Diggory, Diggory Delvet

Look who we saw by the River Esk on the outskirts of Musselburgh! Out for a stroll on a fine Sunday evening, and this little fella had his nose in a hole next to the path. He was snuffling about and wiggling his tail, clearly looking for something interesting. He came out of one little hole and went snuffling into the next. As he did so, out of the first hole at breakneck speed came an enormous worm. No kidding, it was 7 inches long and of commensurate girth. And it was legging it.......as much as a legless creature can.

Diggory Delvet then snuffled out of the second hole and right onto the tarmac in front of us. He wasn't moving very fast and of course his tiny eyes meant he couldn't see much, but his little pink nose was twitching nineteen to the dozen. He didn't seem in the slightest bit scared by two giant omnivores standing over him, but sensibly he turned round and snuffled right back towards the exploratory digging he'd done on the side of the path.

Diggory, Diggory Delvet,
Little old man in black velvet.
He digs and he delves,
You can see for yourselves
The holes dug by Diggory Delvet.

from Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes, Beatrix Potter

9 Lives

I couldn't leave this little BBC news item unshared. It gave me an especially nice Friday feeling. If you were a cat, how bad would it be to have no back feet? Lucky black cat Oscar could tell you; I'm sure he'd tell you how great it is to have them back too.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_environment/10404251.stm

Keep Calm and Carry On

This website came to me, in relation to work, from a friend:
Keep Calm and Carry On: http://www.keepcalmandcarryon.com

After the last week or so of office life, it seems like an appropriate thing to remember, but I also wondered whether the phrase applies quite nicely to climbing...

But also on that website I found this:

‘There is no trouble so great or grave that cannot be much diminished by a cup of tea. ’
Bernard-Paul Heroux

I need to remember that.

How to eat cheesecake

Have you really not harnessed the power of the cheesecake yet? You must. Here's how you do it.

Buy raspberry cheesecake and sit in the garden with it, and a nice glass of wine, on a pleasant summer evening.

Open the box, and slice said cheesecake into appropriately sized pieces. We found that starting small was pointless. You might as well just chop it in two and have half each.

Conveniently, friendly pussy cats have a penchant for raspberry cheesecake. Make sure you have one close at hand to assist. Frankie here plays the innocent very well, although he probably knows you're about to blame the disappearance of the cheesecake on him.

Unfortunately, he got caught red-pawed with the box right under his nose. Now if that isn't incriminating, I don't know what is!

Yes, it's as easy as that. Open box. Eat. Delicious. And who knows how hard you can climb using the power of the cheesecake? ;-)

Twittering Nonsense

This seems a funny thing to post, maybe a bit hypocritical even, given the broadcast nature of blogs, but I think it's funny. I work in an environment where "twitter" seems to be the latest fad. Rather than post a long rant about it, I think this video from Current TV will tell you nicely a) what twitter is (if you don't already know) and b) what I think of twitter (which you don't yet know).

Wasting Time

Rooting through various boxes of collected junk (of which I still have plenty), I am sometimes lucky to find a little forgotten gem. It's usually something fairly insignificant which I kept because it meant something to me at the time. Just occasionally I find these things and realise they still mean something....so I continue to keep them. I suppose this is how I have managed to accumulate so many boxes of "junk".

Maybe it isn't really junk after all, it is a collection which reminds me that I haven't spent my life doing nothing and going nowhere. Today was one of those days when I needed to find some of my junk, and I found this: a birthday card.


It's only 3 years, not 20, since I was given it by some very good friends, but it reminded me to pull myself together and get on with doing all those things I really want to do rather than make feeble excuses for not doing them and otherwise procrastinate.

Happy New Year!

Not much climbing today, I think....

Happy New Year!

Tip of the Day

If you accidentally drop some eggshell into the raw egg when cracking it into a bowl, the best way to get it out it using the edge of the broken shell. Did you know that? Well I never...

Tonight is chocolate mousse cake night. Nigella's recipe is, as usual, fit for goddesses (and gods, I suppose) and naturally gluten free (as long as you're careful to buy the right chocolate). Especially nice for those who can't usually have "normal" chocolate cake....except that this is normal chocolate cake.

Unfortunately, I don't have a big enough round tin with a removable base, so this time I've put it in the rectangular brownie tin. It just about fits, but while writing this I've realised I'm now going to have trouble getting wobbly, bendy moist, moussy cake out of a solid tin. I have visions of it looking more like chocolate crumble cake than chocolate mousse cake. I'm sure it will still taste good. Presentation never was my strong point!

It has yet to come out of the tin....

Not sure how this is going to improve my climbing, but at least it's given my finger a good rest and my biceps a workout with beating eggs and sugar....not so easy after a power yoga class!

Unfinished Business

It struck me last night, whilst dithering over a decision to climb or not given the dubious weather forecast for today, that I've started lots of projects this year, but have left several uncompleted. Of these, I've come tantalisingly close to completing Friendly Fire (F7a, the Anvil), Jocks and Geordies (Font 6c, Kyloe In) and Red Rum (Font 6b+, Kyloe In). I've had a good shot at Dog Eat Dog (Font 7a, Bowden Doors), Green Traverse (Font 7a+, Stanage Plantation) and Shadowlands (F7c, the Anvil).

While it's good to have some things to work on, it's also frustrating to not be able to invest the time it takes to complete them. But life is full of Other Things, like Bad Weather, Jobs, Non-climbing Friends and Sleep, which at different times each take precedence over climbing. Even bad weather is necessary, to fill our reservoirs, water our crops, wash my car, remind us that good weather is good....

Other Things...

The good weather seems to have been and gone; it's frustrating that the long days should be rendered useless by rain. I'm looking at it sheeting down now and hoping that it rains itself out by tomorrow. Having done so much bouldering and sport climbing so far this year, I thought it was about time I put my helmet on and got back to some trad. In my usual fashion, I will start with the easy stuff so as not to scare myself silly. Tomorrow may end up feeling like a huge anticlimax if all I can manage is a VS, but I am sure that longer term it will pay off not to jump straight on E2!

Fortunately, Nigella's Dark Chocolate Loaf Cake is just out of the oven, so whatever happens tomorrow Everything Will Be OK.

A sight for sore eyes

There are some things I never thought I'd see, and a Spaniard climbing in the kilt was one of them. I think we agreed it suited Jose rather well, and it didn't seem to impede his climbing ability one iota!

Bit racey, flashing all that leg, don't you think??!

We had a fun evening. I hope Jose will take his new-found fashion back to Spain and treat the ladies there to it. I'm sure they will be thrilled! Shame we can't continue to have the pleasure of his company here too, but we wish him well for the future and hope to see him again soon.

Two days in The County

Easter Weekend has been very productive! We spent Sunday at Bowden Doors and Monday at Kyloe-in-the-Woods. Bowden was windy and a bit chilly, but we managed a few problems, despite lacking a guidebook for most of the day. When we did manage a peek at a guidebook, we mis-identified our location and convinced ourselves we'd climbed Dog Eat Dog and the unnamed 6c next to it.

Caroline on the supposed "6b" problem

Ha ha. I thought it was a bit too straightforward for 6b. It turns out that we climbed two unnamed problems which come in at about 5b/5c. That'll teach us to a) read the guidebook properly and b) not to be so cocky!

Unfortunately, we have no idea which problems we did. No guidebook. We probably would have mis-read it anyway. Here is Caroline on another good mantle problem with a heel hook and a huge rock over:

Unfortunately, two days on sandstone doesn't come without war wounds. This was the result of a sharp crimpy problem that wouldn't have happened if I'd been tall enough to reach the big jug that was about 4 inches above my very best stretch.

Here are the two crimpy problems. The one on the right has my blood on it!

We did find some fabulous rocks though.

Monday at Kyloe-in was fabulous. Out of the wind, in the sunshine, we had the whole crag pretty much to ourselves. Badfinger (5c) took a bit of effort, and is (I think) much harder than Bad Company next to it (also 5c). I made some progress on Red Rum (6a), but still can't hold the top pocket, despite getting my fingers right in it. Next time...I just ran out of skin. Tonight, my fingers are very sore. I sense more yoga, more cake and less climbing this week...