[comPiler]

2011 goals
17 January 2011, 10:25 pm

Writing one’s goals publicly to give yourself a reminder/humiliation seems to be quite the in-thing for 2011. At least amongst climbers. So I thought I’d give myself a bit of a list, something to check up on later this year and see how I’m progressing. Some of these I can definitely do, but some are a bit more ambitious and might not happen.

Climbing

I’d like to fulfil the long-standing goal of climbing F7a again, and onsighting F6c. Probably one of the routes at Portland. This is definitely do-able. More unlikely is climbing F7a+.

Trad climbing – I’d like to get up to E2 and possibly E3. Something steep and safe at Pembroke or Gogarth. Pleasure Dome is on the list, maybe also Ocean Boulevard or Soul Survivor at Swanage. Some steep and savage grit cracks, with the ultimate aim of doing Sentinal Crack at Chatsworth – ouch!

Places to visit: Cornwall, Verdon, North Wales. Spend much more time at Swanage and Portland to get fit.

Writing

Actually write a short story.

Try to write a radio play.

Get at least one article published in the national media.

I think that’s enough for now, I’m getting tired just thinking about all that lot!



Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[comPiler]

Regional Rivalries
19 April 2011, 9:56 pm

I’m from Yorkshire, so the phrase “wrong side of the Penines” trips of my tongue quicker than I can ask for a curd tart. A year of living in Preston did little to stop me believing that Lancashire, basically, is crap. Constant rain, run down towns, saying books so it rhymes with flukes. It’s just the almost-but-not-quite-like-Yorkshire-ness of the place.

Growing up with one of England’s basic regional animosities bred into me has made it surprisingly easy to pick up others. Five years ago I moved in with Lesh and her family. They’re Sri Lankan, and if there’s one thing that unites Sri Lankans, it’s this: a deep and abiding hatred of India.

The broad contours of this hatred will be familiar to any Brit who loathes Americans. Indians are loud, boorish and uncouth. Poorly educated, they know little beyond their own huge country. Their food is too greasy and they are prone to bouts of religious extremism.

The details are more subcontinental. Sri Lankans have the hottest food. Colombo’s beggars are fewer and less deformed than Delhi’s. Had the Indians lost the recent world cup final with Sri Lanka, enraged fans might have tried to burn the players’ houses down. That would never happen in Sri Lanka.

And as surely as I’ve learned to love rice, I’ve begun to pick up a little of this regional rivalry. I was eating dinner with an Indian friend in a Delhi restaurant. She ordered a plate of chillied prawns, ate a couple, and started fanning her mouth in desperation. We swapped plates.

“Not so bad,” I said. “Compared to our food.”



Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[comPiler]

A little late night love poem
21 April 2011, 10:43 pm

I’m finished packing for my trip to the Verdon, and I’m listening to Brian Eno and indulging in a little melancholy.

I loved you once...  I loved you once: perhaps that love has yet To die down thoroughly within my soul; But let it not dismay you any longer; I have no wish to cause you any sorrow. I loved you wordlessly, without a hope, By shyness tortured, or by jealousy. I loved you with such tenderness and candor And pray God grants you to be loved that way again 

? ??? ?????: ?????? ???, ???? ????? ? ???? ???? ?????? ?? ??????; ?? ????? ??? ??? ?????? ?? ????????; ? ?? ???? ???????? ??? ?????. ? ??? ????? ?????????, ??????????, ?? ????????, ?? ????????? ?????; ? ??? ????? ??? ????????, ??? ?????, ??? ??? ??? ??? ??????? ???? ??????.

Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[comPiler]

Zipping up the man suit and enjoying some old man shit
4 May 2011, 9:40 pm

When I first peered over the edge of the Verdon Gorge I felt sick. I grasped the damp railing of the belvedere tight and leaned over to get a better look at the crag – a soaring buttery yellow buttress drapped in cloud and mist.

The Verdon, looking moody.  Topos and guidebooks can never prepare you for the immensity of a big crag like the Verdon. It’s easy to plan out your dream climbs at home – “a couple of pitches to the rim, 6b+, we can climb that” – but the reality can be sobering. Those 6b+ pitches turn out to be over 200 feet of vertical limestone lost amongst plunging groove lines and fear zones of orange overhanging rock.

Intimidating enough in the sunshine. But the cold driven rain reminded us that the Verdon is a semi-mountain environment, where bad things happen even to well prepared teams.

The first – and only – routes we did were fine, slabby little numbers with belays perched over the drop. Our abseil system provided the excitement, with a tag-line allowing us to climb routes with a single 70m sports rope. Abseiling down on just one rope, a chunky knot jammed into the bolt at the top and the tiny purple cord getting snagged on everything, felt insecure at first, but I think would work as a great system for the big sports routes in the Gorge.

An easy route on a sunny day, but the exposure doesn't go away. After this we say thunderstorms over the hills around the Gorge every day. Sometimes the days started with blue skies and the promise of routes, but it didn’t take long for the weather to turn. Neither of us were keen to get caught below the rim in a ferocious storm. Even on the lower crags the downpours started lamost without warning, drenching us before we could get off twenty metre sports routes.

I struggled to get my leading head on at first, despite Mark telling me: “Zip up your man suit!” But when it came, it was worth the wait. Stepping out of a rest into the fierce crux of Marco Polo (6c), pulling up on tiny pockets and edges, I forgot about the distance to the next bolt, didn’t let fear of a scary clip paralyse me, and subsumed inner chatter with the moves. The falls, when they came, were casual. Exhaustion and failing skin, not fear, were the limitations.

How would that feel high on the immaculate walls of the Verdon Gorge? Hopefully I’ll find out in the autumn.

Finally, some sun! Sore tips after attempting Marco Polo, F6c, near Toulon. Finding only bad weather forecasts on Meteo France. Eating cake in Fontainebleau.



Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[comPiler]

The more you know, the more you need to learn
7 May 2011, 10:57 am

So my trip to France felt like a real insight into climbing weaknesses and strengths and an opportunity to see what I have to do to improve.

So, first the good things:

As I expected, I’m good at reading sequences and doing fingery walls. I didn’t get pumped often, so the 4x4s seem to have paid off. I turn out to be surprisingly good at slab climbing, quickly doing problems in Font that no one else could. So – time to try some hard routes at Portland, start hitting Pembroke. The slab climbing can perhaps wait until the autumn gritstone season – or should I plan a trip to La Pedriza or Llanberis?

Now, the weaknesses:

The difficult 6c at Toulon (Marco Polo) showed that my strength and bouldering need to go up a level if I’m to get up harder sports climbs (tho I’m probably okay for a lot of trad up to about E2). Same with the tough route at Chateauvert – I really lacked the power for some big moves, the rest I could just about handle.

Falling – for the first few days the fear of falling was high, and it took me a long time to feel relaxed when on lead. It’s even worse when I’m high on a big pitch. Since I don’t have enough free climbing days to spend getting my head in gear, I need to do as much fall practice as possible at the wall. Maybe aim for 50 – 100 falls in the next month or six weeks? How do I get used to taking falls and hanging out high up?

Footwork – I struggle with heel hooks. This needs practice, and  feel I could improve my ability to drop-knee too. Possibly also some hip and leg flexibility to make the most of these kind of moves, but most of it will be drills and practice at the wall, and copying people who are good at heel hooking.

Steep rock – after failing on a fairly straightforward 6b at Chateauvert I realise I need to really improve my ability on very steep rock (up to about 15/20 deg overhanging). One element of this is pure strength/thuggery, the other is being comfortable on steep rock, happy to take falls and so on. Many hours of bouldering in the fridge and leading on the steepest wall at the Westway beckon. Not sure where to practice this outside… perhaps Higgar Tor?

Dead pointing – I’m just not very good at it, lacking accuracy and timing. Need to learn how to hit the holds at just the right time in the jump.

Staying calm – Mark noticed that before doing some problems at Franchard Cuisinere I was a bit shaky and skittering when first getting on the rock. I’ve notice myself feeling really shaky when I get nervous, often just as I’m about to succeed on a route (perhaps success is scarier than failure?). Apparently my first move nerves disappeared higher on the problems and some level of precision returned. I need to stay calmer and manage the tension between being psyched and excited, and calm enough to climb well.



Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[comPiler]

Investigative journalism masterclass
16 May 2011, 8:42 pm

I spent the weekend on a Guardian Masterclass on investigative journalism, run  by Paul Lewis and Heather Brooke.

Probably the most interesting thing for me was seeing how Paul did the investigations behind his biggest stories, such as the Ian Tomlinson case and the death of Jimmy Mubenga, who was allegedly asphyxiated by security guards on a plane as he was being deported to Angola.

Twitter was key to finding witnesses and evidence in both cases. Something I didn’t realise the Guardian did was to write “teaser” stories which, with some clever wording, would alert anyone searching for the story that they were trying to investigate it further. Plenty of tweeting with the right hashtag was very effective at getting witnesses – in the Mubenga case an oil worker saw it whilst on an oil rig off the Angolan coast. Paul reckoned that both these stories would have been impossible to do before 2008 and the rise of crowd sourcing, mainly through Twitter.

Unlike old fashioned investigative journalism, with its slightly furtive methods, this kind of crowd sourced story was investigation in the open, in which everyone can see what the reporter was doing – other hacks, press officers, hostile officials as well as potential sources.

The story of West Midlands police attempting to ring Muslim areas with cameras was interesting too. A lot of the investigation hinged around a forensic reading of the press release and sniffing out things that looked fishy. After that it was simply a case of asking the right questions to the right people:

Where did the money come from?

What’s it for?

Where in the Home Office is giving you the money?

What part of ACPO does the money come from?

Basic stuff, but allied with imagination and tenacity it got a front page story and the cameras were removed.

Heather did a good class on using Freedom of Information requests, looking at how to query officials who refuse to give information when really they should.

On Sunday afternoon we had a session from James Ball who let us into the secrets computer security, encrypted email and chat, and interrogating data sets. He had worked with the WikiLeaks team on the Iraq war logs, turning the mass of data obtained from the US military into stories. Again, lots of complex ideas turning on asking basic journalistic questions.



Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[comPiler]

The scandal of low pay at the Palace
18 May 2011, 9:13 pm

I read a story last week which really made my blood boil. The cleaners at Buckingham Palace have been asking for a pay rise – from £6.45 an hour, just above the minimum wage, to the London living wage of £7.85. How anyone could survive in London on even the later is beyond me, but according to the workers interviewed in the Guardian piece it would make a huge difference to their quality of life.

Needless to say they were moved on by police when they tried to protest at the Royal Wedding.

I can’t tell you how angry this makes me – the Royal Family, who get £30m of our taxes each year, can’t even give its cleaners a decent wage. Personally I think they should pay them not just a living wage, but an outstanding wage. Instead we’ve had statements from the Palace such as:

“We are currently in negotiations about paying the London living wage.

“We are in correspondence with KGB [the company with the cleaning contract]. As a publicly funded body, we are concerned that our staff have fair rates and proper working conditions.”

Well yes. There are a lot of people who’d like to see some movement on this, for starters the nine MPs who signed an Early Day Motion and the cleaners’ union the PCS.

The PCS have written a letter which they’re using as a basis for a petition which they want to go to the Culture Secretary. I’ve included a version of it below, but let’s go one better. Let’s make sure the Queen’s right hand man, her private secretary, hears about this. His name is Christopher Geidt and his email is christopher.geidt@royal.gsx.gov.uk

Please send him this letter, or your own, if you feel moved to write something.

Dear Mr Geidt,

I was was outraged to hear that cleaners working for the Royal Household in London are paid £6.45 per hour even though the London Living Wage is set at £7.85. Cleaners in the House of Commons and House of Lords are paid at the rate of the London Living wage.

As £30 million of taxpayer’s money is paid to the Royal family annually for the upkeep of the Royal Households it is clear that the London living wage of £7.85 is affordable.

Why then are the people who work so hard to maintain standards at The Royal Households paid so little?

I am asking you to do all you can to ensure that all cleaners working within the Royal Households are paid the London living wage of £7.85 per hour, a rate that is supported by the Mayor of London.

Yours,



Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[comPiler]

Lunching out
25 May 2011, 7:52 pm

Here is a very good article on procrastination from the New Yorker.

Here is a bag containing (I think) some cheese, which I packed for lunch in France. It’s been sat on the chair since I returned, about three weeks ago.

My bag of cheese. No idea how smelly it is. “Philosophers are interested in procrastination for another reason. It’s a powerful example of what the Greeks called akrasia—doing something against one’s own better judgment. Piers Steel defines procrastination as willingly deferring something even though you expect the delay to make you worse off.”

Edit: apparently it had some grapes in it too.



Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[comPiler]

What to give the tropical island dweller who has everything (culinarily speaking).
28 May 2011, 10:11 pm

Ahhh, Sri Lanka, that verdant isle in the Indian Ocean. Spit some seeds on the ground, they say, and soon a plant will grow. It’s home to jackfruit, the world’s largest fruit, and durian, one of the smelliest. I’ve eaten Sri Lankan vegetables with no name in English, prawns bigger than the palm of your hand, tiny dried fish in bitter curries, aromatic steaming tea, raw cinnamon straight from the tree, water drawn from the well that’s so pure you could bottle it.

So what do Sri Lankans really, really lust after?

Campbell’s cup-a-soup. Nesquick. Dairy Milk chocolate. Dairy Lee cheese. Mayonaise. Sandwhich spreads. BBQ sauce. Crackers. Tinned fruit. Club biscuits.

The best of the west. There was stuff on the back seat, too. If it’s processed, comes in a multi-coloured plastic packet or is made by a giant corporation in a factory, they want it. (The grass is always greener, right?) So in preparation for this year’s trip to Sri Lanka we’ve been buying trolley loads of “delicacies” for the rellies and getting it shipped over to the tropics.

Showing no respect for Archie's porridge. Pro at work. Goodies! Next stop - Kohuwela! Assuming there are no Somali pirates with a taste for chocolate digestives, after 21 days on the high seas our package will arrive in Colombo ready to be dispersed around the family.

Those biccies could easily break! Not to mention the crackers. Joining the packages for Colombo, Nugegoda, Beruwala and elsewhere. Enjoy, folks!



Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[comPiler]

Most pointless climbing trip ever.
30 May 2011, 7:19 pm

In retrospect, it looks a bit ambitious. A very busy day on Saturday, followed by an extremely early Sunday morning to pick the rellies up from Heathrow, then home, quick rest and up to the Peak for a day and a half’s climbing, despite an iffy weather forecast. Two friends had already backed out. But I was desperate to get some trad climbing done and start the process of getting my head in gear.

Picking Dad and Punchi up was fine, after getting them home I had a sleep and eventually left about 12.30. Traffic was terrible, I was dead tired, and by the time I got to the Peak I was shot. Despite the good weather I decided to go to Outside for tea and cake, promptly reversed my car into a gate and the locking mechanism went straight into my rear light unit. I couldn’t get hold of my friends so went to the crag on my own but fell asleep in the car, and managed to miss the only decent weather I was to see all weekend.

Broken! If only I could blame someone else. I eventually met up with my mates at the campsite near Hope, had tea and a nice chat before crashing out. Woke to rain. Snoozed. Woke up to rain, again. Clouds brushed the slopes of Win Hill. The forecast was for more of the same, so it was back to Outside for the shopping I’d resisted the day then the long drive back to London.

What an expensive, tiring and totally pointless way to spend my Bank Holiday.



Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[comPiler]

When am I?
1 June 2011, 8:26 pm

I tried to go to see a friend’s band the other week but failed. I got lost. Not in space, as I found the venue easily, but in time. I was a week early.

Even for someone as bad with dates as myself that was quite an achievement.

Why it happened is a bit of a mystery to me. Obviously I’d read the date and had even managed to plan ahead to go there, but just got it completely wrong. My offhand explanation is “I’ve got a bad memory for dates.” But that’s not quite right.

It doesn’t feel like a failure of memory. I’d remembered the gig perfectly well, just remembered completely the wrong thing. Instead if feels like a kind of blind spot. For some reason I can’t conceptualise time and map it in my head.

Spatially I can do this. I can look at a map and create a rough copy in my head, and match where I am now to the map. Give me a map, or a route description or topo, and I’m a happy man. But I can’t do any dates without a calendar in front of me, and remove the calendar and – poof! Any sense of time goes with it.

Memory, after all, comes in many forms. We often find ourselves being able to perfectly visualise someone but have forgotten their name; normally we feel this as a failure of memory. Instead it’s a massive success – of all the hundreds of thousands of unique faces we see, we’ve managed to remember one, perhaps from years ago. What about a musician who can remember Bach cantatas perfectly but struggles to remember the time of her concerts? Or a mathematician who can remember acres of theorems but gets lost on the way to his mother’s house? Would such people be suffering from a failure of memory, or be exemplars of memory? Common sense says the former, but on a moment’s reflection we should say the later.

I see my problem with times and dates as an inability to navigate, rather than simply forgetting – after all, I hadn’t forgotten about the gig. Just put it in the wrong “place”. Is getting lost a lack of memory? You might be able to remember exactly what a street in a rarely-visited city might look like, or what you did there, but connecting it to your current location might be simply impossible. Getting lost – in time or space – is really an inability to make maps in one’s head.

Sometimes the times ahead of me just disappears into a fog, or there’s a blank on the map marked “here be dragons”. The nearest thing I can equate it to is a feeling from when I was a small boy, and the way the unknown world beyond home was misty and indistinct.

A couple of years ago at work we all did a Briggs-Myers personality test. One element of your psychological type relates to planning. I’m a P for Perceiving which means I’m poor at planning ahead, or to put a positive spin on it, spontaneous and open to new plans.

Once I had to go to a conference in The Hague, on the Monday and Tuesday. On the first afternoon my boss called to ask what I was doing on Wednesday. Just back in the office I replied, nothing serious lined up. Oh well in that case would I mind going to Thailand for a week or two, leaving Wednesday morning?

How fabulous! What a release from routine! I walked out of Heathrow on Tuesday evening and was walking in again less than twelve hours later. At the Briggs-Myers session my colleague Katie shuddered at this story. She’s a J for Judging, and her type like to plan ahead. No, they need to plan ahead. My thrill at going to Bangkok with two days notice was as inexplicable to her as her horror was to me.

Is it possible to mix Katie’s skill at planning ahead with my more relaxed approach? If I learn to map dates in my head will I become a slave to the map rather than enjoying whatever comes up? Perhaps just referring to my diary a a lot and muddling through as well as I can is the best it gets.

Even then, if I’m a week early, try to understand it wasn’t deliberate. I just got lost.



Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[comPiler]

Energetic Americans
2 June 2011, 9:00 am

Gillian Tett’s column in the FT Weekend magazine is always worth a read. This week she writes about the trend of American high achievers continuing to take on major new projects, even develop new careers, into their 60s and beyond.

“The other night, I was seated at a dinner next to Henry Louis Gates Jr, a black literary professor at Harvard University, who has forged a brilliant career as a public intellectual…

“Cheerfully, Gates described the dizzy whirlwind of his current life: he is making documentaries about blacks in Latin America, writing books, editing a website and sitting on assorted boards. Oh, and performing his “day job” – running a department at Harvard. So far, so normal, by the standards of America’s hyperactive east coast power elite.”

I’m not so much interested in the age issue (at least not yet, anyway), but rather how on earth do these people manage to do so much? I feel the same mix of envy and exhaustion when I read about Victorian Britons like Dickens or Gladstone.

How do they get it all done? Some theories:

• They don’t piss around on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Particularly true for Gladstone and Dickens.
• They don’t sleep very much. But when I try this I get ill after about a week. Are these people suffering a permanent cold?
• They don’t do much fun stuff. I suspect this is probably true. They just work. Maybe Mr Gates has swapped hanging out with his mates for editing his documentary or his website.
• They’re not very good at what they do. Unlikely, but possible. We’ve all met people in senior positions whose grasp of the details isn’t that great. They rely on their assistants, and who’s to say the east coast power elite don’t have a bunch of interns and lackeys preparing briefs and doing the time-consuming leg-work of research.
• They have domestic servants. So whilst I and the rest of the harassed middle classes are doing the washing up and going to Sainsbury’s, our highly paid power elites are busy on their projects, which will give them that good elitey stuff like cultural influence, power or cold hard cash. Meanwhile Renata from Mexico City is cleaning the bathroom.

 

This last point my explain Ms Tett’s “subtle divide” between the US and Europe, where people tend to retire in their 60s. I’ve no stats to hand, but I imagine there are more domestic workers in the US, and that they are more affordable. (If someone could prove or disprove this for me I’d really appreciate that.) It would also explain our energetic Victorian forebears – there were always plenty of household servants or wives, freeing the man up to be energetic.

Alas, not an option open to most of us. I think I’m going to buy a big pack of paper plates.



Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[comPiler]

Pembroke
18 June 2011, 1:15 pm

Last weekend I went to Pembroke for the first time in 11 years. I’m not sure why the huge gap – I think I’d forgotten just how wonderful it is. Where else are there so many superb crags within such a short distance? And what’s more, all the walking between them is flat.

Duncan, my partner for the weekend, claimed a well travelled climber of his acquaintence reckoned Pembroke to be one of Europe’s four world-class cragging destinations (the others being Font, the Verdon and the Elbstandstein, discuss ad infinitum over a brew on a rainy day). When I’d been before I hadn’t done a great deal of limestone climbing and didn’t appreciate how good the rock is down there.

Good weather, immaculate rock - someone strikes it lucky. It was my first time trad climbing since last autumn and I was pretty rusty. Having spent most of the year so far sports climbing the routes themselves felt fine, but the gap between gymnastic exercise and doing the lead felt pretty big.

I started off on a VS, that was fine, then dodging the showers we went to do an HVS near Stenis Head, climbing until late in the evening.

On Saturday the weather was perfect, sunny but a little chilly and windy, not too hot at all. Rather ambitiously, we did three routes on three separate crags. On Bosherston Head we abbed into the wrong bit, but found an easy way out. Heading to Rusty Walls Duncan had his sights set on Lucky Strike, but there was a team on it so we did a classic E1 crack called Solidarity. Again, seconding it, the climbing felt straightforward but the lead itself a little beyond me. As ever, mileage is the key!

For a finale we went to Castle Head to do a HVS called Rizla. This was my lead, and it knocked me right back. I got about 30 ft up the black, soapy, slopey rock with a few bits of gear but couldn’t get any more in – the usual friendly Pembroke cracks had disappeared! I tried to get a small wire in a crozzly horizontal crack but it pulled out, and I was unwilling to press ahead to where I thought I could get some more in. I retreated, and felt bad about myself. Duncan took the lead, wangled some gear in, slowly udged up, then at about 60ft announced he was retreating, thinking it a rather bold E1. We were sandbagged! (And I felt better.)

We awoke to Biblical rain on Sunday.

 

Car park cafe  

"What were the skies like when you were young?"  

Pembroke coastline from Castle Head.  

Symbol of the unconscious



Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[comPiler]

How wealthy is India?
25 June 2011, 12:39 pm

The Economist did a really cool interactive map this week which is good for thinking about the aid to India debate.

One reason it chimed with me is that it compares Indian states to countries, something I’ve often thought about in terms of population. UP has around the same number of people as Brazil. The greater Delhi area has as many people as Chile. This is reflects what I’ve felt visiting India – many states and the biggest metros are so big they dwarf European countries.

But this map goes one further by comparing the states to nations in GDP and GDP per head. That’s when it gets really interesting. GDP wise plenty of states look like solid middle-income countries, and Maharashtra is as wealthy as Singapore, but GDP per head brings out a completely different picture. Huge swathes of northern India look like sub-Saharan Africa, and the poor bits too: Sudan, Benin, Eritrea. On this map Maharashtra is equivalent to Sri Lanka. The figures show better than any argument I’ve read why aid agencies continue to work in India, despite the existence of extremely wealthy people like Mukesh Ambani.

Of course there’s a positive spin too. With so much room for development in the Indian economy and a young, entrepreneurial population, the country should continue to grow strongly for a long time.

They did a similar map of China last year, which is interesting for comparison.



Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[comPiler]

First blood
28 June 2011, 9:16 pm

On Sunday I took my first trad fall for, ooh, at least ten years.

The last couple of weekends out trad climbing have been fun but I’ve not been feeling confident or smooth. Placing too much gear and generally gibbering about have been the order of the day. Of course I’m taunted by memories of when I could climb reasonably well, which makes the process of slowly pushing myself that bit more frustrating. So I figured a trip to the grit and some short, sharp, safe routes would be ideal. The plan: try something hard, either get up it and get the tick, or take the fall. Either way, a confidence boost.

Gardoms was suitably sweaty and hot on Sunday, and my mates suitably hung over and chilled. I didn’t care! I had my mission. After a warm up it was time for, Nowanda, a classic HVS jamming crack. It was greasy, a fight to get the jams in, and of course I put too much gear in, being a coward. I went for it, fell off – and everything held! Happy bunny. A short sleep in the grass gave hay fever, so instead of a snooze I got back on the route.

“Andy, do you mind just standing to the side, I think it’s best for the rope?”

Andy obliged, I turned around, swung my foot up to the first brake and kicked him sqaure in the jaw. Poor lad, it was his birthday too. After my perfect roundhouse the route was straightforward.

The E1 next door, Landsick, was next. Up, too much gear, rest, try again, go for the crux, fall off the sweaty slopers and a bit more airtime, my TCU holding perfectly. Looking at the pictures now it looks pretty insignificant. But it was pretty intense for me.

Going for it on Landsick, Gardoms Taking the fall.



Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[comPiler]

Reminder/humiliation
30 June 2011, 6:32 pm

In the depths of winter I wrote on this blog a little list of goals for the year – “to check up on later this year and see how I’m progressing.” Well, later is now and with six months of the year down it’s time to check on my progress.

This is going to hurt.

First, sports climbing. Onsighting 6c and redpointing 7a. Nearly there – I flashed a 6c in Portland very early on in the year, came to within an ace of redpointing a 7a at Swanage just before Easter. Our trip to France was supposed to give a final boost to my sports climbing and see my hit the magic mark, but that didn’t happen thanks to the weather. I missed quite a bit of training and a couple of trips away due to getting tattooed and injuring my shoulder, and once the summer arrived I’ve been trying to concentrate on trad climbing. So nearly, but not quite. Hopefully that’ll be rectified in the autumn with some south coast sports trips.

Trad climbing. I’ve been trying hard on this one in the last few weeks, with trips to Pembroke, the Peak and Swanage. It’s been tough. I’ve been wracked with nerves and though the climbing has felt easy, the overall leading of harder routes felt a bit beyond me at first. But it’s slowly coming back, I threw myself on an E1 last weekend and though I didn’t get up it, I wasn’t too far off. More confidence and speed with my gear placements is what I need. So with a bit of luck, some good weather, and the right route, I still hope to get up an E2 this year. Not so sure about an E3.

I’ve visited the Verdon, and spent a bit more time at Swanage and Portland, tho the Bill still has plenty of crags I’ve yet to even visit. Unfortunately I don’t think I’ll make it to Cornwall or N Wales this year. I had plenty of time off with my old job and was planning to take a bunch of long weekends to get far away from London, but my new position has fewer holiday days and most of them will be used up in our trip to Sri Lanka later in the summer.

Despite not actually ticking any of my main climbing goals, I feel I’m getting there which is great. Unfortunately climbing a lot is really, really detrimental to writing. It takes up a lot of time and energy. So my ambition of writing a play or short story remains very much unfulfilled, even unworked upon. Getting a newspaper article published hasn’t happened yet either, though I hope with work to get a few ghosted op-eds out there in the next few months, which is at least half a tick.

However I’ve been writing much more on here which is proving to be a good way of working on a few ideas and keeping my hand in.

Two big projects I’ve achieved this year didn’t even rate in my list, but I’m very happy about achieving them. I got a new job, which is really exciting, promises some interesting travel and is a whole lot more stimulating than my previous one. Result! And I’ve gotten tattooed, a very long-standing desire which I’ve fulfilled big style. I’m very pleased about getting that done, even if the result was to make me too skint and knackered to manage all the other things.

I’ll check in with this list again at the end of December.



Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[comPiler]

Where was everyone?
5 July 2011, 8:57 pm

Had a splendid couple of days out at Curbar this weekend. What a wonderful crag – steep and striking lines everywhere, great ambience and virtually no one there. I don’t understand it. A perfect Sunday in the Peak and we didn’t see another team all day. I did Sorrel’s Sorrow, a classic graunchy HVS crack, and there wasn’t even a hint of chalk.

Where were all the climbers?

 



Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[slackline]

Most probably found it too hot for grit and were on the Limestone (or didn't fancy the walk and went to  Stanage Popular instead).

[comPiler]

News of the World
7 July 2011, 9:34 pm

The phone hacking scandal emanating from the News of the World really is incredible. There are so many angles to the story that I can’t really grasp it all yet.

To me though, one thing stands out. It’s the time, in 2003, when Rebekah Brooks gave evidence to the Commons Select Committee. She admitted the paper paid police for information. That’s illegal. That’s corrupt. And what’s more – no one called her out on it (as far as I understand).

The police didn’t follow it up. MPs didn’t follow it up (or obviously not vigorously enough). And she felt confident enough to say it on camera in the Commons.

At least someone is paying for this, if not the right people. I feel sorry for the decent reporters on the paper looking at losing their jobs. But after Iraq, and the financial crisis, in which no senior people have lost their jobs, I think there might be a mood for revenge amongst ordinary people. I hope so!



Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[comPiler]

Backbone
10 July 2011, 7:58 pm

I’ve spent today cleaning and hanging out at home rather than doing anything that requires much effort, physical or intellectual. So I haven’t been following the news much, other than to hear now it turns out that an internal NI memo has turned up which indicates that, oh what a surprise, executives at the company knew phone hacking was more widespread than they let on, and that they’d paid police for stories.

I thought about the cowardice of politicians who for years have refused to stand up to Murdoch, as a group, prefering short term tactical gain over their opponents to uniting in a long-term goal of reducing the power of one company. Blair had three meetings with Murdoch in the ten days before the Iraq war started, but ignored a million people marching in London.

Anyhow I was put in mind of something by the historian Tony Judt, and found the full quote here:

“Courage is always missing in politicians. It is like saying basketball players aren’t normally short. It isn’t a useful attribute. To be morally courageous is to say something different, which reduces your chances of winning an election. Courage is in a funny way more common in an old-fashioned sort of enlightened dictatorship than it is in a democracy. However, there is another factor. My generation has been catastrophic. I was born in 1948 so I am more or less the same age as George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Gerhard Schröder, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – a pretty crappy generation, when you come to think of it, and many names could be added. It is a generation that grew up in the 1960s in Western Europe or in America, in a world of no hard choices, neither economic nor political. There were no wars they had to fight. They did not have to fight in the Vietnam War. They grew up believing that no matter what choice they made, there would be no disastrous consequences. The result is that whatever the differences of appearance, style and personality, these are people for whom making an unpopular choice is very hard.

“Someone once said: ‘But Blair’s choice to go to war in Iraq was unpopular with the majority of the population.’ I agree. But what Blair was doing was going for a different kind of popularity – he wanted to show his strength. To do this he had to do something unpopular, yet something that cost him nothing. Doing something unpopular that may cost you your job is much harder.”

(My italics.)



Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[comPiler]

Stuck in America
14 July 2011, 9:59 pm

The classic DJ mix “Too Many DJs” has many superb tracks, but one of my favourites is – a prime cut of sleazy German electro if ever I heard it.

Except of course it isn’t, at least not quite. As I only recently found out, it was originally performed by American spandex pantomime rockers Kiss. I was quite surprised, being a bit of a heavy metal/hard rock fan, but there you go. In a way it’s no wonder I didn’t know this; although it was one of Kiss’ few chart successes in the UK, it only reached the heady heights of No 51 back in’79.

Yet Kiss are – or were – massive in the States. I think all you can say is: “America – what the fuck?!” I mean, men made up as kitty cats?! Kiss are one of those very few pieces of American culture that don’t make it across the Atlantic. Obviously there’s something about a bunch of guys dressing up as the Star Man and the Star Child and singing “Detroit Rock City” that doesn’t chime with a British audience. Only David Bowie could get away with it, and then only as a phase. They have Kiss, we have Spinal Tap.

Kiss’ failure is unusual. From JR to Woody Allen to Elvis to Jane Fonda’s workout video to OJ’s glove to Jay-Z, we’re saturated in American culture. So it got me thinking as to what else doesn’t travel so well to our shores.

First up: the Grateful Dead. I mean, I’ve never heard a Grateful Dead song, as far as I know, and I used to have dreadlocks. That’s saying something. Yet once again, they’re massive in America. They’ve been touring continually since the sixties and, as I write this, their next date is Saturday 16 July in Bethel, NY, should you feel inclined to catch them.

I just looked at “dead.net” and found this: “It’s hard to believe that a year like 1982, which included so many excellent shows, has only been represented once on an authorized Grateful Dead release. We’re making that “wrong” a “right” with Road Trips Vol. 4 No. 4. This awesome three-disc set delivers an indisputably fine show from that underrated year: the complete Philly Spectrum 4/6/82 concert, with a heapin’ helpin’ of the 4/5/82 Spectrum show to round things out.”

People will buy an album from live shows from 1982? That’s what I call a fanbase.

I feel in the nature of research I should go and listen to a Grateful Dead song but I can’t bring myself to. At least not right yet. I guess they’re not going anywhere fast (except to Saratoga Springs next Tuesday).

Third up in my transatlantic no-shows: Ayn Rand. The only time I’ve seen Ayn Rand mentioned on mainstream TV in the UK was a month or so back in Adam Curtis’ documentary “Machines of Loving Grace”. She was the scary Russian lady, a fanatical rationalist and anti-communist who wrote long books that no one has heard of in England but which are massively popular in the US. When the Republicans don’t cut enough taxes for you, then head over to the Rand camp where you can, erm, live for yourself and campaing against taxes. She was the house philosopher for Alan Greenspan, number cruncher, chairman of the Federal Reserve and overseer of the financial crisis.

It would be too easy to note that a lack of irony runs through my three choices of American culture without a passport. When I discussed this idea with a friend, well travelled in America, he suggested including the American breakfast. Now there is indeed no trace of irony about an American breakfast, no sneaky saying one thing but meaning another. It is what is is – a massive Saturn Five of a meal to launch your day in calorific orbit, amped up with enough free coffee refills to wake the dead. The all American breakfast is a glorious thing. And unlike Kiss songs, Grateful Dead shows, and The Fountainhead, I have enjoyed many a three-egg omlette and blueberry pancake, nodded yes to that fourth cup of coffee, and .



Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[comPiler]

Dance music
17 July 2011, 3:25 pm

Having a bit of a dance music renaisance at the moment, and have discovered Sound Cloud. It’s like having a massive box of DJ tapes to dip into every so often, brilliant! (That last sentence probably reveals my age, or at least the era when I dicovered electronic music.)

Here’s what I’m listening to today:

Progressive House Mix – March 2010 by nickchan24

Ignore the odd warblin tarts track and get down with the euphoric house sounds. There’s a really great mix from about 35 to 43 mins. Enjoy!



Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[comPiler]

Moaning about climbing
26 July 2011, 6:32 pm

If climbing this year has a low point, I reckon it came this weekend. A perfect sunny Sunday, partners lined up for a day in the Wye Valley, but I stayed at home. Less than a month ago I felt on a roll, pushing myself on trad routes, but since then I’ve done nothing.

There are plenty of good reasons. I’ve struggled to shake off a bad cold, exacerbated by a hectic work schedule. My knackered shoulder is taking its time to heal. I’ve just been tired. It’s one of those periods when living in London is tough. Even if I were dead beat, I would happily bodge out to the crag for an afternoon’s bouldering if it were a half-hour drive, but a minimum of 90 minutes in the car to reach rock – and those 90 minutes on the gladiatorial M25 – acts as a powerful deterrent when I’m exhausted.

The feeling that the summer of climbing is already waning only adds to my mood. Work and family commitments mean I’ve got one weekend and one day out before going to Sri Lanka at the end of August, and by the time I get back, get over the jetlag and long flight, it’s coming on for mid-September. And whilst the autumn can be one of the best times for climbing in the UK, it’s overshadowed by brooding November and chilly December ready to storm over the horizon.

But… hold on a minute.  I’ll be rested from my holiday in SL (which, in case it looks like I’m carping, I’m super-psyched about). The autumn is perfect for sports – and trad for that matter – down on the south coast. Perhaps I’ll tick my E2 down at scary old Swanage at the fag end of the year. Routes on the grit should be climbable well into October if we’re lucky with the rain. My shoulder may be iffy, but it’s getting better. And I have booked a three day trip to Catalunya in November, and hopefully will manage another weekend away on the continent before Christmas.

The year’s not over yet!



Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[comPiler]

Flying chappatis.
29 July 2011, 8:08 pm

Pure south Asian genius.



Source: Bridbeast's Blog

[comPiler]

National Service
16 August 2011, 5:14 pm

So David Cameron is flirting with the idea of introducing National Service, or some similar “tame the feral youth” type affair.

That was some scary news for my cousin, who is 15, and far from feral.

“Mum, I don’t want to go in the ARMY!” he pleaded, genuinely upset.

He will be receiving the following letter:

CALL UP NOTICE FOR MR XXXXXX (name removed to protect the innocent)

Dear Mr XXXXXX,

Congratulations!

You have been chosen for the first batch of recruits under the government’s new General Rehabilitation of Irritable Teenagers (GRIT) programme. As a new recruit you will be required to attend a six month long Teenager Understand and Face your Future (TUFF) paramilitary-style training course. This will be followed by the three-month-long Teenager Or Recalcitrant To Undergo Re-Education (TORTURE) programme of advanced physical and mental training.

Please attend your local TUFF training centre at RAF Lockermouth, Inverness, Scotland, at 09:00 GMT 1 Sept 2011.

You will be provided with military-style fatigues for the duration of your TUFF course. All other equipment will be provided. You must bring:

5 pairs underpants

5 pairs socks

The following items will not be permitted and will be confiscated:

Mobile telephones

MP3 and other music players

Personal computers

Personal hygiene products (we will supply soap, shampoo and de-licing powder when required)

Jewellery

Pets

Alcohol, cigarettes and drugs

Knives and other weaponry

You are permitted the following personal items:

1 x Bible/Koran/Torah or other religious book

1 x 50m packet of dental floss

1 x pen

Please note this course is compulsory. Failure to attend will result in a custodial sentence for your parents. If you abscond whilst on the course, advanced students undergoing the TORTURE programme will be permitted to hunt you down and return you to base.

I do hope you enjoy your time on the GRIT programme.

Yours truly,

Col Walter Kurz

Programme Director

General Rehabilitation of Irritable Teenagers



Source: Bridbeast's Blog