not sure what for and this has started to frighten me.

At home I try to google “why did the doctor ask me to pinch like a crab”. “what are those pinching tests for” “can’t pinch with both hands at the same time”. Difficult to search for something when you have no idea what it is you are looking for. My hand was getting weirder as I noticed what I could and couldn’t do. Picking things up was fine as was opening doors but using a fork was not easy nor was getting things out of my pocket. I walked without moving my left arm and I held it crookedly when I wrote on the board. My left arm is definitely weaker so I check out with the mirror, as said by a famous body builder (possibly loui Farengo) train by the mirror not the measure. My left side has gone, no lat, and a weedy bicep, withered thing.

My college database was added to and web enabled by various IT guys but eventually the college decided it had to be replaced and contacted free-lance programmer Mirek Scoczec to write the code. Having done most of the jobs that the database would help to manage I volunteered to help with the design. Over 3 years I worked with Mirek communicating most days via email and we built a new school management system called w4. A new UWC in china was interested in using our system so invited us to visit. This visit was going to happen two weeks after I went to the doctor but the tests were in 4 week time. I went back to the doctor.

This time it was my doctor so I went through all my tricks, the crab, the double handed knee slap etc. and was sent straight to the hospital for a CT scan. He wanted to rule out the possibility of a brain tumour before I travelled to China. Gulp.

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I didn’t feel very well all of a sudden so got Hilary to drive me to the hospital where I performed the crab, knee slap and a new one the finger wiggle for a 16 year old doctor. It was Friday afternoon so I was keen to get home to the next episode of The Bridge and a bottle of Valpolicello. Neurologists love to find things you can’t do. The kid also asked a lot of questions and I told about my Uncle Aubrey dying of motor neurone disease.

The scan was done and we were sent up to the Neurology ward to see the consultant who seemed to be wearing a wig. He checked the scan and there was nothing. Did the old routine plus some new stuff. Spent ages staring at my legs, back and tongue. How rude. Looking for fasciculations apparently, that’s twitching to me and you. I should mention that up to now and for almost all of the consultations I had the language has been Norwegian so I’m never quite sure what’s going on and in fact misunderstand a good deal like when he tapped my head I didn’t know I should try not to blink (found out later on youtube). Diagnosis of neurological disorders is mainly down to the score you achieve for certain tests and it’s important to know what you’ve been asked to do. I was admitted to the ward and given a bracelet but asked if it was OK to go home, they said it was. Next question, how about the wine? no problem (your brain is already shot).

That night I looked up the thing about the tongue. It’s a test for MND, you tube has videos of tongues rippling like one of my 3D wave animations. I check mine out in the mirror, it ripples, a bit. “Does your tongue ripple Hilary?” No leg twitches but had a twitching eye a week ago, my score creeps up. Lying on the sofa I can’t move my left side. Is it the Alcohol or something else? (it was the alcohol).

The hospital was closed for the weekend so on Monday I return with Hilary for an MR scan.

Someone forgot to book it so we wait all day for nothing. On the way home we decide to take a detour along a road I’ve never been on before. There had been some major tree felling which had exposed a group of boulders in the middle of what used to be a forest. Hilary stops the car and excitedly run up to have a look. Superb rock, nice slab, brilliant overhanging arête, pity about the wet landings but it might dry out. A great find, but for what? I can’t contemplate life without climbing, not that I do it all the time, it’s all the looking forward to doing it that I think I’d miss most. Tuesday I return for the scan but before I go manage to go to work to teach my class. I’m wearing my hospital bracelet and some students are off sick with a cold.

The IB physics syllabus has an option on imaging so I had to write about NMR for my book.

In the section on X rays there is a photo of my broken ankle, I was wondering if I could get a photo of my broken brain. I try to engage the radiologist in a conversation about nuclear magnetic resonance but he tells me this has nothing to do with the nucleus it an MR scan.

Lying totally still is a challenge especially listening to Norwegian country and western music.

I’m not sure what they were scanning for but they didn’t find it.

I’d been hearing a lot about the expert and was looking forward to meeting her she went through no familiar routine looked at in the eyes and said doesn’t look like Parkinson’s, given your family history it looks like motor neurone. As she told me the news I looked away and was overcome by a quite unfamiliar feeling and tears flooded out. She was very nice about the whole thing and to be fair she said most likely not that it was sure, still quite difficult to accept though.

That night I tried to tell Hilary what had happened but I couldn’t get it out. It’s not a normal sort of crying it’s a totally overwhelming, paralysing wave of crying. The next day I left for China. My sister phoned me at the airport and probably wondered why I went quite for a minute. No, she knew alright, she’s a nurse too. Meeting Mirek in Frankfurt was a bit strange, he didn’t know what was hanging over me and his reassurances that everything will be OK weren’t very reassuring. I felt that if Mirek was to get the China contract I would have to do my job of presenting W4 to the management team. I didn’t need to worry, they are all old

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friends but I wanted to do my bit, for me it didn’t matter, I made nothing from the deal but it’s my friend Mirek’s livelihood. I held it all together and did my bit and it was OK. That evening with Karen and Ian I wobbled, then later that evening lost it completely when Mirek started talking about the future. It seems silly but I didn’t want to let Mirek down by dying, maybe silly is the wrong word. From what I had read on the internet I had 3 years of slow death ahead of me. I don’t normally swear but I was shitting it.

Figure 78 In China with Mirek and Mark Wang.

Returning to Norway I was admitted to hospital again for more tests again I was discharging myself every evening and teaching classes when I could. This didn’t always go so well and a couple of times was hit by the crying wave and had to head for the door. First test was a memory/intelligence test with a Swedish psychologist, that one I did in English. I can speak Norwegian but Swedish? Forget it. I had caught something from the shanghai smog so could hardly speak. My score was a bit low but nothing to worry about. Any neurological condition has far reaching consequences so they check all brain functions. One of the main reasons for going for MND and not Parkinson’s was the withered left side so I had some rather unpleasant electric shocks down my arm to test for nerve damage. The pain shooting down my arm showed that nerves were OK so there was good news MND ruled out. The withering was due to the fall I had the year before, couldn’t use that arm for a while after which lead to the muscles wasting. Just to make sure I had a lumbar punishment. I would be no good under torture.

Next on the list was Parkinson’s which, although mentioned before, had been discounted as I was not typical, whatever that meant. The first test was with levodopa. Parkinson’s is a disorder of the brain which stops it producing dopamine. Dopamine is a chemical that somehow turns thoughts into muscle movement, levodopa is synthetic dopamine. It’s not conclusive but if I had Parkinson’s L-dopa should allow me to move my hand. It did. Problem solved here is your prescription you can now go home, smiles all round for solving the days mystery.

Well, what a relief only Parkinson’s so what do I know about that? I used to watch Horizon programmes on BBC with my mum, they were science based documentaries about interesting topics such as quarks, super conductivity and black holes. I learnt a lot and my mum slept a lot, she tried hard not to. One of these programmes or something similar was about Parkinson’s and like the one on the boy with Tourette’s was very memorable and shone light on a condition that wasn’t well known. From what I recall when the man took his medicine he writhed about uncontrollably and when he didn’t he couldn’t move. He didn’t like the writhing so was learning to do things without. Boiling an egg took an agonisingly long time and when he tried to eat it was thrown all over the kitchen. Playing pool was just as bad. To

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get moving he’d push off a wall, turn round, race to the table and try to hit the ball. Maybe he could have tried an easier sport. The other thing I knew was that Mohamed Ali has it as does Michael J Fox two clear writhers. Billy Connelly still seems quite normal and Robin Williams, well he’s dead.

I went back to work and tried to continue life as normal, no one had suggested anything otherwise and no one at work really said much. It was nearly holiday time anyway, there was however one test to go, the DAT scan. This is an MR scan with an injected isotope to show up the activity in the bit of the brain that produced dopamine. I had to stop taking L-dopa for 3 days and that wasn’t good, tried to go to work but had a shaking fit in front of the class, then cried in front of the neighbours on the way home. This was as low as I got. The test was another half hour motionless in the tube, I asked for different music but got a coughing fit.

Have you ever tried not coughing when you’ve got something tickling your throat. It throws your whole body into a spasm. The test confirmed the diagnosis. Summer holiday saved me from further embarrassment then I had a month of rehabilitation at the Haugland rehab centre just down the road.

I often watched patients at the rehab centre doing there exercises outside my physics lab and didn.t look forward to having to join in. It all looked rather embarrassing stepping on logs and throwing bean bags, but I fit helps I’ll give it a go and they should know they’ve been running session for Parkinson’s patients for years. I waited in reception for the others in blue group to arrive, they don’t all have Parkinson’s but the ones that did were easy to spot. A bit like the first time I saw a climber in Borrowdale, instant recognition that we were the same. The way we hold our heads forward, walk like we are going to fall over arms not swinging. There is also a look, sort of like a mask. We can smile but only when we think about it. I hadn’t met anyone with Parkinson’s before and was a bit shocked by the severity of some of their symptoms. One guy walked fast but couldn’t stop, another could hardly move at all and a third shook all the time. I had a lot to look forward to.

One of my worries was that Parkinson’s was causing me to lose my marbles but there were no loose screws in this lot. The cognitive problems I’d been having were due to the trauma I’d been through not the condition I ended up with. A lot of the activities seemed meaningless but I got to train a lot. The main focus is something called LVT big which is a set of repeating swinging type movements that are supposed to stop your body folding up. Probably OK if you’ve got nothing better to do but I’d rather go climbing.

The main benefit from the month was to meet other sufferers and to gain a more positive outlook. I went there thinking that I might have to stop work and left sure that I didn’t. The parts seemed pointless and on their own they are but the whole worked wonders. I also found out that if I train I can build my strength back up so started climbing again.

My hand won’t move when I want it to but if I go to grasp a cup it works fine, same with climbing. The first hold is sometimes problematic but once I get going it’s fine. Clipping bolts can be difficult so sometimes I miss them out. This is made easier by the medication that can cause reckless behaviour, gambling and impulsive shopping. If either of the last two begin to happen then I’ll just be normal. First time out was a complete disaster we were a long way from home so when it started going pear shaped I couldn’t go home and had to wait for Per and Luis to finish their fun day out. For some weeks I worked away on an old 7a problem which I eventually shook my way across, that gave me confidence so started working my way through the classics on the old cliff.

Wobbly on the 6c but it’s a start A bit scared on the 7a, got stuck on the high step at the end.

Fumbled a nasty clip on the 7b, really shocked. After practice got it wired and slapped my way to success. Then straightened it out into a 7b+ direct version.

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Couldn’t touch the crux of the 7c, a high under cling/layaway for the weak hand and power up. Found an alternative more slappy finish so downgraded to 7b+.

Figure 79 Post diagnosis 7a.

Per also wanted to do the routes again so we had some great late summer sessions.

Doctors, physios and other professional’s brought in to treat me often ask the same question.

Are you depressed? Always very direct no chance of avoidance. A couple of times I said maybe I was but that’s before I knew what it was. A journalist who had been depressed himself explained it to me. “It’s when nothing gives you pleasure”. Then I have never been depressed, my family and climbing always give me pleasure.

And that is as far as I got, there’s a lot more, just not sure if I can be bothered to finish it off.

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Part 2 It’s been more than 5 years since I wrote that last sentence, since the “book” has been sat in my dropbox doing nothing. I did approach a publisher but they weren’t interested and anyway Andy told me before he died that he had made virtually nothing from his book so I thought I might as well publish and be damned, whatever that means. A publisher would’ve got me an editor to correct my grammar, remember I never went to grammar school, this might make it easier to read but it wouldn’t be me. Not that there is anything great about being me but it’s my story and I want to tell it.

I haven’t read it again, just skimmed through and added some stolen photos but I can see there are some gaps. Some are not going to be filled, best leave out that stuff hoping no one remembers, I certainly don’t. Hilary read it again and commented that I don’t say much about family life which is true but there is an explanation, I just got tired and started to rush things, by the time I got to Norway the end was in sight and I took some short cuts. I hope to put that right now.

Spoiler warning: I have a bad memory and can’t remember what I wrote about in Part 1 so there is going to be some repeating of stories. That does make the “conversation” realistic though, as we get older we tend to just repeat the same old stories.

I tried to write a list of things I should have included but it went nowhere, I’m just going to have to write and see where I end up. Two problems, firstly I now can only type with one finger on one hand, if I try to use my left it keeps doing things without me realizing. Even though I use the keyboard every day I still can’t remember where the letters are. I look at the keyboard all the time and it’s really annoying to suddenly realise I’ve written 50 words in capitals. Typing with one finger is OK until I have to use shift, then I use my thumb which is awkward since my fingers are so stiff. Poor old me, I’m 64 by the way. My problems are nothing compared to that guy in the film “my left foot”, he had to write everything with.. well I guess it’s obvious. His eponymous left foot. Steve Bancroft taught me that word, it’s used in the old Stanage guide. Not to be taken away HVS on the eponymous boulder. I just looked in the guidebook and there is no mention of eponymous, not to be taken hadn’t even been done, the crag drawing is there but the boulder with not to be taken written on it is the big air boulder. Maybe the reference is in Steve’s guide but I can’t find it. I rarely check my facts, too much trouble. I didn’t check the facts in my first physics book either, that was caused much trouble too. Not to be taken away HVS, on the boulder close to the eponymous boulder.

The page from the guidebook

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I once had a visit by a group of occupational therapists to assess my working conditions and demonstrate some aids to keyboard usage. I use an imac with a neat wireless keyboard. No way was I going to put one of those ugly boxes on my desk, untidy or not.

There were two things, what was the other one? Oh yeah, my brain. Parkinson’s comes with a bunch of non-motor symptoms such as difficulty making decisions like should I tidy up my desk and should I empty the dish-washer, don’t laugh it’s true. It also causes compulsive obsessive behaviour, I try to channel this into positive things like writing books and brushing boulders, maybe I should channel it into tidying my desk? One of the first things I noticed was a reduction in my cognitive ability when at all stressed, I couldn’t answer physics exam questions on sight. I’m slowly getting thick. I attempt the Guardian crossword everyday to exercise my brain and it seems to be working in that I am getting quite good at them. I once finished every crossword in a week. I asked my psychologist if this was a good strategy, he said, yes, you will get better at doing crosswords but nothing else. Oh dear. He measured my cognitive level and was surprised I was a physics teacher. To be honest I’ve never been very clever I’ve just learnt some tricks to fake it, maybe that’s what being clever is? I’ve noticed in my writing that I tend to repeat certain words in the same sentence, I say certain words because I don’t know if they are nouns, verbs, adjectives or something else. I’m not joking.

Here’s an example: Joe is an excellent student who achieved an excellent result in the end of year exam. I’m always having to go back and replace one of the excellents with an outstanding or exceptional. Apologies in advance for over use words like excellent. I blame it on the Parkinson’s.

I can write a whole lot of stuff off with the old Parkie’s excuse it’s certainly made my job much easier. If my doctor informed me tomorrow that I don’t actually have it I’d keep it to myself. I used to run workshops for teachers but found I couldn’t do it anymore but rather than give up I coopted an assistant, first of all Daniel then Emma. They basically ran the workshop using my material I just sat next to them chipping in and answering questions when I felt like it. Perfect. Sometimes my train of thought would suddenly stop and they would take over. Easy for me but difficult for them, I had a lot of fun, much more than when working alone. I have a website that I have probably mentioned before but since I haven’t revised my own script. I’m not sure if I emphasized what a big part of my life it is. I actually have 2 physics websites one for teachers and one for students. I make more money from the websites than teaching. You may find it strange that I am so open about how much I earn, not very British, but in Norway everyone’s earnings are made public. Each year my name appears in the local paper with how much I earn and how much tax I pay. Hilary doesn’t like it but it makes me quite proud. I did re-read the bit about crying on the toilet because we had no money, no money, no more. I get up at 5 each morning, sometimes 4. Lying still makes my joints lock up so there is a limit to how long I can stay in bed even on a tempura mattress, or is that Japanese fried fish? Getting up so early means I can do 3 or 4 hours work before work, this means I can get a lot done. Recently I wrote an online textbook in 6 weeks and 1000 multiple choice questions in a month. For that I won a bottle of champagne. The other site authors didn’t even bother to compete. They think I have an unfair advantage, Advantage?

Hmm. I have been at this school for over 25 years and will “soon” retire, no one else has been here longer, I have my own untidy lab and my students think I am mad as in mad professor not mad lunatic. I designed and manage the schools management system so I know what’s going on but have no responsibility. Perfect. I rarely meet other teachers apart from in staff meetings where my sole aim is to crack jokes and make everyone laugh. There was a time when I thought I had lost my sense of humour, I hadn’t, it was just resting.

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I mentioned that I will soon retire but that’s being pessimistic, I have no intention of giving up while I am having so much fun. If allowed, and I won’t be, I could go on until I die. I suppose I could die before reaching retirement age but that really would be pessimistic. When I retire I’m going to be a right pain in the arse. Seems like I’ve started swearing. I live next to the school and fully intend to “help” my successor in any way possible. Maybe you could do it this way? I tried that once and it didn’t work. I think you should use my textbook.

That’s 1400 words in 3 hours, 6000 a day is totally out of the question. Probably because I didn’t take the advice given to me I now have to strap my wrist for typing. When I climb I not only tape my wrist but all of my fingers, actually not all, I don’t tape the little one, never use it. I can’t crimp so never get it up on the hold. I use what is called a 3 finger drag, bending only the last joint, even when using jugs. My left simply doesn’t move and my right is too painful. The 3 finger drag doesn’t use any muscles, due to the shortening of my tendons, my fingers are naturally curled so I just hook them on the holds. This means I can hang on for ages which is a good thing since I climb really slowly. I don’t feel like I’m slow but when I watch myself on video I look like a sloth. It’s particularly noticeable when reaching between holds. I remember we used to practice slow climbing on the Leeds wall, that and silent climbing, my cracking ankles and Steve’s squeaking fingers resulting in much laughter.

Blindfold climbing is also fun until you jump off and have no idea where the ground is. I have climbed with two blind climbers, both Polish. Pawel was quite good and went on to climb big mountains. Martha wasn’t so good. She was taking ages on a short climb and it was time to go home, she was nowhere near the top but was determined to get there. One move later I announced that she had reached the anchor and she came happily down. Luckily no one else witnessed my scam and she never knew. Sorry if you’re reading this Martha.

This evening is the graduation dinner for the leaving students, I avoid such things like the plague, I just can’t cope with milling around and small talk. One on one I’m quite normal, apart from the shaking hand and stoop I could pass for someone without Parkinson’s but stick me in a crowded room of people I don’t know and all hell breaks loose. It starts in my legs that begin to shake, if I try to walk I look like Forest Gump before he lost the leg braces. The shaking gets worse and spreads over my whole body until I am a gibbering wreck. A bit like a standing up epileptic fit. I have no idea if this is a common Parkinson’s thing, maybe it’s just social anxiety. My daily life is extremely routine and that’s how I cope, break the routine and I’m done for.

I have heard that you get 10 good years with Parkinson’s which means I have another 5. I haven’t studied the progression of the disease but I’ll probably end up in a wheel chair. The other day a student asked if I am looking forwards to retiring. Not really.

So that’s the present and a little bit of the future but what has happened since I wrote part 1?

As I scan through the final part I can see that I lost a bit of steam during the final stages, the chapter on Norway being particularly thin. Must have been about day 10 and I was keen to get it finished. Filling in the missing years will have to wait, first I’m going to fill in the missing bits of the not missing years.

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Norway revisited I gloss over the whole moving to Norway which is pretty much how I handled it at the time.

Almost all of our life as a family of 5 has been spent in Norway so it is a very important part of my life and deserves more attention. Strangely enough it’s also the time when, at the age of something like 54, I peaked as a climber.

It’s 5 o’clock in the morning and I’ve had breakfast. I always eat right away when I get up which is problematic if you get up many times during the night, each time I have to eat. I still have a thing about my weight, I simply climb better when I am light. I don’t think it’s just the strength to weight ratio it’s more subtle than that, my whole body seems to function better.

This weekend I’m travelling to Oslo for a training weekend with the Norwegian national team. Wow! But I thought you said you peaked at 54. I’m not in the climbing team I’m in the para-climbing team, much more about that later. We are having some sort of competition so I want to perform as well as possible so have been training and trying to get my weight down.

This morning I weigh 63.2 kg which is OK but I have been down to 61, if only I could stop eating at night. Very difficult to be strict with yourself when you’ve just woken up though. I wake up every hour, go to the toilet and have some dry crackers and orange juice. I went for all the urine/prostate tests and they told me there’s nothing wrong but I should try to hang on longer. The tests aren’t pleasant. First they get you to drink 2 litres of water before arrival. I usually don’t drink any water at all so this wasn’t easy. By the time I got to the hospital I was absolutely busting for a pee. Luckily they got me into the test room straight away avoiding the necessity to buy a new pair of trousers for the journey home. The journey home is an hour by car, we live in a small village called Flekke in the west of Norway, the hospital is in Førde. In emergencies they send a helicopter which can land about 100 m from our house. This wasn’t one of those sort of emergencies.

I’ve always had a problem with peeing or weeing as we called it when I grew up. Funny how wee was acceptable but pee too rude, only one letter difference. Piss was totally out of the question. I once wet myself at infant school, we were making a lino cut of a snowman, I stlll love the smell of linoleum but not piss. When you wet yourself while wearing shorts you forgo the inconvenience of wet trousers but you get a wet leg instead, the pee dries on your leg and starts to sting, or maybe the stinging came from the slapped leg you’d get for wetting yourself?

A church service is about one hour long and I had it in my head that I could not survive to the end unless I had a pee just before entering the church. Once in you couldn’t get out so a midservice visit to the toilet was out of the question. Timing was of the essence. This was made worse by the fact that I couldn’t pee when other people were standing next to me. The problem was that when you pee you often pop (family word for fart, snot was nose pick by the way) and you can’t pop in public. This all caused enormous stress which I had to deal with myself. I have never told anyone about this before. Exams were a nightmare. In my A’level maths exam I just had to ask if I could go to the toilet. Incidentally a helicopter landed outside the exam room at about the same time that I was dying for a pee, maybe it was that sort of emergency. How did that random connection just happen. I really have no plan this stuff just streams out unlike my pee on the day of the exam which, due to the fact that Mr Billington stood over me in the toilet, remained locked in my bladder, I had to go back and finish the exam in agony. I think I sweated it out in the end which I know, having also studied A’level biology is nonsence. I seriously considered fitting a catheter for exams. Although having now experienced having a catheter fitted twice I don’t think it was a viable option.

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Am I the only one who has experienced such traumas? Men and boys just don’t talk about this stuff. When I went for the tests I had to empty my bladder into a beaker placed on a weighing machine. This measures your flow rate. Apparently my flow rate was lower than average. I realized that I had no idea what average was. I have spent my whole life avoiding the trauma of standing next to other people at the urinals so don’t know what normal flow rate is. At university when I lived in a room with a shared toilet I could hear Chris Varley pee and do remember that at times it sounded like there was a horse in there but thought nothing of it.

They also asked if I pee standing up or sitting down. Sitting down? Was that an option?

Recently, when on a climbing trip with a group of friends in Greece, I bought up the subject. I had just had enough of the endless talk about football and wanted to talk about something more interesting. It was all a bit awkward but Phil Burke did say that he sometimes pees sitting down. If only I’d known that this was an option it could have saved me a lot of unnecessary stress. I could have gone into a cubical instead of the using the urinal. I don’t think Mr Billington would have followed me there. Popping is OK when you’re doing a poo in a cubical, or is it?

The flow rate wasn’t the worst bit. That came with the insertion of a tube into the bladder to see how much is left. The other time I had a catheter fitted was when I broke my leg. As I have mentioned I have inherited my dad’s thin ankles. Bernard used to call them lucky legs, lucky the don’t break. Al Manson said that the last time he had seen such thin legs they were hanging out of a nest. In the old days we never used bouldering mats so always on the often rocky ground with a thump. My legs would always buckle under the force and I’d land in a crumpled heap. Anyone who has studied physics will know that this saved my ankles from breaking. I wasn’t so lucky on the way to work one winter morning. Ice covered by light snow is lethal. My foot simply tucked in and my ankle snapped leaving me lying in the middle of the road. At the same time a lorry appeared and would have run me over if I hadn’t managed to defy the laws of physics and initiate motion on a frictionless surface. I could have thrown by backpack away, since momentum is conserved this would have caused me to move in the opposite direction however I was several months into writing my first text book and the only copy was on that computer. My first thought on hitting the ground was is my computer alright.

Rather like when I broke my pelvis in Poland A doctor appeared from nowhere and administered morphine. Actually he didn’t appear from nowhere he appeared from the Haugland rehabilitation centre that I was lying outside of. It was Eirik Fisman a good friend and excellent example of Norwegianess, he is a full time doctor, a specialist in rehabilitation medicine. He is really good at it, I know first-hand as he ran one of the sessions when I was a patient at the centre. We sat round an around an open fire in a traditional wooden building called a Gamme, rather like a hobbit hole, it was a moving experience, I cried. Eirik is also a skilled craftsman, he built his own house from wood he chopped down himself, he even made all the door frames skirting boards and door frames. He built a Canadian canoe from twigs and bark (maybe exaggerating a bit here). Has shot all the meat in his freezer and has about 10 aquaria full of exotic fish. Norwegians are resourceful. I feel quite useless surrounded by neighbours who can do so much, all I ever seem to do is waste my time brushing boulders.

I got the morphine but no helicopter, the road seemed much bumpier than normal. I got to the hospital and they confirmed that I had broken my leg. I of course knew this already since I was there when it broke and heard the crack. I of course couldn’t pee into the bottle so went into the operating theatre bursting. The operation was done under local anesthetic which means they numbed me from waste down, strange how they can numb half your body with

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one injection but when I go to the dentist it takes 15 injections and it still hurts. This is a quote from a monologue I performed for my students at a staff show. It was a parody of a scene from the Vagina monologues. You may not be familiar with this play but it’s based around the idea of what a vagina would say if it could talk. Our students perform it every year. I have only seen it once and found the whole thing rather uncomfortable. My piece was based on the angry vagina. The mouth monologue. Just imagine if your mouth could talk: My mouth is angry.

It’s seriously fed up.

My mouth needs to talk.

All you future dentists out there waiting to torture my big gob. Drill it out, floss it through make it bleed.

You mouth washers.

Like braces, what’s that all about?

Lumps of plastic and wire shoved into my mouth supposed to make my teeth straight.

Well I’m telling you one thing, it didn’t work.

Does it look like I wore braces when I was a kid?

I went to the dentist so often they ran out of teeth to fill.

There is so much metal in my mouth I have to take my head off to go through airport security.

See that one at the front it’s not even real. You’d think they would get the colour right but no, too big and too white.

And that grey one. It’s dead you know and it’s not very nice having a bit of dead person in your mouth. Pull it out Mr. Dentist, you can’t bring the dead back to life.

Actually my teeth are fine now, it’s the gaps that are the problem. Hence the need for the dental floss and those little wire brushes. Oh thankyou Mr. Dentist just what I need to keep my mouth in order, 57 ways to make my mouth bleed.

I’m sorry but I hate dentists and I’m not having them telling me what to do with my mouth.

No more sweating in your chair, no more swilling your pink water, no more clacky thing, no more squeaky rubber gloves. No more endless injections, why so many injections? When I broke my leg one injection numbed the whole of my body. When I go to the dentist 15 injections for one dead tooth and it still hurts.

No, I’m having them all taken out, replaced by the beak of a bird. Beaks have no gaps, no gaps no problems. Birds don’t floss. Birds don’t have fillings. Birds don’t smell of mint. Who decided I should smell of mint? What’s wrong with oranges or rose petals or vinegar? No, mint mouthwash, mint toothpaste, mint dental floss, mint, mint, mint. My mouth wants food, my mouth wants chocolate, my mouth wants everything.

That was back in the days when I could make fun of myself, it’s much more difficult to make fun of yourself when you feel that you might be the subject of ridicule already. Rowan Atkinson could never have been Mr. Bean if he actually was Mr Bean.

The operation was fine as far as the leg went but not for my bladder. The problem was that it was above the numb line but where the pee had to come out was below. No matter how desperate I was I just couldn’t go, not even when alone. They tried inserting a catheter but failed. It was many hours before the flood gates opened, standing up in a cubicle.

My main problem now is not the frequency but the urgency. When I decide I need to pee I need to do it right away and it’s not easy to undo my trousers with my dodgy hand. It’s just a matter of time. I wonder if they’ll send a helicopter? I still always sit in an aisle seat on a plane.

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Moving to Norway wasn’t at all traumatic for me but I think it was for everyone else. I had an interesting job to go to so that is all I thought about. Hilary had been offered a part time position as school nurse so was almost OK but the children had nothing. Rowan was a talkative little chappy always asking questions, he could ride a bike when he was two and buzzed about with his mate Erland all over the place. After moving to Norway he didn’t say a word of Norwegian for 6 months then suddenly started speaking fluently. When we arrived in Norway on the boat the man at the barrier asked where we are moving to. “So your children will learn to speak with a Sunnfjord dialect, poor things”. In the UK it would be equivalent to a Cornish accent, farmers chewing straw and all that. Well they do and so do I and we’re proud of it.

There were a lot of promises and we made a lot of assumptions. Norwegians are rich and I’ll earn a lot of money. Not entirely true. Norwegians are all richish but my salary went down.

All Norwegians are paid well which means the difference between my salary and that of a cleaner is not so great as in the UK for example. Everyone where we live has a similar sized house, a decent car walks up mountains in the summer and skis down them in the winter.

Most men shoot deer and flyfish for salmon, at least it seems like it. So everyone has a big house do they? We didn’t, the budget was cut so the houses were made smaller. Before moving we measured up for furniture and found that the whole new house fitted in our living room. We tried to sell our furniture but nobody wanted it. Another myth was that the college would pay our moving expenses they didn’t mention that the only way could do it for the amount given was if we hired a van and did it ourselves. A friend fancied an adventure so we bought a load of flat packs from Ikea and off we went.

Over the years we became regulars on the Newcastle – Bergen ferry, eat all you can breakfast making sandwiches under the table for the next 2 days, reclining chairs not cabins, bingo was free so not really gambling and we knew the kids treasure hunt off by heart. As the years went by the kids got more Norwegian and stopped helping us make the sandwiches which wasn’t really allowed. Norwegians are very honest. We once took our kids to the circus with friends Kåre and Solgunn, children £10 under 5’s free. Josie was 6 but who would know. Their boy Severin was 6 too, we couldn’t believe it when they paid for him and we had to swallow paying £50 to see a crap circus.

We also were told that the local school was making preparations to welcome the new English family. When we arrived with Josie there was no one to meet us. Eventually we found the headmaster but he couldn’t speak English. Eventually Josie found her class which comprised of a boy with a Mohican, another boy who was deaf and a girl, Inga who fortunately smiled.

The level of noise in the classroom would not have been acceptable in Wikke infant school back in Wales, Josie could not understand why the teacher couldn’t control them. Miss Morgan controlled 30 pupils by just looking at them. The thing was the teacher wasn’t trying to, they were allowed to make noise, after all they were only 5 years old, well 6. This was not proper school it was pre-school. They didn’t start school until they were 7. Josie could already read write and solve differential equations but she wasn’t allowed to do any of that at school.

This was playschool. We tried lying about her age to get her into proper school but the man from the circus walked in and blew our cover. The school certainly wasn’t prepared but I don’t think it was their fault. All they would have been told is that there is an English family moving in, the big welcome was our principal Tony Macoun’s embellishment. No harm done, Josie spent two years pretended she couldn’t read or write and forgot how to solve differential

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equations completely. She went on to get a PhD. Flekke school actually has an impressive percentage of doctors amongst their alumni in Josies class it’s 25% but soon to be 50% I believe. It was just too hard to accept that Josie was not completely happy at school. Children aren’t stupid, well some are I suppose but Josie wasn’t one of them. She knew that we wanted her to be happy so pretended she was, when I look at some of the video footage we have from those years it is clear that she was far from happy. Should we have moved here? I think so, we live in an area with no crime, the children could play outside after dark, go fishing, have adventure with little boats on deserted islands, pick mushrooms and berries, ski from the door in the winter and swim in the fjord in the summer. They remember their childhood fondly or maybe that’s just what they tell me.

Florence didn’t need to learn Norwegian she just picked it up without realizing she was speaking two languages. She had her 2nd birthday on the day we arrived, that was August 2nd.

This is in the school holidays which means we are always away from home so never gets a proper party. I suppose she does now of course but we aren’t invited. The principal’s wife Ann Macoun made a big fuss and a cake, her best birthday to date which isn’t saying much since she had only had one other. Florence’s language use was quite interesting, she spoke Norwegian at nursery school and English at home, if you spoke to her in Norwegian at home she wouldn’t understand and the same was true for English at nursery. Our first parents evening at the nursery was an interesting experience, it lasted about 3 hours, we ate cakes and sang songs about large ravens. They were trying to welcome us but at the time it felt very weird, what is this? Some kind of cult? It was very kind of them and all of those parents are now good friends but it took some time to get into.

Josie learnt to speak Norwegian pretty quickly, she also learnt sign language, the whole class did so they could include Jøran in their activities. Norwegians are big on exploration it’s part of their culture which begins in early childhood. We took the kids to an evening activity for children in the woods. There was an old ruined house there and children were playing on it. I was concerned so reported it to the leader. “Oh, that’s OK what could happen to them? Maybe they break an arm but it can be fixed.” What if they die, that can’t be fixed. Their concern for safety was quite refreshing after the recent clamp downs that had taken place in Britain. It was the same at the college, we seemingly could do anything, health and safety didn’t exist. It did of course but it was in Norwegian and no one could read it.

Developing new cliffs for climbing is a big responsibility, what if it’s not safe. In the old days it was quite common to climb on loose rock, you just climb carefully, it used to be seen as a skill “use the loose block to gain the bottom of the groove”. You can’t teach that particular skill to students though especially when there are 10 of them standing at the bottom of the route. Climbing can be dangerous but not when you’re doing it with groups. Yes, they get scared but that’s not because it’s dangerous it’s because they think it’s dangerous. During the early years of the college all students would do a 60 m abseil. I found a nice place to do this with several trees to fix the ropes to and a good flat area at the top. At the top of the cliff there was a large piece of rock with a crack under it. It wasn’t detached, the sides of it were attached to the cliff, there were no cracks. I don’t know why I’m using the past tense, my bad grammar. This is not the start of some horror story, the rock is still there. The problem was that in my imagination it could come tumbling down killing all of the students. I couldn’t sleep at night thinking of the consequences. I reckoned that if it happened it would be best if I died too rather than have to meet all the parents, if I didn’t die then maybe I should disappear, they would think I was under all the rocks. I could live off berries in the mountains. There

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have been some large rock falls at the cliff but not on the bit we climbed on. A geologist was contacted to make an assessment. We no longer take students there.

Figure 80 Recent rockfall

During the first year of the college there were only half of the students and half of the staff.

This was great, I got full pay for half a job. To make up for this I ran a lot of activities. Rock climbing of course but also mountain walking and kayaking. I had done a lot of kayaking at Atlantic college, mainly sea kayaking and surfing, I even had an instructor’s certificate.

Kayak surfing is fairly horrible and involves a lot of swimming, sea kayaking is quite boring and makes your back ache. I should’ve listened to my mum’s advice “sit up straight, don’t slouch”. Slouch, that’s a word you don’t hear so often. There was a climber in the peak called slouch, he wasn’t very good but had a car so he would be around quite often.

The college in Norway is built next to a fjord, Hilary’s mum always called it a lake and you’d think it was if it wasn’t for the seaweed. Norway is upside down for surfing, deep fjords and shallow sea. This makes it easy to drill for oil but there’s no surf in the fjords we do have rivers though so I thought white water kayaking could be a good activity. Before leaving Wales I went on a white water course at Plas y Brenin. I hadn’t been back since the “free doss” incident but luckily there was a new director. The instructors there are the real deal, in the evening they would show videos of their expeditions. Blumin ‘eck. It really inspired confidence and I was soon throwing myself down grade 4 rapids safe in the knowledge that whatever I did they would get me out. On one day we met a group from the army. One by one they were ordered to take a big drop and one by one they messed up, several taking the fall backwards. It’s important to get the line right which is difficult to do if you can’t paddle. It’s a horrible expression but “cannon fodder” springs to mind.

Since I was in charge of kayaking at RCN I had to buy some kayaks. The river I had in mind was a short drive and we had a transit with an open back so I bought 5 very short white water boats. These were great in the river and swimming pool but, when in the hands of a beginner are very difficult to keep in a straight line. The river is a salmon river, I didn’t know at the time but you really shouldn’t paddle it in the fishing season. The locals were very tolerant as this multi-coloured group of students in multi multi-coloured plastic drifted past. I had learnt all about bank support at Plas y Brenin so when I sent students down a nasty bit I’d station other students on the bank, the problem was that even though we had practiced throwing lines they didn’t really know what they were doing and nor did I.

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The college has always tried to hold to the principle that provided a student has potential they should be able to attend regardless of financial or physical difficulties so we have many students with no money and several with no legs. Idris had legs but they didn’t work, it seemed to me that kayaking was the perfect activity for her, luckily it was. She couldn’t get to the water but I would carry her there over my shoulder, she was quite light. When sitting in a kayak you need to be wedged in, this is usually done by bracing your knees on the knee supports. Iris couldn’t do this so I wedged her in with a couple of buoyancy aids. This worked well and she became quite good. It’s amazing how good you become when you know that failure means certain death. I’m kidding, she wasn’t wedged in that tightly. Being inclusive isn’t easy, I once took some blind kids climbing and got a severe telling off from their supervisor. Physical activity raises the blood pressure which could result in the loss of what sight they have. I recently climbed with a blind girl from Bergen. She lost her sight in junior school when another child shot her with a staple gun, how many times has a teacher said “don’t do that you could blind someone”? Well, there you are, it’s true.

At the bottom of a waterfall there is often something called a stopper, it’s a circulating flow of water that stops you, hence the name. There’s one at the end of Flekke river and a student got stopped in it. Luckily the river is narrow and I reached him with my paddle and pulled him out. I’ve not been back, except to catch salmon. We still have the boats, they are under the cycle shed.

I don’t really like hill walking, I only do it if there is a reason such as walking to a crag or lake, taking the dog for a walk or picking mushrooms and berries. I’ve always liked foraging, on family holidays we would pick blueberries and fish for small brown trout in mountain streams. Simon Wells introduced me to chantarelles but we had to drive to Scotland to find them. I was convinced that we would find some nearer to home in Sheffield so went searching. Eventually I found some near Burbage and picked enough to be able to share them with a friend of Hilary’s at Rotherham college of further education where she worked. Hilary was a Health visitor when we married and was very jealous of my long holidays so did a certificate in education and became a lecturer. Our first long holiday was spent in several gites in France. We rented the gite and invited friends to come and stay with us, we’d split the rent between who ever came. The mix of people turned out to be rather interesting. Let’s put it this way, they didn’t all get along with each other. I won’t name any names but one guest had to leave in the middle of the night but that wasn’t the worst event. That has to be the moment when Simon’s ex-girlfriend turned up out of the blue with her new partner. We explained the situation and they camped out of site down the road. We never told Simon they were there but every now and again Hilary would disappear for a while to visit them on the pretense that she was going for a jog. There was also a rather awkward week with two mothers, mine and Fiona’s. Fiona is now Martin’s wife but at the time they were not married. Both mothers had recently lost their husbands so we thought they would have a lot in common, they are also both Christians however my mum is a Baptist Fiona’s a Catholic. We met them at the airport on a boiling hot day, by the time we got to the house everyone was ready for a dip in the pool.

My mum got straight in but hadn’t realized how deep the pool was and sank to the bottom. I had never realized she couldn’t swim. Martin dived in and rescued her. Not a good start. My mum doesn’t approve of alcohol and we liked to have a bottle of wine or two in the evening so thought the best solution was that we stayed in a tent in the garden and the mum’s stayed in the house. Maybe we should have kept the noise down a bit.

Chanterelles are particularly nice with scrambled eggs so we had ours for breakfast and Hilary delivered the other half of my find to her friends at work who had them for tea. That evening

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there was a programme on tele all about mushrooms, in particular about Chantarelles that are one of the easiest mushrooms to identify but beware, there is a similar mushroom called the false chantarelle that can cause hallucinations. This can be identified by the lack of forks on the gills. I checked the remaining mushrooms. Oops. Hilary phoned her friend but it was too late, luckily they weren’t too worried about the possibility of hallucinations, bring it on.

There are loads of Chanatrelles where we live in Norway, a lot of people pick them now but when we first moved there were only a few keen pickers one was Solgunn. She invited me on a mushroom hunt, we picked many kilos but it took the whole day. We would get caught out by this sort of thing many times. When a Norwegian says they are going to pick mushrooms it means enough to last the year not just a few for dinner, mølte picking is even worse. Mølte are cloud berries, the grow in wet places on small plants close to the ground. If you are colour blind like me they are difficult to spot. They grow scattered here and there so take ages to pick and require a lot of walking between plants. It’s a great day out but you have to be prepared for day in the mountains, I never thought of taking any food or drink with me so always ended up eating most of my berries.

Figure 81 Some mushrooms in a basket

Svein Øve is another early friend who likes being in the mountains. He would often invite me to go hunting or fishing. After a day of walking from lake to lake with no food or drink I would be dying to get home for something hot and maybe a beer but he would always insist on making a fire to brew up some coffee. On one occasion I asked him if he would like to drop round for a beer, but it’s Wednesday he said. When a Norwegian drinks beer they don’t have only one. What’s the point in one beer? The first time I went to a party I was a bit shocked to see teachers, doctors and dentists falling down stairs and throwing up in the toilet.

You’d think I was talking about the end of the party but this was the start. They begin drinking before they leave home. Alcohol is expensive so if the party is in a bar they bring something extra in their pocket, this is consumed either in the toilets or dealt with under the table. After the party they have another party and are still drinking at breakfast.

Another interesting experience was the Eurovision party. In Britain Eurovision is a joke.

Everyone knows that Brit bands are the best in the world and we don’t need a competition to prove it. Well they are aren’t they, Genesis of course, Pink Floyd, Led Zeplin, The Who, The Beatles, The Stones…… yes all British. Terry Wogan used to host the program and made no attempt to hide what he thought of the farce. We assumed the party was a joke but it wasn’t.

They seriously thought this was good entertainment. We took a bottle of wine and put it in the kitchen. Everyone else bought wine but didn’t put it in the kitchen, they sat with their own

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bottle and drank it. At 12 the party was just getting started and we had to leave, the host called us back. “You’ve forgotten your wine.”

At Christmas there is always a big party paid for by the employer, it’s called a Julebord.

Everyone goes and everyone gets ratted and party util 3 in the morning. Our school employs many foreign teachers who are not used to Norwegian customs, they don’t get ratted and leave at 10. Our school also has its own Christmas traditions, or should I call them winter traditions, one is secret Santa, you probably know the score. Everyone is randomly allocated a secret Santa who buys them secret presents over a period of two weeks. Teachers and students are involved. So I get allocated a student and every day leave a small gift (mainly chocolate) in their mailbox or room. I get nothing. At the end of the week the student tries to guess. My student, a girl, is very excited, was it you Torbjørn, no. Was it Abdul, no. It was Justin then, no. So can Julie’s secret Santa reveal themselves? I step forward, the smile drains from her face. Oh it was you err, thank you. My secret Santa never even bothered turning up. A small bar of chocolate appears in my mail box the next day.

The 17th of May is Norwegian National day so there is a big celebration that is planned over several months. The organizing committee is changed every year and in a small village like Flekke that means that you get selected about once every 5 years. There are different sub committees and my first time was with the games group. The games are always the same, wheelbarrow race, darts, nail hitting, guess the weight of a leg of lamb and horse shoe throwing. Some of these guys can drive in a 4 inch nail with one hit! I saw a 12 year old do it once, that was Kent Marius, he went on to compete in strongman events. Lots of Norwegians have two first names, Finn Atle is another, he is related to Kent Marius and can also do the one hit nail trick. He had a leg ripped off by a muck spreading wagon, maybe he now qualifies as a para nail hitter. The leg of lamb is often won by Åge (pronounced Orga) who used to own the local grocery store, he’s our next door neighbour and can probably do the nail in two. He’s not related to Finn Atle or Kent Marius but is related to another two namer Tore Andre, he’s also our neighbour. Åge is married to Bente (pronounce the e as if Benter but don’t roll the r). She is Ingvard Flekke’s sister. Having the same name as your village is quite common and pretty cool, like a personalized number plate. Ingvard is married to Eva whose sister is married to Jonny, he’s a millionaire. His brother**** is married to Monica who used to work at the kindergarten, her sister Anita is a teacher at Flekke school and bakes great cakes She is married to Per Arne who sings and used to work in the bank but now works for the IT company that Jonny sold to become a millionaire. His brother Sylan also sings, he is a teacher at the middle school in Dale. His dad was my Norwegian teacher for a while. His wife Tone (Tooner) is not from Dale. Never slag any local person off to anyone from Flekke or Dale, they are probably related.

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Figure 82 17th May in Flekke.

I suggested we add an international dimension to the games, how about Boule? No way, we always do the same games. Then why have a committee? Good question. Local committees are not about decision making, they are social gatherings. They last for hours and there is always coffee and sometimes cake. Everyone is expected to be on a committee. Around March every year you get a phone call asking if you would join a committee. Your not supposed to say no and I ended up on loads. Village hall, the almost communist party, the local ski centre, 17th of May, the Christmas tree party, the school parents committee and the alcohol licensing committee. I definitely didn’t see eye to eye with the licensing committee. I thought it would be good to grant a license for a café to serve alcohol at Saturday lunch time.

But what if a child sees someone drinking? I think they meant drunk but in Norway 20 years ago drinking and drunk was the same thing. Our children saw us drink at home and probably (definitely) even saw us drunk but my drunk is a mellow drunk not a violent one (unless there happens to be someone lying on the floor who I can punch). Ever since my experimenting with alcohol at university I have developed a very sensitive puke early warning system. Drink more and you’re gonna be sick. I don’t like being sick so I stop. It’s not really the actual vomiting I dislike it’s the bit before when the saliva pours out of your mouth as you kneel over the toilet. It’s a relief when it comes out. I also don’t like the bit afterwards when you have sick up your nose.

The way alcohol is dealt with has always been something I couldn’t understand. Teenagers sometimes organize parties but to be allowed to rent the village hall the arrangement must be alcohol free, so they drink before the party then on the way deposit a carrier bag full of booze under a bush, throughout the evening they return to the bush for a top up. Some of the youngsters arrive at the party totally drunk. They are usually sent home by one of the adult supervisors (Night owls) but some get in and find a place to sleep. Some party. Norwegians are generally quite shy, some get over this by drinking. Shy no longer, just unconscious. This is not a good way to drink, there has been at least one fatality as a result. At one party I saw an adult selling home-made vodka to kids from the back of a van. I’ve only tried it once and its’s lethal, you might as well inject heroine. The local paint shop used to sell flavourings to add to the spirit. Brandy, whisky, rum etc. As far as I know the owner of the paint shop didn’t

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distil alcohol but made some pretty potent cider that was almost the same strength. He would bottle it in empty meth’s bottles. I thought it might be a good idea to discuss the alcohol issue at a parents evening. We knew our children (Josie probably didn’t) drank and we knew other people’s children drank so let’s talk about it. None of the other parents admitted to knowing that their children drank. For a change it was a short meeting.

The Nordal ski association is a family affair run by the Nordal family. For financial reasons a partnership was set up involving the college and Åsnes (Ozness) ski factory. Norwegians will know the name Åsnes but might not realise that the factory was in the tiny village of Straumsness. Arnulf Åsnes is one of the brothers who owned the factory and its name, he would drive me to the meetings which were often up at the ski hut. The only decisions we ever made was to agree to things that had already been done. Every winter there would be a dugnad. A dugnad is a voluntary work day but there was nothing voluntary about it except that you didn’t get paid. I would never have any clue about what to do, the Nordal’s would run around doing stuff with tools and I’d stand on my own waiting for time to go home. I did once manage to help set up the winch, my job was to climb the telegraph poles and fix the rope into pulleys. To do this I used special crampon shoes. Climbing up was easy but I dropped a shoe at the top and had to be rescued.

Driving on snow took a bit of getting used to, we have studs in our tyres but sometimes that’s not enough and we fit chains. Struggling to get up the hill to Nordal I stopped and put on the chains. With chains in place I drove the rest of the way with ease. At the top we met Svein Øve and Asgeir who looked at our chains and began to laugh. What’s so funny? You put the chains on the back and your car is front wheel drive. In Norwegian that would be forhjulstrekk. Jelena once bought a car with forhjulstrekk mixing up her English and Norwegian to think she was buying a fourhjulstrekk car, it’s not only me. After a while you get used to driving in snow and start to feel comfortable sliding round corners. During our first years we would always go back to the UK for Christmas. One early morning we were following a bus to Bergen thinking that if the bus can drive this fast so can we. Wrong! On a completely straight piece of road I lost control and we ended up in a field with the fence wrapped around the car. After a quick wheel change ( we had a set of summer wheels on the roof so we could change the tyres for British roads) we were towed back to the road by a sleepy farmer. I sweated all the way to the ferry driving on slush with 3 winter tyres and one summer one. Norwegians often make fun of the British who close down schools when it snows. They should try driving up an unploughed 1 in 4 with summer tyres. When I look back I am amazed at some of the things we did. These days changing a set of wheels is a big job, back then it was nothing.

In the evening of may 17th there is a party, no drinking this is a family affair. The school leavers celebrating the end of their years at school don’t even drink, haha. The party starts with the final of the darts competition and nail driving. I once made the darts final. I used to be quite good at darts, I would practice for hours at home then go to the pub and try to hustle the locals. I once scored 180. The problem is I was never any good under pressure. I played for the darts team once and that was awful. The responsibility of being part of a team ruined everything. I didn’t perform well on the 17th may either. This is followed by the bondegut speech, this was more often than not done by our other neighbour Atle, Åge and Tore Andre’s brother. This is the Ness family. Their mother died tragically with several other mothers accidentally drove onto the ice covered fjord and their car sank. A bondegut is a farmers boy and the speech is supposed to be about local events. My speech was about my experiences of

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being a holiday farmer in Wales. When I was a boy I wanted to be a farmer, I even bought farmers weekly. I remember the advert for the bloodless castrator, never did figure out how that one worked. The speech was in Norwegian but I can’t write Norwegian so just wrote how I speak. The children thought it was hilarious, my way of writing not the speech.

For Norwegian readers entertainment here it is: My name is Bond, James Bonder gut.

Før eg begynner eg må seir at dette er min første Norsk Taler, så eg er ikkje sikkert at det skal gå bra.

Problem er ikkje så mykkje at eg må snakkeNorsk men at det er ikkje så let å huske kar eg skal seir på Norsk.

Så eg bestemt meg å skiver alt på papir.

Men; eg kan ikkje skriver.

Eg var ein gang skriver på Flekke skule sin foreldre kontakt gruppa. Vis dokker leser gjenom alle referat fra 10 år tilbake du vil sikkert finne noka som var skrivt av en barn ikkje en foreldre.

Tja eg kan skriver men det er ikkje akkurat Norsk, eg bare skriver same som eg snakke.

Eg har faktisk prøved ein gang før. Eg skrivt en epost til en selskap i Oslo.

Eg skrivt ”er det mulig å sende noka bil dele i post fordi eg kan ikkje skaffe dem her omkring.”

Det sikkert forståt meg fordi etter et par minute fek eg svar. ”Hvor er du fra?” så skrivt eg tilbake med glede ”eg er fra sunnfjord”. Rask som lyn kom en kort svar tilbake . ”jeg vite, det er let å høre” Då eg beggynt å plannlegger taler eg tenkt at kansje eg skal for lit råd fra noka norsk venner som kan hjelpe meg å snakke feilfri pent Norsk. Men eg bestemt meg å ikkje bruker noka hjelpe middlar fordi eg trud at kansjke det blir lit rart vis eg stor her og plutselig snakke som Kong Harald. Akurat samme vis eg ein gang treft Leif Gunnar på flekke butik og han beggynt å snakke englesk som en engelsk lord ”hello old chap my names leaf gunnar, fancy a spot of salmon fishing old sport”. Kansje han snakke så pent engelsk men eg har aldri hørt han.

Så eg håpe at dokker forstår meg men vis du ikkje, det er heilt ok. Eg undervis i physic så eg er vant å snakke uten at folk fortsår en einaste ord eg seir. Kansje Rolf skjønne kar eg meiner?

Eg var veldig stolte då eg første hørt at eg skal blir årets bonder gut men kvifor stor det ”bonde gut”på placat eg faktisk er en bonde gut noka eg skal bevise dokker.

Eg var ein gang en skikkeleg bonder gut med tau i steden for belt og en jakke som er heilt samme som en min nabor Kåre har i daglig bruk. Men det var ikkje i Norge det var i Vales og det var 40 år siden. Kver sommer familien min tat ferie på an liten gard i wales. Det hadde 10 kyr og et par hundre sauer. Ja eg var ein skjikkelig bonde gut, eg lest ”farmers weekly” og var på besøk til den nasjonal bonde treff ”the royal show” i stoneleigh kvert år.

Men det er ikkje så kalt i wales så alle dyr var ut heile år. Nei kyr var ikkje ut heile år det må in å blir melke to ganger kver dag. Skjønner du.

Det var en stor overaskelser den først gång eg fant ut at sauene her i norge var inne heile vinter. Tenk vis du importert en engelsk sau til norge. Kvar skal ho tenkje dene første høst etter ho er hentet fra fjell og seer at bøndena har begynt å klippe hår av alle hennes ny norsk sau venner.

Nei ikkje klippe håren mit eg trenger jakke til vinteren Du trenger ikkje jakken din. Dømme engelsk sau

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Kvifor trenger eg ikkje jakken min?

Fordi du skal inne heil vinter Kvifor skal eg inne heil vinter?

Fordi du skal har ingen vinter jakke etter ve har klipte håret dit I norge folk seir at det finnes ikkje dårleg vær bare dårleg klær men eg seir I norge folk har riktig klær på grun av alle dårlig vær Det var Magne Bjergene som første spørt meg om sau redning. Han vist at eg var en san fjell klatrer og tenkt at kansje eg kunne bruker tekniken til å redde sau fra farlig klippe og fjell vegger. Eg hadde ikkje peiling men trud at kanskje det blir gøy å henge fra en klippe med en sau. Og gøy det var men det er ikkje så let å holder tau og sau på same tid.

Første gång det var en to timers tur in fra steistølen med en stor sec full av tau og utstyr. Der var to sau som sitter fast på en hylle så eg måte klatre op, feste tau på en einerbusk og rapellerer ned. Men eg glumpt å forteljer Magne at eg hadde tau med og han var livred nå eg beggynte å kom ned med fart. Og det er ikkje så let å for tak i en sau. Eg måte svinger og hopper. Eg ropte til Magne å for lit råd om sau handtaking men han var ikkje noko hjelp med lukket auge.

Nå vi klatre vi bruker seler som gå rundt bein og livet, men har du prøvt å ta en sau i en seler?

Kansje derer nokon som har men eg har aldri. Det er sikkert mulig å kjøper noka special sau seler fra internet men eg hadde bare den som ve bruker til vanlig. Eg prøvt å feste seler rundt sauen men det gå ikkje an. Bein var altfor tyn og livet var altfor tjuk så bestemt meg å improvesere. Ull er ganske sterk så eg tat en stor klump og drat sau fra hylle men eg har ikkje tenkt at en sau kan blir så tung. Plutselig eg var opned med sau i en hand og tau i min andre.

Men det gik bra og eg kom rask ned. Ikkje for rask heldigvis.

Kar med den andre sau? Han gik ned åleine. Klippen var ikkje så veldig bratt egentlig.

I wales vi hadde ikkje så mykkje å gjøre med sau fordi det var bort heile tid men kyr må vi henter kver dag. Det var dagens høgde punkt. Klokke 6 hørt vi han stor bønden sin Austin Varebil (Alle bøndena kjørt samme type bil) og sprang vi ut til å hjelpe. Alle kyr hadde navn; Linda var snill ung og svart men lilly var gammal stygt og brun. Ho hadde et horn som var lit skiev og altid prøvt å sparke hunden. Vi 4 ungane lært mykkje om gardsbruk og stel av husdyr men ve forståt ikkje alt. Det var et par gang då dyrlege var på besøk som var mest rart. Eg vite ikkje kar han gjørt men etterpå der var altid et par ting som var igjen i en bøtte. En sprøyter og en veldig long og veldig skitten gummi hansker. Eg hadde glumpt heile episoden men et par månad siden eg var utan for esso i dale og Gabriel Hovland var der. Han hadde panser til bil up så han kunne sjekke olje. Og kan du gjette kar han hadde på, ja den lang gummi hansker. Nå eg vite at dyrleger i vales var en mekanika og. Men eg vite ikkje kar slags olje det brukt i vales men det var sikkert noka dårleg greier.

Kyr henting var bra men traktor kjøyring var best. Eg var bare 11 år gammel men fek lov å kjøyre en gammel fordson major. Den Gamla tractor var ikkje samme som tractor vi har i dag.

Det var ingen takk. Ja det var en cabriolet. Accurat samme som min gammel engelsk sports bil. Men eg vite kvifor min bil var bygd uten tak, så eg kan kjører rundt om sommer med vinden i håret. Var det samme tenking bakk traktoren.

Kar tenke det om.

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En Cabriolet traktor til årleg, bruk her i norge?

Kvifor?

Det var ganske lenge før nokon i vales fot den først traktor med takk på, eg husker det var en blå ford med kvit tak. Derer faktisk en som stor ved siden av vei intil dale.

Min opgave var å riste høy et par ganger så det blir tør raskerer. I Norge du heng up gress på gjere men i vales det bare heng up klær ikkje gress. Først gang eg såg sanne heshing det hadde ingen gress på så det var ikkje så let å vite kar det var for noka. Eg trudde at kansje det var en kyr køing system(eller ku køing system på bokmal eller ku queing system på bokmal/engelsk) kansje lit samme som den det bruker på flyplas. Eg var i Barcelona flyplas ein gang, tidlig om morning så tidlig at eg var den først i køen, før det begynt å set up gjere, men etter en timer det begynt å set up stolpene og tape back meg men når eg begynt å gå fram eg var stoppet og fortalt at eg må gå rundt. Kvifor? Der var ingen folk. Kansje der var nokon som filmer for ”Spains funniest home movies” men eg trud det var ikkje så veldig morå eg.

Det er lenger siden eg kjørt en traktor sist men den gamla fordson had en hand throttle og two pedaler bremser og clutch. Min job var å kjøyrer rundt og rundt og rister høy. Han stor bønder set motor i gång men hoppet av etter two eller tre rund så han kunne in og ta lit mat. Eg beggynt fra kanten og kjørt rund og rund i circler som blir mindre og mindre (ever decreasing circles på engelsk). Etter en timer eg kjørt rundt den minst mulig circle men bønder komme ikkje tilbake. Kar skal eg gjøre? Skal eg gå rund igjen i circle som blir stører og stører? Nei det er kansje ikkje lurt, på veien in eg snud gress over så den våt flate ligger øverst, vis eg kjøyrer igjen den våte vil ligger på bakken igjen. Men han fortalt meg ikkje korleis man stopper. Eg prøvt bremser men motor var for kraftig heldigvis clutchen fungert men eg må stor heil tid, men clutch på en gammal traktor er ikkje samme som en ford fiesta. Etter to minute eg må gi meg og begynt å kjøyrer igjen men eg hadde en plan. Vis eg kjøyrer rundt to ganger og snu gress to ganger igjen alt skal blir bra.

Og det gek fint Dugnads and? Eg vite kvar en dugnad er og eg vit kvar en and er med en dugnads and? Kar er det for noka? En fugle arter som hjelpe kverandre heile tid? Eg vite ikkje Aahh Dugnads ånd.... så pas Det hadde dugnad i vales og. Kver gång der var noko job å gjører vi var ut å hjelpe, summer var den beste tid og den beste lyd var en bailer(make bailer noise). Det var en bra machine men det ikkje altid fungert som det skal fungere. Av og til den del som knuttet tau fungert ikkje og en enormt 10 meter long bail var lagt, eller vis tryk var for høgt bailen var så tung at det var umulig å løfte.

I Flekke der er ikkje så mange dugnad rundt høy og derer ikkje noka dugnad rundt gjuling heller heldigivis. I vales den material som kom ut av kyr var lit myr solid en den de gi ut her i norge, kanskje det er på grun av alle regn? I vales vi lastet up en trailor og kjørt rundt med en stor gaffel, her kansje det er best å bruke skjei.

Første gang eg var på en dugnad var i flekke skule. Eg hadde opgave å heng en dør på en av dei leike hytte som ligger ved parkerings plass. Å henge dør var ingen problem men å henge dør så det var mulig å åpner var ikkje så let. Eg brukt to timer å løser problem på papir men eg hadde ikkje tid til å gjører jobben. Heldigivis Tore Andre stilt op og brukt 5 minut å heng op døren på en heilt annen måte som eg hadde tegned. Tor Andre og det andre Ness naboer som vi bur ved siden av like dugnad veldig men hedigivis det er veldig let å vite at en dugnad er på gang. Det treng ikkje å set up en plakart oven for postkassen men det bare samles rundt garagen til Tore og begyne og venter for meg. Men vis eg er på vegen heim og seir samling fra avstand eg ta en rask endring i retning og gå heime langst sjøen, kryppe gjenom buske og intil hus på først etage og gjøyme meg i soverom.

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Eg var medlem i Nordal skiforeining styrre før mange år. Det hadde dugnad kvert vår å henge up ski heis. Først 3 år eg stilt op men eg hadde ikkje peiling kar eg skal gjøre og fek ingen job.

Etter den sau rednings aksjon fant det ut at eg kan klatre så neste år min opgave var å klatre stolpena. Men stegjern passed ikkje til støvlena min og miste eg en fra toppen av stolpa. Det er ikkje så let å klatre ned med et stegjern så hopper eg ned. Eg trud eg var ganske flink å løse problem åleine med Bjørn Nordal var ikkje einig ”Ja Chris du er flink å hoppe men er du så flink at du kan klatre op igjen med en stegjern så du kan hente den andre som henge der oppa ?”

Og eg klarte det Eg heiter Bond bonder gut.

Tusentak Har en forstat fint 17 mai Dancing in Flekke was a bit of a culture shock for me and for those I danced with. I used to enjoy dancing at the Queens road youthclub. Fireball by Deep Purple was my favourite along with hocus pocus by focus and Hoe down by Emerson Lake and Palmer. We didn’t call it dancing we called it freaking out, we were freaks. My dancing hasn’t progressed since then so when I was invited to dance by Bente she got more than she bargained for. Everyone in Flekke learns swing at school so that’s what they do and some of them are really good at it, Nils David and Knut David are the local John Travoltas. No one asks me to dance anymore but given the chance I’d still enjoy a freak out. The last time I danced was at my neice Bethan’s wedding. Someone Filmed me and put it on facebook. People with Parkinson’s shouldn’t dance.

Another of my committees was the Christmas tree party committee. This organized the postChristmas children’s dance around the Christmas tree. I was made responsible for decorating the tree. “How should I do it?” I asked. “Any way you want.” So I did it how we do it at home, a very rough rising spiral, pretty random really. “Not like that! We always put the lights in straight line from top to bottom.” Oops, my lights were taken down and done again.

My second boob came when collecting money at the door. I hadn’t realized that children under 6 were free. I charged for them all and all the parents gladly paid. A family with 3 kids would have paid about 50 quid, the same as the circus.

My political career was not quite short enough. I was asked if I would join the Socialist Venstre party. I respected the opinions of the other members so couldn’t say no. If I had said no I would be expected to join another party. I wasn’t only in the party I was on the committee. My spoken Norwegian is OK but I couldn’t follow all the discussion. I also couldn’t get out of standing for election, luckily I didn’t get in. I only needed about 30 votes, I think I got 6. Everyone has to do their bit even if their bit is quite small. The village hall committee is the ungdomslag which translates to youth club. I never understood the name, I was the youngest there. I never got invited to join the Bondekvinnerlag because that’s for farming women. I did make soup with them once though, I pealed the potatoes. I didn’t do them well enough though so they had to be gone over again. I have always said that if I ever start to recite local poet Jakob Sander’s poetry then I have been here to long. I haven’t done that but I did bake a special bread based pastry called a kringla for the Jakob Sander café. I got the recipe from the internet but what I made was not a “Flekke kringla” so a lot of it ended up in the bin. On another occasion I made a chocolate cake for the 17th May. They didn’t know it was mine but when it was unwrapped someone remarked that there was no point in putting it out, no one would eat it. Too chocolaty.

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Food traditions in Norway are very important but Norway used to be a poor country so a lot of the traditional food is basic, here is my guide to some of the most classic.

Natron kake

Hjort Rakfisk Flatbrød Lefse Mjøse Pinnekjøt

Skolte Risgrønsgraut Lutefisk Svele

A cross between a scone and a crumpet. Eaten with butter and syrup or brown cheese. Also very nice split in half and toasted.

Bente regularly makes them and gives me some if I walk past at the right moment which I often do.

Venison shot outside our house and hung in the neighbours garage for a week. I buy a whole leg and butcher it myself and I mean butcher, I have no idea what I am doing.

Fermented fish. I don’t like it but it’s nowhere near as bad as the Swedish version that smells like sewage Flatbrød. Quite an art to make, Åge made the flatbrød for Josies wedding. A good carrier of good Norwegian butter.

Another flat thing with butter and cream inside. Eaten with coffee Like sick.

Salted, smoked and dried lamb chops. You have to soak them in water for several days or they are inedible. Eaten at Christmas, we have to have two Christmas dinners because our kids are Norwegian.

The famous sheep’s head. Don’t believe it if told that the eye is the best bit. I tried one and it just a lump of fat with a lens in it.

The cheek meet is very nice.

Not as good as British rice pudding.

More Christmas food. Fish preserved after soaking in lime.

Interesting.

A fluffy pancake often served on ferries. Powdered antlers are used as a raising agent so sometimes smell of ammonia.

We don’t eat a normal Norwegian diet. Our most common thing is curry made from imported “spice taylor” kits. Norwegians don’t like chilly hot food so don’t expect to set your mouth on fire in a Norwegian curry house. Food is very much connected to the land and sea. Eating Mølte at Christmas takes you straight back to the mountain(s) where you picked them and there is nothing like serving up the fish you caught that day. Sometimes that is not such a good experience. We caught a skate once and cooked it straight away. It was like eating wet cardboard. Skate and sharks have to be hung to breakdown their muscles. Local people won’t eat skate because the apparently eat dead fisherman better than sharks that eat live 0nes.

We have had a couple of awkward moments when inviting friends for dinner, serving wine on a Wednesday was a no-no as was serving prawns to Svein Ove who has a seafood allergy. We thought the potatoes dauphinoise would go down well but our guests couldn’t understand why we would put Garlic with potato. I’ve often thought of running a restaurant and for a while I sort of did. Are Morten looked after an old museum of a house on the other side of the fjord.

He often entertained groups of people there and I thought it would be fun to cook with him.

On one occasion we made sushi from freshly caught fish. I had only eaten sushi that I had made at home and had no idea that you serve it. As luck would have it one of the diners was Japanese who came to put me right after I told her husband that you don’t have soy sauce with sushi. On another occasion a Chinese film crew were visiting, they had salmon. If they got a bone in their mouth they’d simply spit the whole lot out. The film crew were making a dramatization of the life of one of our former students Mark Wang. He had been in a plane 143

crash when he was little and was rescued by angels or something, this made him pretty special. He is now a rich businessman. I was in the film which was quite bizarre. I’d just speak nonsense and they dubbed over in Chinese. I have no idea what I am saying, for all I know I could be swearing.

Figure 83 Lillingstonheim

When we first moved to Norway we lived in one of the little teachers houses. I was part of the management so would often present new ideas to the staff in the staff meeting. This would lead to much discussion which carried on after the meeting ending on our front door. If I sat on the balcony with a beer a passing teacher would always say “I wish I had time to sit on the balcony”. “If you worked more efficiently you would” I’d reply. We weren’t earning vast amounts of money but our rent was cheap and there was nothing to spend money on so we quickly saved up enough money to buy a cabin so that we could escape at weekends. A cabin is in Norwegian is called a Hytte, this is pronounced a bit like hooter, we called it the hoot.

There was no internet in those days and taking work there was banned, I’d spend my time building model boats. My first was a viking long boat I then did a Faeroese fishing boat.

These boats take hours to build, looking back at my busy work life and 3 children at home I have no idea how I managed to do this but it’s a great way to shut oneself off. I recently took up the hobby again, built 3 boats, much more difficult with Parkinson’s. Eventually gave up when someone on the Facebook forum commented on my latest build “Not very pretty, I’d throw it in the bin”.

In the summer we would holiday in France. Surfing beaches and climbing venues. The first trips were made in the car a left hand drive Renault Savanah with 3 rows of seats. The kids would always argue about who would gt the back row, “back in the back”. Rowan usually won and if he didn’t he’d make sure that no one would enter his half of the big seat. We’d set of from home with the intention of finding somewhere to stop but never did so drove all the way to the west coast of France in one go. The kids would get restless and would start to argue. I never hit the children, it’s illegal in Norway anyway, but on those journeys I sometimes tried, steering with one hand flailing blindly backwards with the other. Although I never hit them I did get angry and shout at them. I sometimes worry that I might have gone over the top. Verbal violence can be just as harmful as physical. Rowan used to fish a lot, he also tied flies. A local journalist wrote an article about him for a book about interesting (strange) children. In the photo he has dirty nails. On one fishing trip he lent my rod to a student who broke it. I got pretty mad and shouted at him outside our house. This was witnessed by good friend and neighbour Olav, he’s German. Afterwards he came over and told me I’d gone too far. I regret the whole thing, it wasn’t even Rowan’s fault. I have often

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wondered what effect it had on Rowan, after many years I asked. He couldn’t remember the incident.

Social services in Norway are pretty hot. There have been several well publicized cases of children taken away from parents for next to nothing. We often wonder how close we were.

Hilary has worked as a health visitor In the local schools and knows what they look for. One of them is bad teeth, Rowan had lots of fillings. With that and the dirty fingernails we must have been on their radar. I once lost it at a parents evening. Our time slot for talking to Rowan’s teacher Ingvar, Bente’s brother, was 7 to 7.30 but by 7.15 our friends Inger and Arne were still in there talking about Erlend. I boiled over and burst into the room. Ingvar handled the situation well and we sat down. Why doesn’t Rowan do his homework? He would if you gave him any. Here’s my mark book. Oh! It is the parents responsibility to ensure homework is done. Strike 3. I was right once. Rowan was very keen on music, he played Bass in a kids band, Metallica, Nirvana etc. At school he got a very low grade in music so I went to see his teacher. Where does Rowan sit in class I asked. At the back. Aah, that’s the other English boy. Final grades are given by external examiners, in English Rowan was awarded 5 out of 6 even though his English was better than the examiners. It’s because he’s English we were told.

You might think that being bilingual would make you good at learning languages but it doesn’t. Up to the age of 12 our kids had never learnt a foreign language they just picked up English and Norwegian. When their class were being taught English they had special lessons with their mum about what a good loser Scott was. At middle school they could pick a 3rd language and struggled. Florence chose Spanish but it didn’t go well, the best students in the class had been given the opportunity to go to Spain but one was ill, Florence asked if she could take the place. “Everyone will have to be sick before you get to go.” I should have gone to see that teacher but Hilary held me back. Florence can write with both hands, she can write two different essays simultaneously. That’s not true but I bet she wishes it was. This skill rang some bells and Florence went to see the educational psychologist. We called her the left hand lady. She confirmed the dual handed writing ability but missed the dyslexia. I sometimes wonder if my mum is dyslexic. She always writes with green ink (a tell-tale sign). Her writing is illegible so you can’t tell if she can spell or not. All is revealed when she types.

Figure 84 Florence could also sing, here she is in the local paper.

At 15 Florence decided she wanted to broaden her horizons and applied for an exchange year in Panama. She got it and off she went. Picked up Spanish with a Panamanian street accent and has never looked back. United world college, Oklahoma university, Melbourne 145

university, half way round the world on a study ship finally Glasgow university. Last year she taught English, Norwegian and Spanish at her old school. The year she went to Panama changed her life, it’s tattooed on her neck.

At school Josie was the model pupil, teachers only had good things to say about her, Josie managed to keep her unhappiness to herself for 17 years. It’s not that her unhappiness suddenly burst out on the world, no, she became happy, Josie met Gustav. Gustav may have made Josie happy but he didn’t always make me happy. I once organized a special happiness day at school. Students and teachers ran workshops on what makes them happy. I ran one on bouldering, I talked about bouldering whilst doing a circuit of 6 problems in the bouldering room. Other’s ran sessions on, amongst other stuff, horses, chocolate, math’s and smoking.

Smoking isn’t really allowed at the school so smokers have to head for the woods, they probably get to experience nature more than any other group.

Gustav wasn’t a bad student, far from it, he is clever and works hard. Gustav was a demanding student, demanding to have his questions answered, demanding to stretch the limits of deadlines, demanding special treatment in exams. As a young adult growing up in Denmark he was used to having his demands met but clashed with authority in this, at the time, very British school in Norway. After leaving school Gustav would spend his summer holidays with us. That was challenging, it took many years for my perception of him to change from student to son (in law) and it has taken many years for him to stop treating me like a teacher to be questioned to a Father (in law) who sometimes gets things wrong but it’s dad so you let him get away with it.

Josie had a happy first year at RCN but Gustav was a second year so left. A lonely year at school followed by a lonely year at St Andrews was not good to observe. Josie was a natural climber. With no training she top roped a 6a when she was 15. I encouraged all of them to climb, the girls had no concept of height being frightening but Rowan did, he still does.

Climbing saved me at university, it gave me friends, something to do and status. I may have been hopeless at physics but I was there to climb and at that I excelled, graduating with 1st class honour’s. I thought climbing would save Josie too and encouraged her to join the club.

She was not welcomed into this closed community. I visited on a “club night” they met in a pub so I went along. What they had forgotten to tell Josie was that there was a party somewhere else and no one showed up at the pub. Josie cried as I left the following morning.

A couple of miles down the road I had to stop the car as the welling tears disrupted my vision.

It makes me think about the time I was President of the Leeds Uni club. “There’s a bus to Caley if they want to climb they can go there”. Luckily I didn’t remain in that position for long. Gustav also knew Josie was unhappy so demanded to change university, his demands were of course met. Josie ended with a 1st in Geography, she now has a PhD too. Gustav got a 1st in Math’s.

Figure 85 At Josies graduation, St Andrew's

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Rowan also went to university in fact he still there in Bergen. He moved there with his girlfriend set on a career in the oil industry. The girlfriend didn’t last and nor did the oil industry so he finished his Geology degree and started studying physics with an aim to be a physics teacher like his dad, realized he is more interested in biology than physics so changed again. He is now doing a masters. In Norway there are almost no university fees so you just have to pay for food and accommodation, he does this by working part time as a lifeguard, training centre receptionist and shop assistant at a diving shop.

I sit here hunched over my keyboard, aching, shaking. It’s 6 in the morning and I’ve been up 2 hours. Only managed about 500 words, typing is getting slower. Difficult to imagine how I used to do so much, we really did used to go for it. Like when we built our house.

We’d been living in Norway for 5 years paying rent for a doll’s house and thought it was time to buy a place of our own. People round here don’t buy houses they build them. A lot of people actually build them, we weren’t that adventurous, or skillful so hired someone to build it for us but first we had to find a plot of land. By this time our Norwegian was OK but basic and we knew absolutely nothing about house building. You can’t build anywhere, the Komune had designated several plots on the “housing estate” in Flekke but they were too far from the fjord and We’d have to drive to work. On a walk around Haugland Hilary spotted a little wood hidden behind a row of garages. Cherry trees were in full blossom and a small stream trickled. Oh, and there was a boulder, a really superb, fine grained barrel of a boulder.

That’s where we wanted to live. There were three brothers living there with their families, Åge Ness, Atle Ness and Tore Ness. The Nesses. All had children the same age as ours. We had taken the trouble to be part of the community and knew them all. We would regularly walk past “our plot” hoping to bump into one of them, eventually we did, Atle. “We’ve got our name down for a plot in Flekke but would love to live here”. “Where would you like to build?” Hilary pointed.” What there, behind the garages?” “Åge owns the land ask him.” We now know it’s not that simple, the Komune has to change the designation of the land. When it came up at the council meeting they laughed, mad foreigners want to build a house on a steep hill. But we had done the groundwork, all of the committee members knew us, we were granted permission.

The land cost next to nothing but it had no water or electricity, The Nesses got water from a stream but there might not be enough for us. Atle helped us apply for mains water and the Komune lay the pipes in the road. We contacted a local architect who turned our sketches into a house. Offers were sent out to three builders and we chose. Arne Mortensbakke, not the cheapest but the best, a local craftsman a gentle man with a very strong Dale dialect.

Whenever asked a question he would say Jaaaa……..Neiiiiiii…….. Typical Sunfjord. Geir Sande did the ground work. We’d met him when he was doing the ground work at the college.

He had been a teacher but gave it up to operate digging machines. His brother was the headmaster at the middle school, his daughter is now headmistress. She once challenged me to a rope climbing competition. I won by a mile. She was not happy. When Geir started to prepare the site he found that the garages were built on a loose rock which had to be removed.

The Nesses agreed to sell us the garages and we knocked them down, they each built new garages. When the groundwork was complete the little wood had been totally destroyed.

Ooops. The boulder had thankfully been untouched. After 20 years the wood is back and the stream still trickles although for the first two years it stank of sewage. The neighbours new

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septic tank fixed that. We are very lucky to have neighbours who want us to be here so much that they build new garages and septic tanks just to make it possible.

Figure 86 Garden boulder, Knut Sømme climbing

The house is a mixture of traditional Norwegian outside (except the garden) and English inside. We imported the country kitchen from England. The cupboard are all made to measure and free standing. Arne Mortensbakke had never seen free standing units before so lifted them up a few mm and screwed them to the walls. I was too late to stop him doing this for most of the units but did manage to keep the welsh dresser firmly planted on the floor. In hindsight he was doing the right thing. Wooden house move, when I walk across the kitchen floor all the plates in the French dresser rattle.

We also wanted a classic brick fireplace, I had found some old, locally made red bricks in a nearby ruin. We bought the bricks but the bricklayer wouldn’t use them. “You want me to build something ugly? Why?” We did manage to get someone to lay the bricks and it’s not ugly. Everything else is wood. The staircase was made off site and delivered ready-made. It fitted with mm accuracy. I am continually amazed by the skill of craftsmen, people who generally “failed” at school but are much cleverer than me. Not that I was particularly clever at school either.

The build became the subject of much discussion in the local community. At the weekends people would drive out to see the crazy English family’s house on a hill. We love the final result, Hilary has done a fantastic job creating an English garden although quite a lot of it is inaccessible and wild. When we sit on our balcony with the cherry trees and trickling stream we are sitting in wild nature, exactly how we had pictured it would be.

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The last 5 years That’s probably enough filling in of the Norway years now for the last five, the time elapsed since I abruptly stopped writing after the 12 days were up. First the climbing.

When I got the Parkinson’s diagnosis I really thought that climbing was over. Due to lack of use my left arm was noticeable thinner than my right, my traps, pecs and delts were similarly emaciated. Maybe I should start climbing more slabs. I found some new boulders and rebrushed some old classics, at least I was climbing. A photographer had an exhibition featuring sufferers of Parkinson’s at the rehab centre (I think I might have told this story before) one of the photos was a bodybuilder. So I can still build muscle. I built the arm back up in the gym and I no longer look lopsided, in fact Apart from the stoop and the expressionless face I look pretty good. Ever since the days of Charles Atlas and bullworker I have dreamt of having sticking out muscles with big veins, serratis anterior, split triceps and of course a six pack. I used to think I had a six pack but as Basher pointed out it was just rolls of fat. Noo cheers. I don’t know if it’s age, Parkinson’s or the medication but for a while I could eat anything and not put on weight. I got really thin. Maybe it’s the continual burning of fat by my shaking left hand? At the time I was climbing with a Canadian student, Roche, good name for a climber. I would of course always climb with my shirt off. Roche commented that it was like climbing with a skinless man. He made my day. I got one of those fat measuring calipers off the internet. 8%!

Figure 87 Skinless

I was climbing pretty well too leading 7c and bouldering 7A+. I enquired about taking part in paraclimbing but was told No. Parkinson’s is controlled by drugs, if you take them you’re normal. Not quite true. I look strong but I’m surprisingly weak. I got up the 7c by using tricks to make up for my weak left arm. Matching and snatching. I would have done really well as a paraclimber but would have probably felt guilty. I climbed well because I was a good climber

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not because my disability was only slight. Paraclimbing is a strange concept, climb too well and you’re cheating, climb badly and you lose.

Life with Parkinson’s can be a bit flat, dopamine gives you the little highs when you remember that you’ve got chicken for tea or it’s Friday and you’re going to have a bottle of wine etc. Everything’s just the same, chicken or salad wine or no wine. That’s my excuse for taking snus. Snus is a pouch of tobacco that you put under your lip, they used to be called Skol bandits when briefly legal in the UK. I hope my mum doesn’t read this, well if she does at least she will know what’s wrong with my lip. One of the advantages of wearing a mask during Covid times. A while ago I read that nicotine is somehow good for people with Parkinson’s. I used to smoke so didn’t need much encouragement. It’s totally untrue, snus makes me worse. However it does give me something to look forward to. Ooh, I’ll have a snus. That wasn’t very pleasant, take it out. Ooh, I’ll have another one. A series of highs throughout the day. I dopamine is the chemical that makes us happy, which chemical makes us sad? I asked Jelena, the biology teacher. There isn’t one, it’s the lack of dopamine (short version of answer). Oh dear! Thank science for Levodopa (the synthetic equivalent).

I’ve already mentioned some of the side effects of the medication but I don’t think I’ve mentioned the dreams/hallucinations, a one time they were quite regular. The thing is if I laid down for a nap in a matter of seconds I would go directly into deep sleep. A former student of mine, Thomas, once attempted something called Uberman where you take 20 minute sleeps every 4 hours. This isn’t easy since you have to be able to get into deep sleep straight away.

Thomas failed but I could have done it easily. When you do this you start dreaming but you feel like your still awake, the dreams are more like hallucinations than dreams, you are conscious and can control what you do. It’s called lucid dreaming. In a normal dream things just happen, in a lucid dream you have control. I have a recurring dream where I can fly by flapping my arms, in a lucid dream I fly where I want to. The other big difference is you can feel things, if you bump into someone you feel the bump. It’s a lot of fun. I also experienced sleep paralysis, that’s not so much fun. You wake up, open your eyes but can’t move. People and things enter the room and there is a lot of noise but you are rooted to the spot and can’t breathe, it’s quite frightening. The thing is you haven’t really woken up or opened your eyes.

You can snap out of it by forcing a sudden movement, once you realise this it’s not so frightening in fact it’s quite entertaining. I found that sleeping with my head propped up by too many pillows brought it on so I would make it happen on purpose. It doesn’t happen anymore, now I just get bad dreams, they are always related to Parkinson’s. I usually end up lying on the floor unable to move or breath. People around me are unsympathetic as I try to get them to help me. I usually die then wake up.

Days may be flat but I experience noticeable fluctuations on a 6 monthly scale. Sometimes I climb extremely badly other times quite well. Makes life interesting I suppose. The problem with labels like incurable, progressive and degenerate are that they lack hope. When at the bottom of the cycle I feel like giving up. I don’t mean committing suicide, that would be a bit dramatic, I mean giving up climbing. What’s the point in training it won’t do any good.

Actually it does as does the fact that I am on my way upwards out of the trough. My climbing improves which gives me much pleasure even though I lack dopamine.

I was at the bottom of a trough when Rowan started bouldering. Some of my old Norwegian climbing friends had grown up, made some money and opened a bouldering centre down the road from where Rowan lives in Bergen, Bergen Klatrecenter. Jomar by the way went on to be part of the very successful climbing wall company Friksjon walls. I haven’t seen him for a

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long time but if he still has dreads they will be down to the floor. Rowan enjoyed the session at the gym and began to go regularly. During Covid he moved home and we would go to the bouldering room at the school several times a week. Even though Rowan was a beginner he was better than me, not for long. It is a pity that he took so long to realise that bouldering was fun. He spent his whole life growing up in boulderers heaven and never touched either rock or plastic. I suppose I wasn’t easy to climb with, I was only interested in pushing my limits, only bothering to brush problems of 7a and above. Now I was crap we were at the same level and could work the same problems. I even started brushing some of the easy boulders I’d always walked past. Found some whole new areas.

Figure 88 Rowan bouldering at Haugland

I have discovered that to enjoy bouldering you don’t have to climb 7a, the only requirement is that you try problems that are a little too difficult. Difficult enough so that you have to spend some time working them out but not so difficult that you never do them. It is frustrating knowing that I used to be much better but there are the odd days when I pull one out of the bag. Last year I had the idea that a problem called Patrick Mono might be a good one to try.

It’s named after an ex-student and features a one finger jam. The mono is reached with the right hand, pulled right down and a long reach made to a crimp which is used to reach better and better holds. I’d forgotten about the start. A long reach off an undercut. Couldn’t touch it with my weak left arm. If the muscles are weak don’t use them. The tendons in my hands have shortened though over use and my fingers curl naturally. I didn’t know the term at the time but I use a three finger drag on everything. My hand is open but I hook my bent last joint over the holds. This works better on real rock than plastic. Using this method and a straight arm I reached the mono and took the skin off my finger. A week later and my finger had healed enough to try again. Gotcha. Patrick Mono 6C+. I just added the plus.

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Figure 89 Patrick Mono 6C+

Encouraged by this success I tried a short 8a route called Vesle Daniel, named after a poem by the local poet whose work I will never recite because it will mean I’ve been here too long and will have to return to Britain. No chance whatsoever. Far to powerful. The crux is off an undercut and for some reason I am particularly weak on undercuts. According to Adam Ondra long arms are bad for undercuts, so are stiff wrists. I should do some specific training. I can do pull ups OK but can’t lift things. My daughter Florence is stronger than me. I get her to help when changing the wheels on the car ready for winter. We went to buy some wood for the fire but I couldn’t lift the bags into the car, Hilary had to do it. It’s like they always said about Arnold Scharzenegger, his muscles are big but is he really strong. He obviously was, I’m obviously not. Right, I’m going to start lifting weights.

I don’t drive much now. This is a pity since the Bergen boys have opened a climbing centre an hour’s drive from our house. I love going there, in fact I was invited to demo the wall at the opening. Picture this: A group of young muscle bound guys trying a problem. Along comes an old, bent over guy with a shaking hand. Obviously not quite all there. The old guy chalks up, must be going to try the easy pink problem but grabs the red holds by mistake.

Snigger. Bloody hell. He does it with absolute ease, moving with slow precision from hold to hold. At least that’s how I see it. The reality is probably more like: See that old guy over there, that’s Chris Hamper He always does this red problem, if we try it he’ll come and do it in front of us. Here he comes. Snigger. I wonder if your still allowed to use the word snigger?

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Figure 90 Showing off at the Bergen Klatresenter

We have an automatic car so it’s easy to drive but you know that feeling when you almost hit something? When your heart jumps into your throat making your head feel like it will explode. I get that about once every 15 minutes. The problem is that my left hand is a bit slow so if the car starts to drift to the right and I have to make a quick adjustment pulling down with my left nothing happens for a split second and my righthand takes over. There’s a lot of swallowing to get the heart back down. I haven’t hit anything yet but that’s probably ‘cos I don’t drive. I’ve spent a lot of time with an occupational therapist, she got me funding for a special steering wheel and a disabled sticker. I thought the sticker would be useful but didn’t have the wheel fitted when I found out I would not be allowed to drive normal cars. Keep your options open. My mum has a disabled sticker but forgets to display it. She’s had a couple of fines. ”Ridiculous, why do I have to put this thing in the window?” My brother would also have a sticker but he doesn’t have a car, he doesn’t have any legs either. A combination of booze and fags. For a while he had one leg, actually for a while he had two. The “good leg” wasn’t good at all. Very painful, thinner than mine, just got in the way. The doctor wanted to save it but Tim wanted to be rid of it. Now he has no legs and no pain, gets around in an electric buggy which doesn’t need a disabled sticker, it’s sort of obvious, anyway he can’t exactly park it outside while he crawls around Tesco.

I want an electric car, not one like my brother’s although I can see it coming, no, a Tesla. Ever since the Alfa Spider Hilary has made it clear that she doesn’t like flash cars. A Tesla’s not flash, everyone in Norway has one, well almost. My argument is down to the automatic driving capability. If you start to drift off the road it corrects itself. Within 10 years they will be driving themselves, I can’t wait. Who would you like to drive your car today? Lewis

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Hamilton please. No screeching of tyres just woooshh, home to climbing wall, 25 minutes.

The only real speed limit is the speed of light.

A photon arrives on time for Sunday dinner, the electron arrives late due to mass.

I didn’t get that from the internet I made it up. Quite proud of that one.

As you probably realise cars mean a lot to me, well I come from what used to be the centre of the British car industry, Coventry. Rootes, Humber, Hillman, Rover, Jaguar and of course Triumph. My second car was a triumph spitfire 1500, Tahiti blue with a hard top. Later I built a kit car from another spitfire so knew every nut and bolt. When we moved to Norway we had a left hand drive Renault savanah. It really makes no difference which side you drive on with single track roads. When we retired the Renault we test drove a Renault scenic. The kids were a bit embarrassed about our left hand drive car and were excited by the prospect of a brand new scenic. At the same time another Brit teacher was trying to sell her lefthand drive Ford escort because she was returning to Britain. We waited until she was just about to leave and gave her half what she was asking. Rowan cried but I had a cunning plan. What if we imported a triumph spitfire to use as a second car? I didn’t want one of course, this was just to make Rowan happy. Hilary agreed and Rowan and I headed off to buy a yellow 1500. This was a bit complicated since I didn’t have insurance to drive it in England but we made it even though the battery was flat. The Nesses had a lot of garages so even though we had to knock down a row we ended up with 3 of our own. I can’t remember how this all worked out but it’s another example of how accommodating the Nesses have been.

I realise that I’m going back into the distant past again and I have a feeling I might have told this story before but I’m getting to the point. The car was a good buy, yes goodbye to £3000, it drove well and had little rust 15 years later it was starting to look tatty. A couple of years into Parkinson’s I’d pretty much given up climbing, I needed a project, I’ll rebuild the spit.

I’m not sure what I am going to do when I retire. The other day a student asked me if I am looking forward to retirement. No. What am I going to do? Maybe I could restore old cars?

You may spot a flaw in this plan. Maybe I’ll be in a wheel chair, but anyway it seemed like a plan and I had the perfect car to begin on. A Triumph spitfire has a chassis which means you can take the body off and still drive it, well, theoretically. That makes it easier to work on although thinking about it I’m not sure why. When I built the Spartan kit car I didn’t have much money so used all the old components from the donor car. This was a bad idea. Now I have money so intended to replace all the moving parts in the suspension. I then embarked on the biggest spending spree of my life. They say that the Parkinson’s drugs can cause impulse buying and I had a lot of impulses. I started searching for rust and found a lot. I wanted to do things right so made a list of all the rusty panels and bought the lot. Floor, front wing lower panels, sills, rear wing, bulkhead panel and a load of brackets and patches. I found a couple of youtubers who had videoed the whole restoration process and joined the facebook group. I needed to learn how to weld. Atle Ness no longer lived next door, he and Ingjerd move to Dale where they have a smaller garden, the new neighbours are Kjetil and Trina. Kjetil is a welder and Trina is the daughter of Fin Bjarne who was the guy who eventually built our not ugly fireplace, Kjetil said he would teach me, even offered to do the welding for me but before I could start we needed to do something about the Garage floor.

Someone had told us that it is better to have a gravel floor in your garage than a concrete floor, something to do with humidity. The problem is if you drop a nut or washer it’s lost

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forever. I reckoned on dropping lots of nuts so needed a concrete floor. I got a quote, £3000.

Tore said I could do it for less than a 1000 if I did it myself but I had no idea how, he did.

You could call it a dugnad where neighbours get together to get a job done, however I didn’t so much, Tore did it all apart from the smoothing, that was done by Asgeir who taught me how to tie flies. When I built the Spartan I had a tiny garage so had to push the car outside to do work on it, now I had a large garage with a concrete floor.

Figure 91 Dugnad

The first job is to strip everything off the car. This part is easy but the pile of wires, lights and electrical component was frightening. I started labeling everything as It was removed built it didn’t last, after a couple of weeks I had about 10 plastic tubs full of bits. It is important to do all the body work before you remove the body, this is so that it doesn’t change shape and won’t fit back on. My first welding job was to weld metal braces across the doors. My first attempts at welding were fairly disastrous, I couldn’t see anything through the welding mask.

Luckily I discovered the liquid crystal mask that darkens when the flash appears. I practice, practiced and practiced. I got through a whole sheet of steel but I was still crap but managed to get the braces to stick. Next paint removal. I was hoping that I could simply paint over with paint stripper and scrape off the paint but the stripper didn’t do anything. Kjetil lent me an angle grinder and a wire wheel. The angle grinder was the real deal. I tried it out on a scrap of metal which flew through the air embedding itself in the garage wall. I’m going to have to be more careful. The worst thing that can happen is to catch an edge, this ends the angle grinder flying through the air, I once got the wire wheel in my chest. Ruined my Pink Floyd T shirt.

The angle grinder is very effective but can’t get into the corners, these have to be done by hand, scraping with screw drivers and other instruments. I reckon that about 90% of a restoration job is brushing and scraping.

Having removed the paint I could see the rust more clearly. Most was in the panels I was going to replace but there were patches everywhere and all rust had to go. This involves cutting out the rusted metal and welding in a patch. Car panels are rarely flat so the patch had to be bent into shape, I had to learn how to bend metal. First you cut out the rust, then draw around it and make a template out of cardboard to check that it is going to fit. The patch is the cut out a metal sheet with metal shears, it is then formed into the right shape using a set of hammers and small anvils called dollies. This is very difficult. My patches never fitted so I would have to start filing it to shape but I would always file the wrong bit and make it worse, eventually I would achieve a good fit. The patch is then held in place with magnets and tacked into place. The old metal is quite thin so I’d keep blowing holes in it. After loads of trial and error I had my first patch in place, however I’m not sure of the logic in replacing rust with bad weld.

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Figure 92 A fabricated patch

I got reasonably good at patching, there is one in the boot that I am particularly proud of that bends in 3 directions made by a combination of bending and welding bits together. It took about one year to do the body work. That’s a year of working every day for several hours. The garage is next to a road that is used as morning exercise for patients at the rehab centre. Many of them would pop in for a chat as did the neighbours. Åge would pop in most days. He used to be the owner of the local shop, all the moving of boxes had made him strong so would often help out with jobs needing a bit of strength. The patients would often tell me I was an inspiration, I don’t know why, I was only scraping off paint. The rehab centre hung up a poster explaining what I was doing and encouraging them to talk to me. I miss the social contact of the garage.

I will never be as good at climbing as I once was and this knowledge makes training difficult.

It’s not nice to get worse at something. I’m really bad at metal work which means I can’t get worse. It’s important to have something in your life that you can get better at. The problem is I am now quite good at it so can only get worse. Nothing succeeds like success. (and nothing fails like failure) With the body off I got to work on the chassis, scraping, scraping and more scraping. I painted it with blue smootherite (smooth hammerite) and reinstalled the suspension replacing all the joints, springs, brake lines and pistons. The engine and gearbox was then put back in and new universal joints fitted. There are a lot of jobs that are quite difficult to perform with one hand, replacing trunions is one of them. You have to hold a rubber ring in place between two discs on both sides of the trunnion which has to be slid into the suspension forks. Each trunnion was a day’s work and there are 4. OJ’s are also difficult but I found some handy tips on the internet. Who would have thought that simple hammering the yoke would make them pop open. It’s all to do with Inertia.

Figure 93 Rolling chassis

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Before putting the body back on it needed to be painted. I bought a compressor but found it difficult to adjust so decide I would use cans. I got through about 50 cans of primer over 100 cans of yellow and another 30 or so clear. I’m quite pleased with the result and after 3 years no rust is coming through. To do the painting I built a tent out of tarpaulins in the garage but this can only be done in the summer. In winter I built a tent in our spare bedroom. Worked fine except that there is now a fine layer of yellow paint covering everything in the room.

During my spending spree I also bought a stainless steel big bore exhaust and reupholstery kits for the seats. The reupholstery went fine, it’s not a messy job so could be done in the house making it an ideal job for the winter. I worked right through the winter sometimes working in the garage at minus 15°C It took two and a half years from start to finish. The car works and I have driven it about 400 m but never got it registered. The point of the project was to do the work not make a product. I never added up the amount spent but it’s probably around £10,000. The car is not worth that much but the experience was.

Building a car with one hand isn’t easy. Sometimes I’d have to perform contortions to be able to get my right hand in the right place or construct some sort of clamp to do the job of my left.

Maybe this wasn’t going to be a viable hobby for retirement. Undeterred I bought a VW Beetle but when it came down to it I couldn’t face another 2 years in the garage, seems a pity not to use my new “skills” but there you go.

Figure 94 Almost finished

Not able to handle large car parts, but in need of a project, I thought that I would rekindle my old hobby of model boat building so bought a model boat. It was a Colin Archer, not the easiest build but I was attracted to this one since I once sailed on one around some local islands with a group of students (and a skipper). The parts are small and not at all easy to glue together with a shaking hand. On several occasions my left hand would suddenly jerk knocking to whole boat off the table. I was quite pleased with the final result.

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Figure 95 Colin Archer

More challenging build turned out to be too challenging so I stopped building them. I think Hilary was quite pleased. The odd model boat displayed in a window is quite classy, a boat in every window is weird.

The biology teacher Jelena has a wooden boat on the Adriatic in Croatia where she is from.

She invited us to go on a sailing trip and we jumped at the chance. I wasn’t really going for the sailing, I’d read about the deep water soloing in the area and thought I’d give it a go.

Sailing from island to island was fantastic. Each island has a small restaurant, we’d park (sorry moor) the boat and jump ashore for meals of grilled fish and local wine. Eventually we got to the deep water soloing cliffs. Oh my gosh! They were huge. No way am I going up there. I don’t know why I thought I would. Near our house there is a 4 m high rock you can jump off into the fjord. When the kids were small, Florence was 6, they would jump off it but I never have. Too scared. These cliffs were about 20 m. I found a much smaller alternative.

Yes, I’ve done some DWS in Croatia. Fraud.

Figure 96 DWS holiday in Croatia

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Jelena is very much into freediving, Rowan is a free diver too so I was keen to give it a go. I simply could not get my body under water so spent all the time on the surface watching Jelena effortlessly move about. What I hadn’t realized was that I was breathing 90% air 10% water (suppressed gag reflex?) I started to cough and was alarmed by the amount of water that came out. I panicked. “Are you alright?” “No.” Jelena rescued me and I do mean recue, I think I would’ve drowned. Back on the boat Parkinson’s kicked in big time which freaked Jelena out more than the drowning. Diving is not for me.

Our dog, Ben died, he was 15 which is pretty old for a pedigree chum Gordon setter. He went deaf a year or two before he died, not that that made much of a difference, he never listened to us anyway. He was our first and probably last dog. Bought from a posh family in Bergen with the same name as a big car showroom, always thought he was too good for us. Definitely the alpha male and probably not a good choice for a first dog, he was a bully and we didn’t stand up to him. He jumped at people, ran away when-ever possible, barked when we ate and pulled when we went for a walk. Before Ben I would hardly ever go for a walk in the hills but Ben had to be taken for long walks each day or he would go crazy so we would walk every day even though it made no difference, he was still crazy. Ben almost died several times, when he was a puppy he walked out across a lake on very thin ice, he had to be rescued when he swam across the fjord chasing two ducks and a student once pulled him out of a raging river. He loved to run ear flappingly wild but he would chase deer so we kept him on a lead. The biology teacher Jelena had a special relationship with Ben, when with her he could do anything. We once found him next to an injured deer, I don’t believe that Ben had inflicted the injuries but you never know. His death began on a Friday beginning in his back legs. By Saturday he couldn’t stand so I laid out a tarp and he had to wee lying down. I should have called the vet but it was the weekend and I didn’t know who to call. He eventually died on Monday, by then he was in a sorry state. We called the vet but she didn’t make it in time. In the last minutes his heart kept stopping then starting again. Still fighting to stay alive even though life was unbearable. He had a sudden fit, tried to bite me and it was over. The dying was sad but death was sadder, there is something powerful about that moment when life ends.

On the positive side, we don’t have to take Ben out for walks everyday but on the negative side, we don’t have to take Ben out for walks every day.

Figure 97 Ben and Josie

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Ben was Josie’s best friend until she met Gustav, Ben didn’t like this and used to sit on her head to prove that he was her bestie not Gustav, this didn’t work and Josie and Gustav got married. They had their wedding at the college, did the catering themselves although I made the desert, pavlova with wild bilberries Apart from the speech this was pretty much my only contribution. I was in a low at the time and not handling things well. If they’d got married today I think I could have done more., luckily Hilary’s girlfriends volunteered to help.

Hilary’s girlfriends have known each other for years, I actually met some of them before Hilary. They are liked through the climbing community, at least their partners were. I met Jan at University, smiley eyes and a deep voice, her sister Cherry was going out with Mike Hammil. Cherry later married(!) Pete Harrop and ran that little climbing shop in the Verdon gorge. Vanita is married to Leeds alumnus Bush. Trish was with Mark Stokes for a while. Met him on the roof of our house in Sheffield. Before him she was with another climber Phil Swainston who must have been born with grey hair. Sue (Lawty) is a famous artist who used to be married to Mark Hutchinson who was something big in the BMC, he is another Leeds alumnus as is Brian Hall who is married to Louise. Mary is a recent addition. Hilary’s connection to the group does not come from me, before we got together Hilary was with Al Rouse who was friends with all the others even though he went to Cambridge not Leeds. The climbing world has almost as many connections as our little community in Norway.

The girls go on walking/sailing/kayaking/biking holidays every year, we always know when one is imminent as Hilary starts to get fit, 10 paces walking 10 paces running. The wedding wasn’t a walking holiday it was a working week, a sort of international dugnad. Sue, the artist, turned the venue into an installation, Mary used he well dressing skills to make something, they cooked, they served and they cleaned. I made pavlova on my own in our kitchen, pretty pathetic. The day itself is a bit of a blur, met Josie before ceremony – cried.

Beautiful outdoor ceremony – cried. Gave my speech – cried. The rest was eating and drinking. The beer was brewed by local farmer Leif Jarle, he owns the land where the boulder problem Patrick Mono is. He was once on a TV programme where farmers look for wives, the twist is that he is gay, he didn’t find one but has now. There was also dancing but I didn’t join in.

It’s probably difficult to understand why I was so pathetic, I’ve built a car, teach full time, manage a website, climbed 6C+ (one) why can’t I be a proper dad at my daughter’s wedding?

Am I just lazy doing the things I want to do but nothing else. I bet no one was inspired by my performance on that day. That’s fantastic 20 pavlovas, truly inspiring. As I sit here now I find it difficult to understand too, I feel fine, surely I could have mucked in with the cleaning or put out some chairs but no, I kept well away. The answer is stress. Stressful situations magnify the symptoms which drags me down. My daily life is extremely routine, I teach, I come home, I do some writing, go to the bouldering room, do the crossword, watch some TV, go to bed, get up at 4 or 5, do some writing, repeat. I generally don’t go to parties, don’t drive, don’t go to the staffroom, don’t go shopping and don’t organize weddings.

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Figure 98 Josie and Gustav on their wedding day.

I was a fairly pathetic father of the bride but being a grandpa is different, I’m truly pathetic.

Yes Josie and Gustav have had a son, Hugo. Before having some of my own I had very little contact with babies or small children, that’s because I would go out of my way to avoid them.

I couldn’t do baby talk, could never tell whether a baby looked like it’s mum or dad and couldn’t play games. With our children I was totally different, I threw them in the air, spun them round, took them to the park, read them stories with funny voices, took them swimming, tried to play football and kissed them goodnight. I’ve lost all of that playfulness and feel awkward with small children and babies even my own grandson. When Hugo was a small baby I found it physically very difficult to pick him up. Babies are quite heavy, about 5 kg, you have to support their head, they wriggle and you mustn’t drop them. To pick up a baby you go under their body with your right hand and support their head with your left. On a bad day I can’t move my left hand at all so it’s problematic trying to support a baby’s head especially if they move. The best I could do was to have him passed to me while I was sitting in a chair, but it makes me nervous. Instead of love I feel panic. The lack of physical contact made it difficult to bond, maybe I had a bit of post grandparental depression. I don’t know if this is a medical fact but lack of dopamine seems to have taken away the oohs and aahs of my life. I don’t look forward to anything (except for snus). People say “isn’t being a grandparent just the best thing ever”. Not really. There must be something wrong with me, well yes, I’ve got Parkinson’s.

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Figure 99 Josie gets PhD and Hugo

So, not a good start. As Hugo gets older it is getting slightly easier. He is a lovely little chappy and is talks a lot. During these Covid times our contact has been only via video. He recognizes me and I try to clown about putting on hats and appearing upside down. When we meet next time he will have lots of questions so I won’t have to take the lead. He won’t see me as strange, he will see me as Grandpa, the funny one with the hat. When we used to visit Hilary’s parents with our young children, Hilary’s dad was always a bit awkward with them.

The limit of his play routine was wiggling his fingers, his lack of engagement wound me up a bit. “Why doesn’t your dad have more to do with the children?” Now I am him. Our children have fond memories of their Grandad. They didn’t see an awkward old man they just saw grandad, hopefully it will be the same with me.

I don’t have much to do with Parkinson’s organisations but I have in desperation used the forums. One such time was after meeting Hugo for the first time. I was wondering if other grandparents had experienced the same problem. Apparently not. Or maybe it’s just not the sort of thing people would like to admit, sometimes I’m just too honest. A common reaction to getting Parkinson’s is to withdraw completely. You won’t meet these people because they have withdrawn but you may hear about them. At least I haven’t done that. Sometimes I wonder if I really have Parkinson’s, then I meet someone else with the disease and the diagnosis is confirmed same stoop, same facial expression, same gait, same way of holding the hand. Billy Conolly calls it the invisible coat.

Parkinson’s creeps up on me slowly, I don’t really notice the changes. The lowest point was soon after I got the diagnosis, at least that’s how it feels although my neurologist disagrees. I suppose one of the reasons is that the medication hadn’t kicked in. A year ago I noticed a decline but an additional 6 pills a day put me back on track. When I first found out I had got Parkinson’s I of course googled the symptoms and had them all. The drooling, swallowing difficulties, face masking, constipation, quiet voice and small handwriting were all in my imagination. I realise this as I begin to actually get them. The small hand writing is the strangest. In class I sit at the front with a large sheet of paper, students come to me individually and I explain concepts often drawing on the paper, my drawings are ridiculously small and mostly in the corners of the A3 sheet. I laugh about it with my students.

I am very open with my students. Before I meet the new intake I send an email explain my condition. I also send a link to a TEDx talk I gave some years ago. There aren’t any tears 162

(from me) as I read the script but you can tell it was close. I can talk about it more easily now, it’s the look on my students faces that is most difficult to handle. I call them “my students” but they’re not really mine, they’re just the ones who do physics but I have small classes so if everything goes well the group can gel. I don’t really know any other students. If one comes in to borrow a chair I turn to the class after they intruder has left ad say “who was that? Never seen him before in my life”. I am very direct. The other day a student asked. “Will you miss us when we leave?” “No.” was my answer. “You will be replaced”. I’m a bit strange but my students understand me. It’s one of the qualities they have been selected for.

My students work hard in class and sometimes forget to include me. I can spend the whole hour and twenty minutes without speaking. Money for nothing you might think. I compensate for this online. I have made 400 short videos where I explain every concept. If a student has a question after class I encourage them to contact me online. I reply almost immediately between 4 in the morning and 9 at night, during the bit in the middle I try to go to sleep.

Rather than answer their question in writing I send a ready made video. If I don’t have one I make one. I am continually thinking of new ways of presenting the course content. All my new ideas are delivered via my website which has 820 subscribing schools, this generates more income than my teaching job. Two birds with one stone. The money ios nice but it’s not what motivates me, almost all of my motivation comes from my students, the rest comes from my peers, the subscribers. No better start to the day then to open an email from a teacher saying: “ I just wanted to thank you for your website. I am new to IB physics teaching and have found your website invaluable as I try to navigate the curriculum.” Recognition of my achievements by other climbers has been always been important to me in climbing, it’s equally important in teaching. In my school there is little communication between teachers about teaching. We all teach different subjects so it doesn’t come naturally. None of my peers know what I do so how can they appreciate it? Online communities fill the vacuum but you have to put yourself out there. I am probably the most active member of the IB physics teachers facebook group. One RCN teacher once told me that they don’t go onto these forums because they already know the answers to all the questions members ask. Then answer them.

My students look after me. I was explaining to one about how Parkinson’s is now affecting my legs. Walking down hill I get what is called ratcheting in my knees, instead of moving smoothly the joint moves in steps, sort of click, click, click without the noise. In extreme situations they turn to rubber. It’s only a matter of time before I tumble on the way to work.

The student looked alarmed. “If it ever happens just message me and I’ll come and pick you up”. Physics is a practical subject so I have to get out a lot of apparatus, this can be problematic and it’s plain to see. Students will always help me to get things of top shelves. I also have a cognitive problem when it comes to wiring circuits, sometimes it all becomes too much and all I see is coloured spaghetti so student’ have to wire their own circuits. That’s good isn’t it? Sometimes teachers need to step back. Over the years I have come to realise that the most important role of the teacher is to create a learning environment. If the students feel happy and safe they will learn more effectively. By safe I mean that they know that if something goes wrong the I will rescue them. When I did the white water kayaking course I felt safe because I believed the instructors would rescue me if I got into trouble. I believed this because I had seen videos of what they can do. I learnt a lot from that course. I like to think that my students feel safe in the knowledge that if they don’t understand something I can put it right. At least they have seen videos of what I can do.

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UKClimbing When I was interviewed by a reporter for the local paper, Firda, I was quite taken aback by his reaction so I thought I’d try telling it myself. This led to a whole series of articles. I’ve aready told a lot of the stories but thought I’d include them anyway. It started with one on climbing with Parkinson’s.

Shaking out Even before I knew climbing was climbing it's been a big part of my life, but it's only when something is taken away that you know how addicted you are. I went to Kuwait once and there was no bacon for breakfast, I don't normally eat bacon for breakfast but when you can't you really want to: I ended up eating bacon substitute. I've been a climber all my life although there was a period, when I lived in Wales with 3 small children, that climbing trips became inconvenient. Not so inconvenient really, I lived 15 minutes from Ogmore but it's better to say inconvenient than too scary. Blame the children.

Figure 100 Chris struggling to chalk up on a 7b

There is no shortage of rock in Norway but not much of it has been climbed on, so I bought a drill and changed from Jackal to new router. Won the local climbing competition and met some climbers, another come back and still climbing 8a+ at 53. Built two bouldering rooms, one a moonboard, rather damaging to ego and fingers but good to know how bad you are.

Winters spent hanging on the walls and lying on the mattresses, good on moves I'm good on, play to strengths, ignore weaknesses, always be the one who sets the problem, don't do moves you can't do. More power, always more power. Introduce the open hand crimp rule, that'll keep you ahead.

After a lifetime of climbing injuries you get to know your body and what is likely to break it, doesn't stop it breaking but you normally know why. You also get to know what improvement to expect with different levels of training. So why am I getting weaker when I'm training so much? How come I'm losing weight when I'm eating more than usual? Why do I feel so tired?

Why did my hand just explode off that hold? Another injury, must be those new volumes, stick with what you're used to. My friend works in rehabilitation, tries to cognitive therapy me, negative thoughts will hold you back, climbing through the pain just leads to more pain.

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Figure 101 Chris on a successful redpoint of a 7b at The Beach, Stryn in Norway

Tendon injuries get better with time but this one didn't, better see the doctor. Can you open and close both hands at the same time he asks. Well of course I can. No I can't. That's really odd, I never knew that I couldn't move my hand until he asked me to do this. I had a pain in my elbow but not in my hand. It's a tendon injury I explain. A second opinion and I'm rushed into hospital. Not a brain tumour is the good news, probably Motor Neurone Disease is the bad. Google tells me only 3 years left. Hilary sees the positive side of a physics teacher having the same disease as Steven Hawking. I'm struggling to see anything positive. Motor Neurone Disease is muscle wasting which would explain why I have lost so much muscle on the left side. It also means climbing is over which hits hard.

When faced with the prospect of only 3 years to live you start thinking of how you want to spend those final years. Do you give up work and spend time doing what you want to do or do you work as much as possible to earn money to leave behind. Norway has an excellent social welfare system so I can give up work and still get money, but I like my work. Not easy to walk away from something you've done all your life and anyway - if I did give up work what would I do? Climb all day? Who with? In Norway I live in a small town with one other climber, Per, who works full time so can't climb every day. Maybe I could go on one of these climbing holidays? I think not. I could contact all of my old climbing friends in the UK, many now retired, and put together a climbing adventure. Just a minute, I'm sick and going to get sicker. Better do it quick then. Hmm, my withered arm says it's already too late. Of course it's not too late, I'll climb easy routes. Definitely not. Actually I don't want to climb everyday or even all day. I once did the girdle of the east buttress of scafell with the Berzins brothers and fell asleep on a belay ledge. Big wall traversing is not for me.

More tests and the doctors are smiling, it's not Motor Neurone it's only Parkinson's, well thank goodness for that. Just a minute, Parkinson's? That's not so good either is it? Well, the good news is that it's not muscle wasting. That loss of muscle was due to lack of use not a disease.

No reason why it can't be built up again so my neurologist refers me to a rehabilitation centre for 4 weeks.

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Figure 102 Vesle Daniel, 8a. A route which Chris wants repeat post-diagnosis

The rehab centre is right next to where I live so quite convenient really. It's also where Per works so maybe they'll make a good training programme for me. First day and it doesn't look good as I play games on the lawn with the other patients. I hate games. This is going to be more challenging than I thought. Don't focus on the illness they say, but that's why I'm here.

So from the salsa sessions I learnt that I have immoveable hips, from the Tai Chi no sense of balance, I am hopeless at swimming, and have very stiff legs. How on earth can I climb with such a useless body? By the way, none of these problems are anything to do with Parkinson's apart from the balance maybe. Parkinson's makes me walk with one hand hanging and my head forward. The stooped posture has been there for years, I thought all climbers were like that. They are aren't they? Look at Chris Gore.

I was asked to make some goals, things I will try to do with my left hand. I hardly used my left hand before so not easy to use now. I lied about a few things I was doing but my main goal was to climb a 7a boulder. (not only with my left hand of course, who do you think I am, Johnny Dawes?) It was one I'd done it before many times but not post diagnosis. It's a sloping traverse. Ever since Hampers Hang I've been on the look out for more sloping traverses, I have quite a collection here in Norway, Holten Hang, Maureen Lipman, Slope John Paul 3rd and Deerless. All 7a, well they are either 7a, too hard or too easy. I had to wear my proper shoes but I managed it in the end. By the way it wasn't me who named Hamper's hang, Steve Bancroft would've never forgiven me.

The rehab programme was good as a whole but at the time I couldn't see the point, I met other Parkinson's sufferers, inspiring and frightening. You know how, when you talk to someone with a stutter you start to stutter yourself (Oh, only me). Being with people with Parkinsons makes you walk with a stoop talk quietly and shake, if you've got it yourself it's even worse.

Rehab resonance. I learnt how to exercise my voice by blowing into a bottle of water, stand on half a ball, and how to do things big to stop them getting small. Even got to know what I should eat.

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Problem is I've never done anything for the sake of being healthy. Everything I do is to be a better climber (sad and ineffective but true) the fact that I'm healthy is a side benefit, or not as the case may be. So yoga would be good for me but I hate yoga. Why do people assume that when you get ill you will enjoy things that you hated before? So I have to admit I don't do any of that stuff, and I still don't brush my teeth properly. When I walk past the windows of the rehab centre on my way to work I stand up straight and swing my arms, the perfect patient.

My teeth are rotten.

That was all about 6 months ago and although not exactly on top form I'm climbing 7b+ (sport) again and on my way up. My left hand doesn't work when I want it to but works ok if I don't think about it. When I started it was really weak, I could only hold on with a straight arm so had to use my right arm for all upward movement, hang >match > pull > snatch. With continued use it's getting stronger. My strength was always my strength so I have to find new beta for routes I used to power up. The problem is, when I find an easier solution the grade comes down. If you can't climb 7c then make it 7b. At this rate I'll never climb 8a again.

Figure 103 Chris refusing to let Parkinson's prevent him from climbing

Clipping is a bit of a problem, if I use my good hand to clip it means I'm hanging on my bad one which can't be trusted. If I clip with my bad hand it sometimes freezes and I can't open the karabiner. No one likes to fall off with a pile of slack in their hand but luckily the drugs make me reckless. Balance isn't a problem on overhangs and I don't climb slabs but it can be a problem scrambling about at the bottom of the cliff. The other week I fell over and rolled down a hill in front of a group of students I was instructing. Probably best not to spend too much time at the top then. Belaying is also slightly problematic, holding the rope is OK but when my mate falls off I fall over. Actually the worst thing of all is chalking up. I dip into my chalk bag with my left hand and suddenly it decides to stop moving and won't come out.

Reminds me of a chalk bag my sister made for me with an elastic draw cord. Revenge of the clean hand gang. No need to stop for a shakeout, I shake all the way up, all the way down and all the way back home. The man with the wobbly hand.

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They say the best way to hold off the symptoms (shaking, involuntary movements, drooling, difficulty swallowing etc.) is to be active so that's what I'm being. I hope it works but even if it doesn't I'm having fun. Must be awful for those who have to be active for the sake of being active. Makes me wonder though, if I do manage 8a with Parkinson's, surely I could have managed more than 8a+ without...

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Losing the thread I'm going to cut a long story short and add another story to make it long again. I didn't manage the 8a I challenged myself to do post Parkinson's diagnosis. I did train most of the winter but mainly doing pullups as I was scared to tweak something bouldering. Did a lot of rowing machine, which was supposed to burn off energy but didn't work. Ended up gaining weight, a bit of research turned up the unlikely fact that Parkinson's drugs are used by some body builders because they promote the production of growth hormone. Looking good, climbing crap. Mark Stokes in the 80's.

Chris refusing to wear prism glasses or buy a new fleece The climbing season started well with a couple of 7b's and one 7c. OK it's not really 7c but if you're rubbish at jamming it might feel like it. I got taught how to jam by Steve Bancroft, failed the exam but I'm still better than the average sport climber. (Per + Luis)/2. I can't pinch so wild moves replaced an easy hand change on a 7b, surely 7c for me but the lads wouldn't have it. Tried an 8a and couldn't get anywhere near it, fingers too weak.

Summer holidays and everyone goes on holiday leaving me with no one to climb with. I become Gary Gibson for a month and start to brush everything in sight. Fed up with the choss, I move further afield, 10 minutes rather than 10 seconds, and find a gem. Spend every afternoon looking at it. Now there are two routes and three projects. Magnificent and too hard.

I generously offer them as open projects and attract some attention from Bergen. 8b ish.

Rock is plentiful where I live but people aren't. Per is in a new relationship expecting a baby, has other priorities, the long talked about November trip to Spain is no longer talked about so I look for alternatives. Could put an announcement on UKC but what if I get offers I can't refuse but really should. Get stuck for a week with a geek. Better to ask someone to put out feelers, who knows everyone, where they are and what they are doing. Chris Gore.

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Figure 104 Martin on a 6c+ I did without drugs

Chris Gore has an encyclopaedic knowledge of world climbing between 1974 and 1991. We tested him out on the trip, none of us could catch him out, he should be on Mastermind or something.

I asked if Chris knew anyone I knew who might fancy a trip to Spain. What I really meant was did he want to go with me, but the phrasing made it easier for him to decline. He sensed my awkwardness and Skyped his reassurance. Tickets were booked. Some weeks later the team doubled with the addition of Martin Atkinson and Mark Leach.

I know Martin and Chris very well, more off the rock than on as it happens. Our wives are all good friends and our kids know each other (we have 3 each), we have gone on family holidays together and they have both been to visit us in Norway. I haven't seen Mark for 30 years.

Figure 105 Mark never actually took the bat rest, Bat route was named after Batman

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Mark was a very strong climber from Lancashire. Used to pop up all over the place with Jerry Peel and Mick Lovatt. I first climbed with him at Pen Trwyn, at the time I had an Alfa Spider that I suaved about in. The Brat lived up to his name by telling Mark and I that it was OK to sleep in an empty room at Plas y Brenin, we did and it wasn't. The director kicked us out before breakfast. Luckily he didn't see us driving off in the red sports car, I wouldn't have been able to afford the petrol if I had to pay for accommodation. Mark seems to be able to apply himself to anything, he has a very impressive job title but I can't disclose it in case he ever wants to sue you.

At one time or another we all lived at 84 Hunter House. I was probably there for the least time. Moved into Martin's room when I moved to Sheffield to get married. He was in France modelling lycra. Too many distractions to do my marking so moved on. Andy should've been on the trip, a brief email exchange confirmed this but nothing can be done about it. We had a good time but probably not worth the cost of a flight from Oz, anyway we wouldn't have been able to tell all those stories had he been there, nooo cheers.

Chris is still climbing hard, 8a PB this year! Giddy aunt. Martin has been climbing a bit and biking a lot. Mark hasn't, let's leave it at that. Posting about the trip on FB draws lots of comments, mainly about Mark. Brits do like their banter. Having moved away 21 years ago I find it a bit harsh. In his day Mark was the best of the 4 but all 3 are legends, mixing on both the crag and the competition circuit with the best in the world. I was some way behind, enigma rather than legend. How did he get up that? I did compete twice, beat a lot of legends.

Met Stefan Glowacz the day after. Said hello and he asked me who I was, 'one of the guys who beat you'. Mark, trying to make up for my non-legend status points out that I'm the only one with a part of Stanage named after me. I got the original Phil Gibson water colour for Christmas two years ago, place of pride.

Figure 106 Mark on Mandela 8a+

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When we climbed in the 80s we all climbed in lycra of course, I wonder what the boys climb in today. I climbed in Levis for a while but then discovered they weigh over a kilo, might as well put butter on my toast and drink coke. For the trip I bought some of those Ben Moon Mushing pants. Don't know what mushing is but there's a problem at the Roaches with the same name. I think they are supposed to be baggy but they only had size small in the sale so had to get them. A little small but they'll grow into me. As it happens the others all wore jeans, not Levis though these were climbing jeans, stretchy and not weighing a kilo. I was hoping my Mushing pants would make me look cool but it didn't work. I guess the 30-yearold Patagonia didn't help.

So, the only one without jeans and the only one with any hair. At least I was easy to find, the airport at Alicante is swarming with men who have exactly the same haircut as the other three.

Mark was keen to point out that my hair is in two halves, the grey half and the brown half, trust a Brit to point that out, never noticed it myself.

The last time I climbed with Mark was on Revelations (5th ascent as always). I helped Mark with the footwork and he helped me with the belaying, 5 weekends in a row. The night after I did it we went to Barry Nobles and I met Hilary, my wife, well she wasn't my wife then but was a year later. If she had been my wife already I'd have met her at tea time not Barry Nobles. Climbing with Martin and Chris was a bit of a lottery, the winner got to drive out to The Peak in the Alfa. On one occasion Martin and I tried to repeat Eye of the Tiger, ground up of course. I fell off with the rope wrapped round a leg from about 30 feet, head inches from the ground, twice.

Figure 107Me on Revelations, pre Mushing pants.

It's good to have a bit of luxury but we weren't on expenses so were sharing two double rooms. Chris and me in one, the other two in the other. Sunday morning breakfast and Martin is not happy, Mark snores. I snore too but had brought earplugs for Chris to wear. 'So did you get a good night's sleep?' I ask. 'It was OK'. Oh oh, the earplugs don't work. Rooms were

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swapped and the snorers were segregated. It's far worse trying to sleep in a room with someone who is disturbed by snoring than with someone who snores.

First day's climbing goes well, really well. I flash a 7a and lob off a 7a+. Trying hard but enjoying it. No idea what the routes are called, these were tufas, 35m long, long, long. Martin and Chris did the same, I thought Mark followed suit but maybe he followed on a rope.

We stayed at Hotel El Pozo. Half board, great meals every night, wine was included but we did supplement. I forgot to say we went to Chulilla.

Figure 108Chris on The Perfect Man 8a at Gordale Chris on The Perfect Man 8a at Gordale

At the crag there were a bunch of German kids, one caught our eye as he onsighted 8a after 8a. His name is Moritz, looks like a big version of Alex Megos. Got kicked off the team for being naughty, we liked him. I introduced the legends, he obviously had a sense of the history.

No one was impressed with our climbing but I think we made an impression with our continual banter and ever expanding stories. We spent most of the day sitting in the dust at the foot of the crag telling stories, laughing a lot. In the evening we'd sit in the dusty seats in the climbers' bar, telling stories, laughing a lot. Note to self: Don't pretend you know all about photovoltaic cells just to initiate a conversation with someone whose life work revolves around them.

Stiff arms, hurting fingers and a stiff neck. Nothing to be done about the arms and fingers, but using some of those prism glasses alleviates the neck problem. They look a bit stupid but do the job. Would be great to wear in one of those rough bars where you mustn't look anyone in the eye. Could pretend you were looking at the table whilst eyeing up the hard man by the bar.

Think I might get a set, useful for looking forwards as the Parkinson's stoop develops.

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Chris suggested a rest day but I wasn't into it, no point in travelling all this way for a rest, I can do that on my way home. I'm writing this in the KLM lounge at Schiphol, the others are home already, cost me 5000 miles whatever that means. By Friday my climbing had gone downhill, so ambitions were adjusted, a nice-looking 6c up a not so tough tufa. By this point certain rules had been put in place regarding my climbing. The problem is that when I get stressed I tend to freeze. Untying the rope to thread is quite stressful, so threading takes quite a long time and doesn't look good from the ground. To solve this problem, we started climbing three on a rope, so Chris put in the quickdraws, I climbed on them, Martin threaded and cleaned, perfect for me at least. Whether it's a 6a warm up or a 7a route of the day it's always a struggle. It doesn't look pretty as I puff, pant and over reach every move. People don't tend to climb underneath me.

Figure 109 Some of those 60 days were rest days

Back to Friday. The 6c tufa started OK but the higher I got the worse I climbed. Feet on ledges still can't be trusted. Get to the top and I'm standing on a ledge holding myself in with a couple of crimps but I can't clip the belay. Luis, who is also here now, shouts up and I shout something down, Chris realises I'm in trouble. I realise I'm in trouble. Imagine taking a nonclimber and dropping them into this position. They'd be scared stiff and so am I. Then I twig, I forgot to take my medicine, I'm 30m up with full blown Parkinson's. The internal jack hammer goes into action as my body shakes uncontrollably. No desire to finish the route, I manage to get a finger into the belay, clip and lower. Kicking and thrashing I return to the ground where Chris administers the patch, ('Who's Patch Hammond Chris?' Used to climb with Leo Houlding, damn) I slowly come down from the peak of resonance. Interesting how the drugs take me down not up. Martin turns up and asks how I am, my trembling lip tells him not good but I hold it together, crying at the crag is definitely not cool especially when wearing Mushing pants.

It's only happened once before, I was in the local shop and fell over twice. This was rather more serious. Reminds me that I have an illness held at bay by drugs but not cured. One day the drugs will stop working and I'll always be like this. Put a bit of a dampener on the occasion for the rest of the afternoon, but an hour in a darkened room does wonders, so was soon ready for action again. Pity it was too dark to go climbing.

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Figure 110 Which one of you is Martin Atkinson?

There are a lot of friends that I haven't kept in touch with, school friends, work friends, random friends. When I bump into them it's all very nice but conversation quickly fizzles out.

Wasn't like that with this 3. We may not be climbing so intensely any more, (although we probably are trying harder than we used to) but whatever it was that brought us together in the climbing community all those years ago is still there. Let's hope it's still there in February when we plan a trip to Font. I think they must have had another meeting, there are no threading lower-offs at Font...

Then we went to Font:

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Spotting the Nutter I first went to Font about 40 years ago. Never been abroad before, only Wales. Eddy, the climbing shop owner in Coventry had sung my praise to a visiting French climber. He must've sung well because we got an invite to stay at his house near Fontainebleau. Bill Turner and I, that is. I had a blue Triumph Spitfire at the time. Spent my first year's salary in advance of earning it. Was so low I could drive under car park barriers. I bet they have cameras now.

Figure 111 Alain Decaing alarmed us with his shorts

Drove round the périphérique twice, but eventually arrived for dinner. A whole family affair including grandparents. A great introduction to the French way of eating and before long I also got an introduction to French toilets.

I'd heard about them from Mrs. Ripon at school. You have to stand or something, no seat. I was quite relieved to find an ordinary toilet in their bathroom so got down to business. My relief was premature, however. Mrs Ripon had forgotten to tell us about the toilet paper.

Sheets of cardboard. I was bought up on Jeyes parchment both at school and church but cardboard was rock bottom. It took some time but I managed to soften the squares to a manageable texture and got the job done, standing up to pull the chain I spotted a pile of boxes on a high shelf. Packs of toilet paper, each with a square of cardboard under the pile of tissues.

The bouldering was excellent and we got pointed at an assortment of problems that after a while all became white. I did the Cuvier classics Charcuterie, Abattoir etc. Then we stopped for lunch, a proper one...

Other climbers arrived and I ran out of steam...for the rest of the week. What I hadn't realised was that they took turns but I tried everything. A good lesson in sandbagging that I should've tried to remember.

My second visit was with another Bill, Bill Birkett. He was writing a book about female climbers, no idea why but he was and I tagged along so he could hold my rope. There weren't many female rock climbers at the time, just three as far as I remember: Geraldine, Lynn and 176

Catherine. We stayed at Catherine's parents' house, they were very hospitable and gave me some cream for my wrecked fingers - it smelt of fish for a good reason. The wrecked fingers were a result of my second time making the mistake of trying every problem that I was pointed at. I think we were supposed to take turns, but Bill was always taking pictures. I did quite well as it happens, using determination where technique was missing. Learnt an important lesson, let them go first then simply copy what they do. Doesn't work anymore, better not to watch and try my own way. As usual she was amazed that such an un-athletic looking person could drag his way up problems that they had taken years to perfect - cake icing with a plasterer's trowel.

Almost all my early visits were in the summer, I wish someone had told me that this is the worst time of year to go; feeling those slopers that were impossible to hang and in awe of the way someone had been able to pull on them, not realising that at this time of year they never had. We always stayed at the free campsite, only facility was a tap. I don't like going to the toilet in the woods so we'd time everything to coincide with the first thing in the morning visit to the supermarket. The campsite is only a U turn away from Cuvier so that's where we always went. Once spent a week there with the best climber in the world, but he never mentioned me in his book so I'm not naming him here. We spent a week wiring all the white problems ready for the weekend visit by the Parisians. Problem was that no Parisians go there on a summer Saturday. We knew the trick and did half the circuit each, my party trick was Carnage footless. I did an insignificant arête that he couldn't do, so he threw a wobbly and his shoes.

Apart from the many trips passing through with the family I have had two proper trips with some local boys from Norway. Old enough to be their dad but still able to hold my own ticking 7B+ a couple of times, crying with laughter when the font of all bouldering knowledge, Jomar, wrapped Bachen up in his pad and pushed him over. Trying to emulate Knut Sømmer's fluid movement was a step too far. One day's climbing, four days recovery.

This trip was going to be a Chulilla reunion, but Chris Gore couldn't make it so we swapped a Chris for another Martin and Martin Veale joined the team (bad name for a vegetarian). I first met Martin on the streets of Sheffield. I used to cruise around with Mark Stokes and Ed Wood looking for parties. On one occasion we were a bit early, first ones there in fact. Didn't know either of the party throwers but sat down anyway, Ed asked if they had any cheese but they didn't so we left. Martin was on his way to a different party and we thought we'd tag along but he didn't think we were invited. He had a girlfriend and a motorbike. Martin was one of the first peak climbers to introduce the sit start, a good way for us short climbers to get our own back on the likes of Ron. Martin used to crawl under rocks and climb out. He also did the first ascent of Big Air at Stanage, jumping from a big boulder to a pocket. I never tried it, scared that I wouldn't be able to do the move or jump back - a sit start would be impressive. Jumping onto boulders could be a new sport, but the problem is there aren't many possibilities. You'd have to take a step ladder to the crag, set it up and jump from it onto the problem.

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Figure 112 Martin Veale repeating his own route, Big Air, Stanage

To protect us from rioting teenagers we invited Phil Burke and Rory Gregory, both a bit older than me. Probably not able to fight as well as they could but looking like they can. Phil was one of my imaginary rivals in the 70s and 80s. I used to stalk his routes, Tales of Yankee Power, Central Route, Menopause all had something to do with Phil. Didn't actually meet him until I moved to Sheffield. Phil and Rory used to have big motorbikes, they'd sometimes park them at Stoney. They could probably get work modelling leather jackets in the NEXT catalogue if it still exists.

Arriving at Charles de Gaulle four hours late, I got some stick from the boys. I was the one laughing last though, the 350 Euro compensation paid for the whole trip. It's always expensive travelling from Norway, a big hassle too, car, bus, boat, bus, hotel, plane, plane, arrive.

Listened to a group moaning about the price of a sandwich at the airport, 10 quid for a sandwich and 5 for a bottle of water, how do people here afford it? We don't, we make our own and drink water from the tap.

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Figure 113 Phil and Rory have known each other a long time

First day follows a typical first night but we are raring to go. Isatis is where it's at. By the third problem our plan to do the complete red circuit becomes half of it. I start well but soon I'm having to try hard. Training on roofs does not prepare me for vertical walls and sharp crimps.

Several times I make it by the skin of my teeth. Poor technique, weak arms, weaker fingers but extreme determination and a crazy will to succeed. Several times I get to the top and hear the comments between the crowd of spotters - everyone comes to the mat when the lunatic has a go; "Bloody hell, that was close"; "Thought he was going to die there"; "Did you see his eyes"; They see it, I feel it. Encouragement comes thick and fast although I get my fair share of put downs. "Stop shaking!" 31 gets slapped and it's time for home but not before discovering that beer in Fontainebleau is the same price as in Bergen.

Figure 114 It wasn't only me who needed spotting

For weeks before we confirmed the trip I had been watching the weather forecast, half hoping it would be bad so I wouldn't have the hassle on the travel. I'd also been watching my weight, which was refusing to go down without me reducing what I eat or doing more exercise. Funny how even though I really wanted to go I was at the same time looking for a way out. The day before I strained my arm opening a bag of crisps. I knew this would happen, luckily it was better after an hour or two.

The Martins took care of the food making sure we had no meat by replacing it, according to Phil, with sawdust and plastic. Even though some of the raw ingredients did have a slightly inedible appearance the result was delicious and I ate too much, over compensating for all the

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energy burned off in the daytime - wasn't only my luggage that was too heavy on the way home. The Atkinson diet.

Figure 115 You can never have too many pads, well maybe you can

Day two was forecast to be sunny all day, it wasn't. Mooched around all morning then went to find dry rock at the exposed boulders of Cul de Chien. Eclipse was dry, just saying. There was a team of young Brits trying it, I poked around in the cave. "What are you looking at?" I didn't think fast enough and replied "Arabesque" the easiest problem on the stone. Should have gone for something more difficult, no harm in looking.

Weather looked up on day three but we arrived at Ellie Font to early. Couldn't believe it was wet, so tried a 7A with a heart on it and got nowhere. Packed up and drove to Gorge aux Chats. None of us had been there before so we were all excited, even the big boys were like small ones, running round looking for dry patches. A couple of sharp "warm ups" led to a nice looking problem by an arête. Basher and I tried a couple of times and worked out how to get to a sloper just below the top. Mark had been a bit behind the pace on the walk in but arrived and easily climbed to the top. It was a good half an hour before Basher and I also topped out.

Another eye popping experience for me, a series of sliding slaps disproving what it says in my physics text book that sliding friction is less than static. Mark made the most of the opportunity by burning us off every time we failed. Why do 56 different problems when you can do one 56 times? Play to your strengths, exploit others' weaknesses.

Figure 116 Maybe one of us should have learnt how to take a selfie.

After several suggestions that we should try something steeper, we eventually left the crimpy walls and tried an overhang. I manage to finesse the start with a heel and toe jam but had to 180

revert to wild slaps over the top. My joy of getting over the top was overwhelmed by the relief of the watching crowd who seemed to be more concerned for my safety than I was. I overcompensate my tendency to overreach by getting my feet really high - fall off like that and you don't go down, you go out. Trusting completely in the ability of my spotters without actually knowing if anyone was spotting. My youngest daughter, Florence, used to be the same: totally confident that Daddy would catch her from 5m, but when she was only 4 I could.

Figure 117 Florence Hamper age 4, no pad, no spotter

The way it always used to be was that first attempts on a difficult boulder were hopeless, often you were not able to hang the holds let alone make a move. Adjustments to body position enable weight to be supported and moves linked. When you eventually do the problem it always seems easy, at least much easier than you'd thought. Things are different now, I look at a problem and it looks easy but I can't hang the holds. Will power enables me to lock my fingers and withstand the pain. My comfortable shoes don't help as I try to use my feet in the way others do. Continually throwing myself at the problem eventually leads to success as I somehow manage to stay in contact long enough to get to the top - certainly doesn't feel easy.

Last day we were going to reminisce at Cuvier but the heavens opened and we drove south to Elephant. Did 1 and 2 on the black circuit. Felt more my style with big holds and long reaches. Funny how one emphasises the thing that sounds hardest. When referring to a black problem it's "black 1 and 2" but if it's red then you say "6A and 5C".

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Figure 118 Close spotting on the way down off Coup de sirocco 6B (the send was free from help)

Where I live in Norway I have developed something like 50 problems on a variety of different boulders. Almost all are 7A+ with the occasional 7B. Never bothered brushing anything easier, means there's a whole load of easier classics waiting to be done on boulders I've always walked past with my nose in the air. Even without dopamine* I can feel the tingle of excitement thinking of potential areas with new possibilities. Happy days. *Dopamine is the substance responsible for that "It's Christmas tomorrow and I can't wait" feeling you had when you were a kid. It's also the Chemical missing in the brain of people with Parkinson's.

A trip to Greece:

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Rock Bottom Don`t worry, this isn't an article about how I reached rock bottom, it's more about the bottom of rocks. Just spent ten days in Greece with a team that had a combined climbing experience of 300 years. Close to forty of those are mine but it didn't feel like it. Basher, Gore, Plantpot, Phil Burke and myself rented an apartment in Leonidios. Rab (yes, the Rab), Keith Sharples, Simon Lee and, save the best to last, Steve McClure (yes, the Steve McClure) rented another.

Chris refusing to wear prism glasses or buy a new fleece Both teams were welcomed by a huge pile of fruit and veg and a selection of local produce.

We wondered if we'd booked for ten single nights whether we'd get ten welcome packs. A characteristic of Greece is toilets you can't flush paper down. After almost pulling a muscle trying to tear off paper, use it and deposit it in the pedal bin I realised that standing up and turning round was the way to go. I reckon we were three folders and two scrunchers, but I never brought up the subject.

I'd been looking forward to this trip for about six months; it's what keeps me going during the long hot summer months when I have no one to climb with. I was actually climbing quite well for a while. No training, just lost 6 kg. Basher even said I was thin, went to the doctor but nothing sinister, just lucky I suppose. Overdid it on my 8a project. Perfect for my condition, everything on the right arm, managed to climb through the pain and got more pain. Couldn't lift a coffee cup for a while. I'd already booked the ticket but was contemplating changing it.

My wife Hilary said I should just go and have a holiday. NO WAY. Took the advice of my physio and did some pathetic exercises for ten weeks and they worked, I could do pull ups again. A couple of bouldering sessions and there was no need to cancel the flight.

Figure 119 Keith Sharples climbing a 7b above an untypically flat part of Elona.

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It can be cold in the shade in winter so I packed my winter jacket; a 25 year old Mountain Equipment down jacket with a Gore Tex outer layer. At least it used to be Gore Tex but I think that white powder coming out of the sleeves is the remainder of the membrane. Fine at the crag, but didn't like the looks I got walking through the streets of London on my way home. Tried to part exchange it for a new one at Lockwoods in Leamington but it didn't have an MOT so I bought a new one outright. Now at last I am the proud owner of a Rab Jacket (and fleece) which means I no longer need to point to other people's Rab labels to say "I know Rab", rather I can point to my own. Must find that POD sac.

First day we went to what was supposed to be the best area, Mars. I used to love that perfect grey limestone in Verdon, but orange is the new grey and Mars is so orange it's red. Easy tufa warm-ups kept me occupied until I fell off Chuck Notis (7a) signifying the end of the day.

Returned on our final day and did some of the tufas again then caused a stir when Phil laid our rope slightly to the right of our ready-clipped line. I tied in then got into the wrong groove.

The team just about to set off on it were too polite to point out my mistake. Must have misdiagnosed my Parkinson's for dementia. I'm not sure if it counts as onsight when you think you've done it before but onsight it was. I picked off a couple of extra draws hanging on the belay and returned to Earth. Requests to give back the draws to the waiting team of German climbers was met with indignance as I argued that they belonged to Animal. It ended in laughs not blows. We met them later that day and they said how much we inspired them, giving them hope to be still climbing in ten years time, umm, thirty actually.

Figure 120 Chris without the Fuzz but Animal still resembles his namesake (in my opinion).

Animal is another of Chris Plant's nicknames. A misheard conversation led me to reveal that I'd never realised he'd got the name because he looked like Animal from the muppets. He hadn't, took me some time to dig my way out of that one. Three Chris's led to some confusion, which became more complex when we met another one at Elona. He said it was the same at Leeds Uni when he was there. Well, well, welI, I was one of them too. Chris the Flash meets

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Chris the Fuzz after 40 years. I may not be the Flash anymore but he certainly isn't the Fuzz, having lost his fuzzy black hair.

Oh yeah, this was supposed to be about rock bottoms. I like a crag to have a nice flat bottom.

Balance isn't so good so I prefer to be on the flat. Mars has a 6/10 bottom. Elona is more like 3/10. Almost hurt myself there when I sat on my hand and rolled off the boulder I was about to sit on. Did a good impression of a turtle on its back for a few seconds.

On day two we went to Twin Caves. 2/10 for the bottom. Met Dani Andrada plus a large team of very talented women. Ok, we didn't meet them, we saw them. I met Dani once before at Oslo airport but he won't remember me. I remember him though, I took a secret photo so I wouldn't forget. Dani has extremely wide shoulders and very thin legs, a bit like me really, well the bit about the extremely thin legs. I used to have the thinnest ankles in the world but the Baker's cyst in my left knee keeps bursting and draining down my leg causing it to swell.

Now I've got one of the thinnest ankles in the world. First time it happened I went to the doctor. He thought it was normal until he saw my right leg. Rushed me into hospital with a suspected DVT.

Figure 121 Me sitting on my rope while trying to get my shoe on my swollen foot.

I've never seen anyone climb like Dani before but I did see it again when our mate Steve tied on. When someone asked us if anyone had lost a hat: "Not me". "No". "Haven't got one".

"Nope" we answered coolly. "Oh I thought it belonged to one of Steve's friends, are you with Steve McClure?". "YES", we all chimed in unison. Although I was a member of Steve's team I can't say I got to know him very well. We did visit their apartment one night and he was there. He had a copy of Jerry's new book on his lap and was stretching his forearm tendons.

All around the apartment were Post It stickers saying things like "I am the best", "My legs are thinner than Dani's". I made the bit about the stickers up but I wonder what it would have 185

been like in 84 Hunter House Road if Jerry, Chris, Basher and Andy had all put their own motivational Post Its around the house. Would have to be colour coded to avoid confusion.

The evenings were all pretty much the same. Conversation would go from climbing to cycling to football to Brexit and Trump and back to climbing. We all have a similar outlook, but that didn't matter and loudness was proportional to time. Chris Gore was referee with Google backup. I kept my head down but did learn some interesting stuff. Paul Scholes is 7ft, Manchester have a player with orange hair, Nottingham Forest were a very good side and 10% of the population are transexual, or was that 1%. I also heard many frightening stories about what it's like for young men working in factories, which made me glad to have such a sheltered upbringing. Climbers often say how they weren't good at school sport. This lot couldn't say that. Phil was a national level runner. Gore swam and played rugby as did Basher and the pot played football. I was called Kangaroo Features by the PE teacher and was always last when teams were picked. Rugby gave me a headache, cross country running a stitch and I always forgot my swimming trunks and was made to wear a girl's costume. I always seemed to have the wrong kit. My football boots had rounded toe caps and I carried a tennis racket in a cricket bag. For the trip to Greece I'd bought a new 75m rope. It was too heavy, too slippy, too thick and the centre mark isn't central (allegedly). Well, at least it didn't get worn out.

Figure 122 Martin climbing while Plantpot chats to Olivia before she became the Wrecking Ball.

Elona is a magnificent crag and it was very impressive watching Dani, Steve and the ladies climbing beside us. One of the women had a habit of letting go after unclipping the last bolt and swinging into Plantpot. He called her the Wrecking Ball, which she took in good spirit. I tried the easiest route on the main wall, Kneebaropoulis 7a. From the name you'd expect it to have some kneebars but it doesn't, they must be after my high point; the last bolt. Was going great while Basher was telling me what to do but then he started talking to someone else and I got confused. Everyone seems to be wearing a knee pad these days, Dani wears two. Don't 186

know why they are called knee pads, more like thigh pads. Tried one on but it didn't fit, soon became an ankle pad. How do you know which leg to strap it to when onsighting? Maybe that´s why Dani wears two? When we first moved to Norway I put snow chains on the rear wheels of a front wheel drive car. Worked fine.

Parkinson's is a degenerative disease which means it gets worse, however as it gets worse you get used to it and so has the team. They still go quiet when my hand freezes at a clip. To be honest, climbing onsight isn't always that pleasant. I focus on my hands, forget my feet, clawing my way up with little technique. On a worked route I can still flow moves together, still feel I can climb, but it's not easy to divert the conversation away from football and it's not easy to divert the climbing to short, worked routes. Go with the flow, even when it's not going the way you want.

The boys were concerned about me at HADA, thought I might fall off the bottom (1/10).

Climbing high point Sokolatina 7a+ flash then tried too hard on Nitinta 7a+ and got so wasted I almost couldn't dog to the belay. They said they'd go up again for the gear but no one wants to be a burden. Did my bit walking up to Panorama (3/10) with Basher, felt even colder after a morning in the sun at Adspach wall (5/10) but what's a pair of cold hands between friends.

Figure 123 Chris Gore climbs a 7b at HADA above a not so flat bottom.

Flew home via UK to visit my mum. Flight cancelled due to a couple of inches of snow.

Norwegians always laugh at the Brits' attempts to drive in the snow, but in Norway we use winter tyres. Just imagine if every car in the UK had two sets of tyres. A rubber mountain. In Norway we also find that the plough is mightier than the salt when it comes to clearing roads and runways. At the airport I queued for four hours before realising that there was a separate line for Gold Card holders. As I left my queue friends, I lied about how bad I felt to be jumping to the front. My left arm freezes when I try to find the arm hole of my new jacket and I become aware of people watching. The manager at the KLM desk senses my distress and

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sends someone to help me, not only with the jacket but also to take me to my bus. 7a+ isn't bad for someone who can't put on their jacket, I suppose.

Thanks to Strong Steve we probably climbed an average grade of about 7c, not bad for an average age over 60. Leonidios is a great place, but if you like flat bottoms you'd be better off at Stoney.

I also wrote something about climbing with students.

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One hand Clapping I don't think Thomas meant anything by it when he suggested the route. One Hand Clapping is the name of a classic route at Donner summit, Lake Tahoe, California. It's also a good description of what it's like to have Parkinson's. It doesn't really work to clap with one hand and it doesn't really work to climb with one hand either.

Figure 124 Selfie with Thomas.

Thomas is an ex-student of mine. I taught him physics and introduced him to climbing, the latter being the most successful part of the deal. He was one of those students who had done with education by the age of 16. Already knew what he needed to know. Was an exceptional programmer. We worked for a while trying to create an online application for the Moonboard - never got it finished, pity, it was way ahead of its time. It had a feature where you could zoom in on the holds and see which sides were incut. I've pretty much got my own Moonboard at a local sports hall. What I like best is to set up just one problem at a time. It's much easier to appreciate the beauty of a line when there's only one to look at. I'd spend ages lying on the mat just looking at a problem. Haven't been there for ages, maybe I should give it a go; doesn't matter if I tweak a tendon now. Probably not strong enough to hurt myself anymore.

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Figure 125 James Riley on the warm up wall at Flatanger.

Over the years I have climbed with a lot of my students; some I have introduced to climbing, others climbed already. James Riley is probably my best student climber. He was at one time the youngest person to have climbed Raindogs 8a. I was a house parent at Atlantic College at the time. We got to select the students for our house so I'd check the application forms for climbers and surfers. One year I selected all the applicants called Daniel and put them in the same room - just to avoid confusion, you understand.

South Wales may have coal but it isn't Yorkshire, so James postponed climbing for a while.

We did manage a trip to France though, where we climbed at Font and Saussois. He lent me his GriGri but forgot to tell me how to use it - he dropped like a stone. There were a couple of other climbers at Atlantic College during my time there. Ben Heason is the most famous, but I never climbed with him. Dave Alcock's son was also there but didn't climb. I used to have a photo of Dave climbing Garotte on my wall. The only time I met him was when he caught me sleeping in a room at Plas y Brenin without paying. Managed to avoid him whenever he visited his son. There was a climbing wall at Atlantic College. I used to take my daughter Josie there when she was little. I made her a harness. She was good at climbing so didn't fall off until the top, where she turned upside down. I bought a proper one.

Andy Pollitt once gave a lecture at Atlantic College, where he showed some photos of me in my pink tights which amused the students. When I worked at Sidney Stringer, an inner city comprehensive in Coventry, Ben Moon and Jerry Moffat came to visit on their motorbikes.

They sat on the table at the front and chatted with the kids. I don't think it was anything like the schools they'd been to; they couldn't believe how relaxed it was. The kids thought they were really cool. I was hoping they'd think I was cool too - but they didn't.

Rob Scaiffe was a pupil at Thomas Rotherham 6th form college. We built an early training board in a store room where he got strong and I got injured. The walls of the school, which looked like a castle, were pretty good too. On one occasion everyone came to school in fancy dress. I didn't but every now and then I'd pop out, change into a Spider-Man outfit and climb up the outside wall to the window of my classroom. No one suspected a thing. This was just after Josie had been born. We shared a nanny with Chris Gore's family, had a big mortgage and a crap car. Couldn't possibly afford the usual Easter trip to Buoux...but I had a plan.

We'd buy a crap camper van and drive down with Rob and his mate Jonathon, splitting the cost of petrol etc. We bought an old VW, which needed a new clutch, exhaust and door lock.

The boys came round at the weekend to help lift the engine out to fit the clutch and the bus

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was on the road. Got to Buoux, but overspent the fuel budget due to a leaking fuel pump.

Broke down once but used an elastic band to replace the broken return spring on the accelerator cable. Ah, the beauty of old cars. Breaking down actually used to be part of the plan for many climbing trips, but then the AA stopped doing 5 star insurance that included a hire car, hotels and trailering your wreck home. Shortly after returning home the bus failed its MOT due to a completely rotten floor, so I put all the old parts back on, sold the new ones and traded it in for a new car.

Dopamine is related to pleasure and happiness, but it's not a simple relationship; if it were I could sell my medicine for a lot of money. I'd be rich but unable to move. A lack of dopamine makes life a bit flat, which can be OK provided the elevation isn't too low.

First route was a warm up. I led quickly, clipped the lower off and let go. Freefall, scream, stopped by the rope and not the ground. I don't normally swear, but I did on this occasion.

Rob had never climbed a sport route and thought I would tie in and bring him up, so let go of the rope. A nearby climber grabbed it as it whipped through the figure of 8. No idea who he was, but he saved my life. Rob was mortified and hardly climbed for the rest of the week. I found someone else to climb with. Totally my fault - it was of course my responsibility to make sure he knew what to do.

When I first moved to Norway, I had no choice but to climb with students. There was a group of very active young climbers in the region but I was the age of their parents, so I didn't think they'd want me hanging around. Samuli from Finland was keen but inexperienced. He held my rope as I tried an 8a on a newly developed crag, Myggvegen. The local lads watched as I grabbed my rope each time I fell. They were concerned for my safety, so they invited me to join them. Not surprisingly I climbed much better with a proper belay and had some great times with the likes of Jomar, Ola Johan, Jaran, Cato, Karsten and Per of course. My wife Hilary would often meet people at work who would tell her that their son knew me. The Dennis Gray of Norway.

The Norwegian lads grew up and had children, so I am back climbing with students. A bit more careful these days but you can't go wrong with a student called Roche. He was from Canada and climbed around 7b. By the time I had got comfortable with the fist bumps and being called dude he injured a shoulder and didn't climb for a year and a half. He stayed on for a couple of weeks after the end of term to make up for it. Others heard that there was a student staying at my house and asked if they started climbing could they stay too. It's no good starting to climb, I said, you have to be good at it.

I'm a physics teacher, not a climbing instructor, but I do like to introduce students to the sport in the hope that they will actually become rock climbers and all that entails. When I was at school all the kids were either freaks or skin heads; I was a rock climber. Whilst living in south Wales I tried to become a surfer but never made it. I could surf but the community was not so inviting. At university, climbing and Steve Bancroft saved me from a lonely existence.

Maybe being good at it helped, although Steve would never admit it. He once wrote in my diary "On the 3rd of March Steve and I went to Caley, where he pissed up High Noon and I failed, cos I am crap and he is my hero". He had a big sulk once when he failed on the top pitch of seventh grade at Malham, so he let me have a go. I wasn't supposed to be able to do it, but I did. He made me ab back down on a single thread as punishment.

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On my recommendation, when she was at university in Scotland, Josie joined the climbing club. I thought it would be a good way to meet people and make friends. It wasn't. Insular rather than inclusive. Makes me feel bad about the way I behaved when I was president of the Leeds University Mountaineering Club. We spent the grant on beer, had a party, then advised students who wanted to climb to catch the bus to Caley.

It's the end of the summer holiday. Norway has been hot and I have no one to climb with anyway, so I've spent the past 6 weeks working on my car, a 50-year-old triumph spitfire I'm restoring ground-up. Maybe not the best preparation for a climbing trip, but it's my latest obsession so I had to do it. The good thing is that I'm absolutely pants at anything to do with metalwork, always have been, but maybe won't always will be. The great thing about learning new skills is that you get better at them and when you're really bad you have a lot of potential improvement. This has been the case in most of the things I do. It took me about 3 years of surfing several times a week before I rode a wave, 4 years of salmon fishing before I caught a salmon and 5 years of cross country skiing before I gave up. I don't think there is any real possibility of progressing beyond my best in rock climbing, but I do get a lot of mini progressions. One day I'm struggling to do my usual warm up (that's a lie, I never warm up) and a couple of days later I'm cruising a 7b.

I won't go into the details, but Hilary and I ended up with a flight to San Francisco. The original idea was a road trip, but neither of us like driving so that idea didn't last long. I tried to convince myself that I could spend a week in the city, but knew that Thomas lived there and Yosemite wasn't far. A day in the valley, run up a route and back to the city, how cool would that be? I've never been to Yosemite, always too tight to pay for the airfare. My relationship with the area is via Mountain magazine. That photo of Jim Bridwell on Butterballs was my favourite, we all started putting chemicals on our hands after that. An article featuring photos of Max Jones and Mark Hudon had everyone looking for their old cricket trousers. I luckily had an endless supply, never played cricket but my dad was a Baptist minister and white trousers are what people get baptised in. Did you know Baptist churches have little swimming pools hidden under the floorboards in front of the pulpit? I was at an educational trade show recently and one of the reps said they know Mark Hudon. I wanted to say that I know him too but I don't - I've just seen his picture. I wonder if he still wears those trousers.

Figure 126 Climbing outfit aged 12.

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Thomas was up for it and suggested Northeast Buttress on Upper Cathedral. 5.9 is about HVS but it's 1000 feet long! I've only done one route that long in my life, the girdle traverse of East Buttress Scafell. Did it with the Berzins brothers and fell asleep on a ledge. Well, it would be an experience, but I was a little apprehensive. In preparation I thought I should climb a crack, so I contacted an old university friend, Terry Hirst, who lives down the road from my mum near Birmingham. There aren't any crags near my mum's house but it's close to Warwick University, which has a wall with a crack in it. I hadn't been to an indoor wall for a long time, so nervously shook my way through the belaying test.

When I was 12 I'd already been climbing for a while and was excited to go on a school trip to an outdoor pursuits centre in Wales. The instructors made fun of me because I had my own boots and homemade climbing breeches. The instructors at Bear Rock are thankfully more friendly. I didn't tape up for the crack so got a bit cut up, but I almost got to the top using a combination of jamming with my right and wedging with my left. Wedging is like jamming but you don't use any muscles. It doesn't work well and tends to result in abrasion. When I was at university I always had cuts from jamming. There used to be a photo of me in the prospectus that showed them nicely.

Figure 127 Image used in physics department prospectus showing hand jam scabs.

The week before we left, news of wildfires reached the west coast of Norway, then the Valley was shut down. For a while it looked like the climbing was off but "climbing near San Francisco" revealed Lake Tahoe. I had definitely heard of it, realised where I'd heard of it as we drove past Grand Illusion. Thomas booked a cabin, picked us up and drove us to Donner Summit. It was a long way, but he didn't seem to mind. We warmed up on a single pitch route called Peter's Principle. I managed it on a toprope, but was very glad not to lead. I stopped trad climbing just as Friends were introduced, so was interested by the lack of any wires or hexes on Thomas' rack. I have difficulty clipping bolts with my left so placing cams is impossible; just taking them out is bad enough. Mark Vallance, the inventor of Friends, had Parkinson's. He told me that Parkinson's has a habit of spoiling your fun. He died recently.

They say you don't die of Parkinson's, but you die with Parkinson's - not particularly reassuring. Dopamine is related to pleasure and happiness, but it's not a simple relationship; if it were I could sell my medicine for a lot of money. I'd be rich but unable to move. A lack of dopamine makes life a bit flat, which can be OK provided the elevation isn't too low.

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Figure 128 The line.

One Hand Clapping is the classic 5.9 of the area. I could see the climbing was easy but it didn't feel like it. I kept wanting to lead but was glad when I didn't. Looking for ways to pull my way out of uncomfortable crouching positions and tying myself in knots that were difficult to untie. Forgetting my chalk bag didn't help, but I got to the top. It was a great route, but I would've liked to have enjoyed it more. Realised that I hadn't seconded a HVS since I seconded Steve Bancroft on Black Dyke at Malham in 1976 and that's now E3 so doesn't count. I very much doubt that it was a chalkless ascent, never was a member of the Clean Hand Hang, unlike Hilary, who used to go out with Arnis Strapcans. I stayed at his house once and thought it funny to pour a bag of chalk into a box of Clean Hand Gang T-shirts.

Figure 129 The Clean Hand Gang.

The other mega classic of Lake Tahoe is "The Line", with a name like that it sort of has to be.

Got to the route as the sun came onto the face. Another team were just about to do it, but they let us go first. I wanted to explain why I shook so much and climbed so bad but it didn`t seem appropriate, so the conversation stayed at the level of me trying to answer the typical American questions like "How are things in Norway?" Californians are very friendly, especially on the buses - one homeless guy offered me some of his cheese. I ran out of things to say, so came out with "Where do you live?" I think he must have just raided the bins of a supermarket as he had 4 bumper cheese trays and 6 large packs of steak. I know this because his bag burst and it all spilled out onto the seat between us.

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The Line is quite easy if you can climb, but difficult if you can't. It's also long. The length of a sport route is limited by the middle of your rope, but the length of a trad. route is limited by the height of the cliff. This was two complete rope lengths. I have to admit that halfway up the second pitch I was wishing it to be over. Being slightly frightened for 300ft of climbing is not entirely pleasant. It's not that I didn't trust Thomas, I totally trusted him and was impressed by the way he organised the rope, hanging it in a sling for me so it payed out nicely. We used to let it hang down the cliff, which annoyed anyone following behind. No, it was nothing to do with trust, it's the non-shaking side of Parkinson's; I get anxious going into a shop so this situation was rather challenging.

I thought that maybe going back to easy trad. routes might be the next step down as the illness steps up, but now I don't think so. I climb way better on my routes at home in Norway, maybe it's better to simply keep doing them. Without climbing we would never have met up with Thomas or visited Lake Tahoe, but the climbing part wasn't the highlight. To be honest, the best part was the cold beer and the meal he cooked in the evening. Well, there's more to rock climbing than climbing rocks.

I seem to have become quite the writer.

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The Present (2021) Since writing that article Per has got another daughter and I see him even less than when I didn’t see him before. I can’t say that I understand this but I’m sure he has his reasons. When we had small children I still went climbing, fishing surfing snowboarding etc. At Atlantic college I would take Josie and Rowan down to the Trench, they would play in the sand and I would do some bouldering, we’d go on holiday to France and I’d go surfing and they would play in the sand, we’d camp at Font and I’d go bouldering and they’d play in the sand. I guess they liked playing in the sand. If I’m happy we’re all happy. It all sounds a bit selfish but it wasn’t all about me, we’d do lots of other stuff. Per did come out of hiding once to climb on the Kilter board, he was still able to crank off a couple of 7a’s as I struggled on 6’s. Per is very particular (or should that be perticular) in the way he climbs. He likes to do things properly, use his feet and stuff. I tend(ed) to just use my power. Sometimes it easier to forget the feet, I could never do the crux of The Weakling with my feet but found it quite easy to campus it. Per and I would often work a project together, I normally get it first but he refused to use my beta. Perfectionism perhaps.

Kilter board? Yes, “we” have a Kilter board. One of those adjustable angle boards with holds that light up. It’s great. Pity we didn’t have it before I became crap. It’s not really ours, it belongs to the rehab centre 10 min walk from my house. Per works there and was responsible for the choice, they also have an ordinary climbing wall for everyone else. It was built at the start of Covid so it’s use has been restricted but Filip and I manage to get on it once a week.

Figure 130 Kilter board

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Filip is my latest “student climber”. By far the best and keenest student I have ever had. He’s Czech and has trained for some years as a competition climber. He had only climbed on plastic until coming to Norway but I have been introducing him to the real thing. He is miles better than me on plastic although not as good as I used to be (I just had to add that). He doesn’t look particularly strong but is, he can also use his feet. On real rock I can still get one over him, he’s not used to looking for foot holds or using hand holds where you have to use the whole hand. He knows nothing about the history of the sport in fact he knows nothing about outdoor climbing at all but he is still a “climber”, I find this interesting. We have little in common, certainly not political views and definitely not life experience but we have a common understanding of the pleasure and pain involved in moving from one hold to another.

Some people might say that indoor climbing and cragging are two different sports, there not.

There’s something very basic in simply moving around a surface using hands and feet and people that enjoy doing it have something in common. It’s like the Junkies in Bergen who used to hang around in the park, they have heroin we have climbing.

The moonboard I built in Dale hasn’t been used for years, I’d move it if I had somewhere to put it but our garage isn’t high enough so when I heard about the mini moonboard it was a no brainer, I sold the Beetle and built a board in the garage (the spitfire is in one of our other garages). Maybe it was a mistake, the moonboard has a reputation for destroying fingers and it destroyed mine. At least Filip likes it. I used to be quite good on the moonboard, did one of Ben’s original 7B problems, now I can do nothing. The holds on the moonboard are arranged in a set pattern, everyone has the same holds, same position. If you do a problem you write up which holds you use on the app and other people try it. All problems start sitting. If I sit at the bottom of the board I can’t get off the ground. It’s not that the holds are all too small it’s just that the good ones are either out of reach or upside down. All of the easier problems are sandbags. This means that the grade is set purposefully low to put people off, it’s certainly put me off. The great thing about the moonboard is you can try other people’s problems. I may be on my own in the garage but I am part of an online community, well I would be if they let me in. I moved the holds around and can now climb from the bottom to the top but my holds are in the wrong position, I can’t share the problems. I took the brave step of posting on the moonboard face book group. Why can’t there be an easier set up? Luckily the trolls didn’t come out to play, most comments were supportive although one young whipper snapper did say that maybe I wasn’t strong enough. The cheek of it. Doesn’t he know who I am?

Probably doesn’t even know where Stanage is. I wrote to Ben, he answered but didn’t see the problem. I just have to get stronger. Maybe I’ve missed the point, is the moonboard for getting stronger or for bouldering? Can’t I just enjoy climbing 6A without always thinking that actually I’d rather be climbing 7A. For me bouldering is bouldering not training. If I wanted to train I’d use a hangboard or go to the gym. Thousands of people go too climbing centres and enjoy doing 5’s, all of them are excluded from the moonboard community. The moonboard slogan is “train hard climb harder” I guess that’s the answer, it is a training device. Damn. I say “train harder weaken slower”. Not that I train or anything.

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Figure 131 As far as I get on the moonboard mni.

Covid changed a lot of people’s lives, not mine.

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