A loving relationship with Time for Tea Original, Millstone Edge, around 1989. I seem to have had a few more muscles then, also a nice line in little black sweaters.
This was supposed to be a photo session for the back jacket of Climbers. Andy Pollitt held the rope. Ron Fawcett took the pictures. I had a serious case of hero-worship related performance anxiety. “You can put more runners in than that,” Ron said, genuinely worried I would fall off a route he could do in a coma. Andy insisted on seconding it formally, although in the normal run of things he probably downsolo’d it with his eyes bandaged & one foot tied to a railway sleeper. Fashion data: the scrunchie was bright red, the Ron Hills light grey with a black stripe. The Boreals were an early attempt to make an actual climbing shoe, rather than just wrap the stickiest rubber in the world around a suede carpet slipper.
Photo: Ron Fawcett
The picture brings to mind the old building-climbing gag from the Batman TV series.
I bet there’s a second photo taken a few minutes later where you climb past a window just as Sammy Davis Jr opens it.
“Why it’s the author of In Viriconium! If you don’t mind, I’d much rather be In a Vodka Martini!”
What astonishes me, Jonathan, is how you could know this. Sammy promised me he would never say a word to anyone.
Those legs look Photoshopped to me.
We probably haven’t seen this sort of physical prowess in a writer since Robert Gibbings.
Julian, why would I photoshop myself knees that looked like that ?
MikeM, I’m not qualified to tell if you’re being ironic there… You’d see more physical (not to say intellectual) ability in writers like Jim Perrin, Al Alvarez, John Krakauer, or Robert MacFarlane (check out his stunning The Wild Places). Anyway, I found the pic, had a good laugh at myself & thought I’d give everyone else a laugh. Also say thanks to Ron & Andy for being so patient.
Mike,
. I forget where I read it now but I recall a passage in which Gibbings was seen stripped to the waist, canoeing down the Thames. Your thoughts and writings on landscape and his, and the way they filter(ed) through to your respective arts seemed like an instant parallel to me but it *was* a whimsical correspondence on my part, since Gibings carved rock but you appear to caress it here.
For the record, I was playing it straight
I don’t know the writers you mention and will look them up; I have just always admired those who have both creative and physical power. One of my favourite images of all time is one of Max Ernst in middle age, staged close to a carving, white-haired, still strong, bleached and articulated, like a piece of shark cartilage washed up on a beach – that’s the way I’d like to go (I cannot find the exact one but you can probably get a glimpse from this of what I mean:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3389/3410596034_75d5a31ff1.jpg?v=0
I just don’t understand how anyone could be in that position, less manoeuvre themselves into it. And even less with what appear to be hold-up stockings on. Amazing. Are you really a spider? or a lizard?
Hi Lara. It’s not hard, Time for Tea Original, but I certainly enjoyed it that day. It was a bit like giving a lecture on some of the simpler aspects of Relativity with Einstein smiling encouragingly up at you from the front row. Suddenly you’re not so sure you got it after all.
Of the two, I’d prefer to be thought of as a lizard. A lounge lizard.
If I tilt my head to the right you look very much like a cat.
uzwi: That’s the worst thing. They look badly Photoshopped.
Finally I understand Coleridge’s “suspension of disbelief”.
Good to have you back blogging…
Ah, the days of Ron Hills and Boreals, What about EBs?
& those weird intermediate things–Asolo ?–with very pointy toes & rubber so soft it wore off in a month.
I bought my first pair of EBs after I’d been climbing for 6 months. The old guys in the club wondered if that was a bit soon–what if I changed my mind ? For them, it was a very committing thing. Also, it carried implications of self-aggrandisement. Were you good enough to need EBs ? (In my case the answer was obviously no.)