A New Life for Old… (Article First Published on UKClimbing.com)

The school bus door hissed shut and the belching vehicle set off, as did lead feet stomping up the path home to another normal evening after school. My sisters sat in stony silence, hollowed eyed in the garden, whilst my Grandmother ushered me inside the house. Hackles rose, skin tightened and I was sat down opposite my father.

The hexagonal was made from a plumber's pipe, the creator of the device assuring me that it was bomber, I didn't like the sound of that, but it fitted in the dog–leg fissure and that was all that mattered, after all I wasn't going to fall. I felt deadskin fall away as I entered this vertical half world that gave new meaning to an adolescence life, formerly full of bullshit and meaningless banter between pubescent youth.

I'd passed this scruffy quarry hundreds of times and never thought any significance to it as a young man struggling to be all that one's parents wants them to be. That didn't matter as I crudely jammed my way up this drainpipe, in the smooth sandy rock face. The arse had fallen out of all that should be good, honest and striving to attain as the school motto went.

Father tried his best to explain, but I was numb before I'd sat down, a feeling only transpired by this, a desire to get away, go and be free.

Like the unexpected news one gets, like the bullet that hits you when you least expect, complacency threw a curve ball once again after I fucked up. A friend placement ripped, it was my first time trying placing the device and I knew it was shit.

I sat in the harness after the fall. I felt different, released, scared, tired and desperate to suceed.

I didn't cry, that came 15 years later, but the body with the brain shook before I knew what had hit me. The proportion of blame lay with no one and that above all was what hurt, distrusting, questionable and unfinished.

I got back on the dusty in-cuts, thoughts of my release now turning to fighting the hurt I should be feeling. While I had seen an ending of my family's stability and parenthood as I knew it, I was in a place I couldn't feel, move or go anywhere, let alone somewhere.

I could only think of me. My parents will still be that, my parents and this folly of mind will only be a torture that would lay heavy on the soul.

I floated past confident crack lines and found a tree that welcomed me in my crisis, a set of ropes and metalwork a saving grace.

I was unsure of who I was and who I was meant to be. The sun threw waves of light over the quarry as I brought up giggling Dan. I look at my hands, brush back my ponytail, and realise there's a new person in town.

A few miles trod later and my dear mother is waiting with my supper. Egg and Chips never tasted so good.