Ancient harbour rings, clattering trawlers, & ropes & marker bouys & mistral gannets, nets & weeds & clouds & things that move in rings, like light...I'll be down there...resting days before the next climb, visualizing the redpoint sequence, rigging the prawner with Fraser, gaff-cutter-rigged that one is...gaff-cutter-rigged; & I've got one eye on the Cuillin - one hand on the winch. Hot village coffee in chipped enamel mugs, sore on healing gabbro scars, a grinding knee, kids turning shells & shrieks on the mud slithering tide, shadowed by dripping joists. Packing trays, hose pipes & boning knives. Extended sessions of street blether, leaves drafted along guttered yellow lines, free mackerel, lost change in drains & the pie shop ovens on the breeze. There is a feeling of snow in the air...a cows knee from old Doni Matheson for they dug & using his cleaver as an expression of full-stop, he extends to me in Gaelic, the whole historical village heyday, & his youth in hard shoes, & I'm hurried along inside great vivacious swirls of laughing ghosts...of herring port clammer, salmon fishery finery & bustle, swept into my grandfathers days, when women had beards & men kept worms on Iniseer...sump oil for the soul boy. Sump oil for the soul.
We were taunting Kenny from the wheelhouse like. You've a long shadow boy, for such a short fella..are ye sure you're no wearing they wrong one today Ken? He stalled as if he had been driving an invisible wagon & looked back at us on the deck, examining his shadow as he spoke. Wha's wrang wi ma shadow lads? Well it's no that it's no wrang, it's just 18ft tall, mighty black n' sleek, & athletic looking aye...more an African warrior type o' chappie than a Sgitheanach. Aaaaye...well, it's they Jag-u-Are of shadows, all fast & so good lookin', I can chase masel faster than yooz can carry me there boy. His retort sounded almost triumphant. Well that's the problem there Ken, if ye get stapped by they police wi that shadow on ye they'll ken it's no yer own. He looked up & down his shadow again, right hand thoughtfully on his chin, left hand trying to go to the bar on it's own...Are the mainland police on they island?!? Aye...well...a cannea find they buttons & I'm no taking it aff in public...He paused motionless & silent on the harbour for a bit. Can ye tell easy it's no my own shadow Tata, does it show obvious like? Aye Ken, ye normal shadow is more shorter than this one, pale blue & they shape of a Woodbine...
With the Hut of Shadows beyond the hunter mast - you roll with an eye on the cave & the straits & if you're balanced & fast on your feet, you can run a jump reverse somersault clean off the highest yard-arm into the winter sea, clear over double-rafted trawlers below. It's an HSD - Health & Safety Dismount aye....well ok it's no a HSD but it's hell-of-a quicker, just don't take thee paint pot & spanners as well, cuase they clatter a bit on touchdown.
It went on for a while, & the winter light does great things for small men on the drink, & tall Struan girls on the shop alike. That's the harbour aye, & every year I'll attempt the winter wall sideways in one go for them, & every year they'll take bets & every year I'll end up cold & wet & they'll end up wealthy & laughing, but that's what goes on, inside the outside, where the huddle huddles, beyond the small world of big grades. I can't always be over at the Raasay climbing barn, training F9a crux circuits, moulding new replica holds while rain taps corrugate roof paradiddle to Raidió na Gaeltachta, & when I can't; I always seem to get the tallest masts to solo. Up there, you can feel the hips of the vessel, it's centre of movement & they always hand me that one, becuase it's grained into my character, to tilt when I should yield...bring a new storm. I took a wander after, with the wee digi thing, to find traces of those silent essential elements, stampeded over by the blind & bickering, the go fasters, the V & E & Font grade police, the bottomless wailers who use drilled gabbro holes for silver teeth, as trumpets to better elevate their own sound...& thus we are here at this evenings blog, a few photographs wealthier. The dog asleep, chin on my autumnal woolly feet, full bellied, safe on the slow tide & for the briefest moment, nobody dies alone, nothing is broken or put out at sea.
The 2007 Coire boulder & sport projects, the brazen Orkney lines with MacGill-Fhinnein, & with Evolv's help onside, won't so much be climbing, as organized bare knuckle fighting. So much like any year then, but with a label stuck on ma arse, which does nothing important.
Is math an sgàthan sùil caraide
At 10/16/2006 10:14 PM, 
John Hunterâ
At 10/19/2006 7:09 PM, ※Sgian Dubh ※â
I dunno matey, he must of thought this was a climbing forum aye.
Right enough, one of the reasons for the blog being here is to present some day to day of how life is around climbing for me, some blether, beyond the normal fantasy & often idiotic or cruel conjecture I've seen paraded through climbing forums, where it seems anyone who swims on the surface can be randomly shot at - badly. As a result, I never look at them now at all & like Jo & Cubby say, I'm just one in a long list of climbers coming under fire for..errr...going climbing. I tried to write things on the forums for a while, inbetween hords of god knows who trapped in postured & abusive cyclic rhetoric, but it was pointless, so I went away. It's best to work on the simple premise that, if it's really that important, if somebody needs information from you to help with some facts, or indeed, if they are in search of some facts, that said individual will phone or email you direct, rather than use a forum, since the agenda will be for finding pure information & not posturing for a retort. For that, no public arena is needed. How hard can that be? I'm hardly what you'd call elusive in the contactability stakes, but this year, it must have been as peaceful out in climbing forum world as it has been amongst the rocks working new hard lines, since not a controversial syllable has drifted into any crag, boulder, inbox or phoneline I frequent. I'd like to think they were all behaving, but then, I'd like to think all priests pray to god without porn under their beds, there is moral justification for every dirty bullet & assassination under the radar & nobody chews their own toenails to clean them when they think they're alone...
Climbing for me has always been 95% action performed in peace, -I use the term 'peace' relative to the fury of internal personal redpoint hell aye- Talking about it after is 5% a wheelchair for the brain beyond the experience of the event. How they turn this into negative bickering is beyond me...Anyway, I could go on as you know, but this a blog, a weblog, a personal journal online, soon to become a resource. It's also here so climbers can ask publically without being humiliated, about anything climbing related, should they need help or advice on sequence solving or technical stuff or approaches, tying a double fishermans...whatever...or want to meet up, & on occasion they use it. Some climbers like to ask outside of the public arena, & that said, my email is normally busy with climbers asking advice on this & that more than the blog comments. Unfortunately, there is only so much of your experience you can impart on others in a beneficial way through an online medium before it becomes nothing more than, -all the best intention & the right words but with no practical sequencing- which is why there are workshops dealing in physical contact with stone- & 'doing' in climbing is everything. -The loudest cow is no always they best milker aye- Simply, the blog is not here for bickering on, for banal gibes, or for some random punter called Hendo to score aligning points to impress whoever he happens to be brown-nosing this month, so I removed him. Get rid of the mouse & the squeeking stops also aye.
Well, pretty free in November, so that sounds good matey. Weather will hopefully be cold for the Coire although climbing on my left knee yesterday, drowned in anesthetic gel wasn't as inspirational as the day was funny & bright. Even got out-bouldered by Finn!...I reckon the fella steals into my place when I'm sparko & gives me a good kicking in my sleep to better advantage himself for morning. I feel like I've been in eternal bat hung knee locks at Red River, or bimbling up some Norwegian big-wall knee-width again way using the anterior cruciate ligament as a cows tail or been ground rag-doll into some leg snapping steep gneissian sea crack with Torrens, as he deftly threads thin wires overhead, laughing lop-sided with a merry squint above a cave of surf & screaming gulls, forging upward. Oh the joy of these past few weeks...Aye bring your mat, I don't mind pack-muling. We'll hit some highball verts that feel realistic inside the time & moment we are there & treat it like any other session. It's ok to just follow it like that...if it feels positive & you climb well...you do, & top banana to you. If you don't, you don't & you say 'close...but no banana', & enjoy it anyway. I've never torn into a climber for performing poorly, in any time frame or sense. Helping a Conquistador to conquist with more effect is about implimentation of positive observation not ruining their experiences with negatives. Oh the Coire...I have one particular blank that I can't get my head round. Well I can see the moves happen, I just can't quite figure the full hook-up. I'll defo have a serious scrap with that once you've got a sufficiently impressive dose of gabbro rash to take home. 8mtrs - totally vertical - brainless bampot hard, no holds bar a tiny brail ripple halfway, which is easier to feel, eyes closed, than it is to see, eyes open...hmmm... a fattened injured spotter wandering below would be a luxury item...
Did you go on a jolly over to the Andy Kirkpatrick Beyond Extremes lecture at Invershneckydoodle? I did my bit here, arsing round the islands like a loon wi a bunch of posters...
M points...muffin points? from they travelling bakery?
eh up lad, how goes it? what happened to the words of Hendo and that gal?
You wann sort a weekend for coming over? first one in Nov looks ok, im weak and fat, but can carry my mat just about.
What u think? otherwise Ill head to the 'coe for some M points