I Think Lucy's Having an Affair

No, scrub that. I am sure that Lucy is having an affair!

I have been working a lot lately and getting quite stressed out about my job. Spending a lot of time in such splendid cultural metropoli as Reading and Swindon (I have been to pretty much every small town in this country with my work and I think Reading and Swindon between them are joint winners of the 'towns with least character award'). 

I think this time away  has allowed Lucy time to put her adulterous plans into action. Just the other day I came home from a long day on the road and Lucy met me at the door. 

'Hi' she said mischievously.

'I have made you something nice for dinner and have tidied the whole house for when you get home'

This has never happened before and I was taken aback. Keen to retain the moral high-ground I made sure that I pointed out that she had forgotten to mop the kitchen floor. I am generous like that, I like to take the time out to help her undertaken her chores properly.

She has made my dinner no less than THREE times this week and has taken me out for a meal and has been nothing but sickeningly nice to me all week. What more evidence does a person need! Now I just need to catch her in the act.

This Friday she sent me an email while I was at work - asking me if I wanted to go climbing and to the gym over the weekend. She said if I wanted I could watch the football with my mates while she did some baking! Watch the football for christs sake! I haven't been allowed to watch football sine about 2003!

I have given everything to her. Supported her when she was short of money. Diligently pointed out where she could make improvements with her housework. Pointed out when she was putting on weight, despite the danger to my personal safety. The list of my sacrifices goes on and on. 

And she does this to me. Fobs me off with chocolate and beer while running around behind my back.

To add to it all, I am pretty sure that the people who have moved in next door are KGB.

VIP

Last night the rock-star took us to see the Noisettes in Sheffield. It was excellent.

They show was pretty damn energetic, with the lead singer bounding around and contorting her body into shapes in which I would have trouble just speaking, let alone singing. This included a death defying number performed leaning precariously over the balcony banisters holding on solely through the power of her dextrous ankles.

The show was doubly good because the Rock Star is a performing arts graduate (although he maintains that he dislikes chattering performing arts students 'darling') and as such one of his ex-course-mates is a backing singer in the band. This meant we got free entry, which is always good!

Added to this, we went backstage and met the band and various groupies before heading off to a side room in some bar that they had booked. I was a little disappointed by the lack of class A drugs and glamour models - but hey, you can't have everything...

Fear

On the fourth day of the mountaineering course, our guide thought we were doing pretty well (as we all have a bit of experience in rock climbing) and agreed to let us try one of the most famous winter climbing routes on Ben Nevis, called Tower Ridge. Andy, one of the guys on the course with me had been keen to do it right from the start.

We were joined by a second guide on the day, and being as Graham had retired on day two (due to a sprained ankle on the walk-out), we had three of us to two instructors.

We started early and ascended the side of Ben Nevis towards the start of the route where we roped up. I was on the end of a rope of three (our guide, The Nurse and myself) with Andy and the other instructor following behind. We donned crampons, harnesses, helmets, extra layers and armed ourselves with our ice axes. The weather was good and it was 9am, leaving us plenty of time to tackle the route.

The climbing was not too hard, though I wasn't fully used to jamming axes into cracks and putting my full weight on them and there were a couple of hard bits of climbing near the beginning. All in all we made pretty good ground up until about midday or so.

The View from the Bottom of the Second Climbing Pitch

The difficulty then came that we got stuck behind a really slow moving group of four and as there was no option to overtake on the route - we had to queue to climb the different sections behind them. We must have waited nearly two hours to complete a traverse and a climb up to the top of the 'little tower'. 

The traverse was scary - I had previously thought that I wasn't at all scared of heights up until that point. But with just a few crampon points separating me from a couple of hundred feet of drop below me - I was more than a little nervous. Here is a photo of the traverse courtesy of a photo stolen from the internet (spot the footprints):

Then it all started to get a little worse. The party in front of us held us up so much that our guides told us that we would have to walk down in the dark ... then they told us we would have to finish the climb in the dark. All in all - we climbed for over 3 hours in the dark!

Just Before We Crossed Tower Gap - The Nurse, and above that - our guide

The hardest point of the tower ridge route comes near the end. Basically you have to cross an extremely narrow, extremely exposed walkway into a hole known as the 'Tower Gap', before climbing out up to the top.

The issue here is that I was roped to the back of a group of three, so I couldn't move forwards until The Nurse in front of me was able to move up enough to pull the rope tight. The Nurse spent a total of 10 minutes navigating the Tower Gap whilst I stood with my feet together and my knees shaking on the narrow walkway ... in the dark. Here is a picture of the walkway in the light that I managed to steal:

Although I was roped in and safe - the fear was pretty much building in me from here. Next I had to climb down into the gap and back out of the other side. It would have been a tricky climb in the summer with a pair of climbing boots and the sun-shining. In the dark - it was much worse. Especially seeing as just as I was climbing into the hole - my head torch broke! 

I kept having to take my gloves off (which were essentially ice-balls by this point) to press the button to get the torch to work again and as soon as I put them back on again, the torch would switch off.

I swore ... lots. At one point the head torch went off as I was straddling the gap with one foot either side and one glove half on trying to hook my axe onto a piece of rock quite far above my head. I can honestly say thats the most scared I have ever been. I cacked myself.

I finished the climb short roped to the nurse (about 1m behind him) so that I could make use of his head-torch light) and we walked 2 hours bac down to the car - to get there for about ten o'clock.

It was a brilliant experience though. While I was climbing, all I was thinking was 'mountaineering is crap!', but afterwards - the feeling was pretty great.

A Hughes in Australia

I am just about to set off up to Scotland for the winter mountaineering course I have been harping on about. I have various kinds of implements for bashing holes in the ground, a zillion different types of 'warm layer' and took a wicked trip to the supermarket in which I tried to buy all of the food that had the highest calorie count per gram I could find!

Anyway the upshot of this is that I wont be blogging for a while until I return (hopefuly with some good photos). So in the meantime I leave you with the third video installment of 'Pillock Conquors the World'. For parts 1 and 2 see here and here.

The Misadventures of Lucky 'Little Bugger' Hughes - The Unfortunate Childhood Dog

I clearly remember being around 10 years old and sitting in the car as my mum drove me up South Lane. 

I asked 'can I have a guinea pig for my birthday?' 

She replied 'would you rather have a dog?'. 

This memory has obviously stuck with me because it was one of the most exciting surprises of my entire childhood. Offering a small child the option of a dog over a guinea pig is a bit like serving up a lobster dish when a visitor asks for a digestive biscuit to dunk in their tea.

Obviously at the time I didn't realise that this was a con job. My parents were planning on replacing the family dog 'Abby' anyway, regardless of my annual birthday plea. It didn't really matter either way to me.

So, off we went to the dog pound in Huddersfield one weekend around my birthday. I remember this being a little traumatic - looking at all of the dogs lined up in cages looking folorn. 

Most distressing of all were the little pieces of paper attached to the cages with the termination dates of the poor creatures.

One dog in particular, was very energetic. We were allowed in to see him and he immediately jumped up at us and ran in circles around my legs. He was a little black mongrel with quite a pretty face, but the most unfortunate body you have ever seen!

His head was about a foot off the ground and connected to these awkward looking bowed front legs. He had a long body and a bug bushy (frantically wagging) tail which arched almost in a full circle so that it rested on his back. They told me he was six months old. 

To this day I have no real clue what breeds were in him, but whatever he was - it didn't look natural.

I think this was pretty much the first dog that we saw, and as we were leaving his cage thing, I turned and looked at his little piece of paper. It said he only had until the Monday after the weekend before he was to be terminated.

'I want that one' I exclaimed stubbornly. My mum knew what I was up to. 

'Are you sure you really want that one, and are not just saying you do because of what it says on the label?'

'No I definitely want that one' I protested.

And thats the one that we got. Of course, I did choose him because of the imminent date of his 'elimination', but thats all water under the bridge now. I named him 'Lucky' (oh how I rued that name in later years) in light of his lucky escape.

I don't really know whether he was lucky or unfortunate throughout his life, but he certainly was energetic and had some eventful times. Within one week of getting him I contributed to him breaking his hind leg at the tennis club by pulling his lead too hard and sending him into a river where he landed on a rock. I can clearly remember his sad little face now. He licked by hand while my friends ran for help. He was a good friend for a boy to have.

He bore a metal pin in his leg which gave him a limp to the end of his days. Not that it really slowed him down. In fact the limp was probably exacerbated by the number of near misses (and hits!) he took from cars in the street...

....for Lucky was pretty much un-trainable...

...or to be more precise, he was untrained. I was never sure whether it was possible to train him, as to be honest as a 10 year old boy - I couldn't be bothered anyway.

He would escape out of the door (and even out of the cat flap before my dad blocked it up) as soon as there was any hint of it opening. And he would roam the streets of Holmfirth for hours looking for adventure before returning covered in mud or some other foul substance (I remember him falling in a pit full of slurry once).

We would get calls from people we knew around the surrounding areas telling us that they had sighted him, and off my dad would go to pick him up. He used to go to The Artist's house all the time when he found out where he lived.

I am pretty sure that he had a network of friends across the town who he would go and play with (probably within about a 1 mile radius), but who would be just as unsuccessful at catching him as we were.

He was also hated by a fair few people in the area. One time he ran into a garden which happened to be inhabited by one of our classmates and picked up their family rabbit. I am not sure he meant to kill it - rather just play with it. 

But kill it he did. And my classmate declared a blood feud on the poor little bugger. But he never caught little Lucky. He was too fast, his little metal enhanced leg going like the clappers as he played the 'keep away from people' game.

Another time he followed my sister onto a bus and she had to pretend that he didn't belong to us to save embarrassment as the driver shooed him off. These events happened regularly. It got pretty bad, and I do remember disowning him in the street myself a few times. 

Particularly when asked 'is that your dog? I see it around all the time?' I didn't like walking him on a lead, purely in case he was recognised and some piece of damage could be traced back to me.

I loved that dog though. In his older year he became less excitable and went to live with my dad as I left for university. He would sit on my dad's workshop floor and wouldn't stray more than 20 metres away from his side. He was probably a bit more adorable then, and certainly easier to get along with. I was quite upset when he died 4 or so years ago.

He still did have the odd little adventure in his teen years. Every once in a while he would disappear off for a few hours and my dad would find him at one of his old haunts near our old house (3 miles away).... 

Subjects I Dont Usually Talk About

I got some bad news over the weekend. A girl that used to hang around in our ‘gang’ in college died of bowel cancer last week. I only found out on facebook having lost contact with her pretty much during my university years about 10 years ago. She was only 28 years old.

When I was in college we spend an inordinately large amount of time hanging around in the kind of common room area, where there was a couple of tables pretty much devoted to those students that came from my highschool. We played a lot of cards during free period, breaks and lunchtimes and I dodged my history teacher whose class I had more than likely skived that morning (she was gutted that I still managed a B in History A-level despite my attendance record).

There was a group of guys I hung out with, most of whom I am still best friends with today, other of which I have lost touch with over the years . We affiliated ourselves with a group of girls because of the mutual benefit of appearing less socially awkward by having friends of the opposite sex. One of my friends still goes out with one of those girls 10 years later.

One thing we would do was to meet up in town for our regular jaunts to either Visage or Beyond Beach Babylon or whatever other nightclub happened to be letting in underage drinkers. In those days I used to take £20 out with me and get thoroughly sloshed on Caffreys (it doesn’t taste like proper beer) and Southern Comfort (it doesn’t taste like proper spirits) in the Welly and Flares and still be able to pay for my club entry and a taxi ride home.

This particular girl was one of the group I hung about in. She was one of the (if not THE) friendliest and smiliest people I ever knew. The type that are actually 100% nice. You know them, there aren’t that many around.

She was the kind of person who would be extremely upset if she ever found out that she had offended someone, and would be completely incapable of ever bitching about anyone behind their back (there are very few women who fit in that bracket). She always made me smile whenever I spoke with her.

She was also a little more troubled than your average teenager (not that you would know if when you first met her). She had a form of manic depression which only really seemed to manifest itself in public at times when she had alcohol. Even a bit of alcohol. She would get upset and drunk really quickly. I forget how many times we must have carried her out of places, comforted her, bought her coke and told her it was vodka and coke, defended her from over-aggressive revellers or bouncers.

She wouldn’t remember what had happened the next day and would see alcohol as her only escape (causing her to drink more).

This problem led her on to incidents which I am not going to go into. She ever showed evidence of this to anyone during her everyday life. She was polite, pretty, fun to be around, well loved.

I noticed she had about 280 friends on facebook – I don’t think I know 280 people! It just goes to show the impact she had on the world. I scrolled back through her profile and saw that she was still posting humorous updated about losing her phone in the laundry, even when she was in hospital.

Her premature death shook me a little. Out of the 30 or 40 people I counted as my acquaintances and friends at college, she is the third to have died. One through a car accident and two through cancer. All of them people who I admired in some way. Added to that, my housemate Mark who helped bring Lucy and I together also passed away prematurely.

But I knew this girl a little better than the others and it all seems a little more unfair due to the sadness I know she had during her life.