Category Archives: biography

Snowdon Horseshoe by night

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13-14/7/95 Hill walking in the dark

J. Parkinson and I, at this point in time busy people working for a living and raising kids, wanted to get away hillwalking, but we found that the time could not so easily be spared. After our successful overnight assault on Nevis of the previous year, we thought we might resolve this conundrum (and spend less time away) by the simple expedient of doing some classic hill-walking overnight. On this occasion we did the Snowdon Horseshoe; on another, we made a noteworthy attempt on Idwal Skyline, and bailed after rather too long spent on Tryfan – of which more later.

We left Derby at 7.35pm. We parked at Pen-y-pass and started up the PYG track at 11.30pm. The drive in along the coast road had taken 2 hrs 40 minutes. There was some moonlight on the climb up to Crib Goch. We had of course deliberately chosen a clear night as near as was practical to full moon. I walked in up the PYG track, and out along the Miner’s Track, in trainers, only using big boots for the actual route itself.

Unfortunately the moon disappeared behind clouds and our traverse of Crib Goch was accomplished in darkness without benefit of moonlight. It was windy; both of us found Crib Goch technically very demanding in the dark. Scary, in fact.

Up and over Crib-y-ddysgl, up the railway and onto the summit, which lost it’s cloud cap only while we were there, about 3a.m. We found that route-finding on the ridge was impossible by torchlight; there was no way of looking ahead. The light of dawn started to appear as we crossed from Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa) to Y Lliwedd. As we descended from Y Lliwedd, there was beautiful, transcendent morning light. We were back at Pen-y-pass at 6.40am. Seven hours on the hill.

On another occasion – I can’t find any paper notes for this but I remember doing it – we decided on an attempt on Idwal Skyline in the dark. We picked a moonlit night of course, and set off from Derby, arrived in Snowdonia, parked up at Milestone Buttress, and set off up the North Ridge of Tryfan.

The North Ridge…what we hadn’t bargained for, what we had not implicitly understood, was some basic astronomy. The moon shines from the same direction, more or less, as the sun. It is never found in the north in the Northern hemisphere. I ought have known this, having worked at or near the equator and seen the rather odd spectacle of the moon being DIRECTLY overhead – something you’ll never see the UK. Ever tried climbing the North Ridge of Tryfan in the dark? Don’t. A fit party might climb the North Ridge from the road to the summit in slightly over an hour. I’ve done it many times, summer and winter, in between 70 and 90 minutes. It took us three hours. That was a salutory lesson. Wisely we opted not to climb Bristly Ridge. We descended to Bwlch Tryfan and from there straight back down to the road.

The Sharp Edge of Blencathra

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Here are a number of accounts of climbing the Sharp Edge of Blencathra, over thirty years. The first, in the mid-1980’s, and most recently in 2015.

The Sharp Edge of Blencathra - Dave Massey Photography https://davemassey.photography
This wonderful modern (2022) photograph of the Sharp Edge of Blencathra is courtesy of Dave Massey Photography https://davemassey.photography (permission to reproduce, applied for)

25/7/85

From Castlerigg into Keswick. Then we tramped out, eventually hitting the disused railway. It was a hot, hazy, blue sky kind of day. Under the big A66 bridge, and some of the old river bridges had a very Canadian feel to them. Splendid scenery. We left the old railway and crossed several fields to a road, which we followed down into a ravine. We stopped in the shade by the babbling brook, a lovely spot encouraging lassitude, but eventually we had to push on.

Up the hillside as the sun beat down on us. This is your Mousthwaite Combe. We laboured up a grassy path up onto the shoulder, which offered amazing views. FM radio reception was quite remarkable – we were listening to Q102 Dublin on our walkmans – in stereo. We continued onto the summit, not taking the route via Sharp Edge on this occasion. We dropped back down to the road arriving at the Salutation Inn in Threlkeld for an excellent bar meal. From there after a pleasant drink, we walked back to Castlerigg in the gloaming.

13/10/85

A large party of ten for a mass ascent of Blencathra! From the inn we moved along a road and struck left into a short valley, across the headwall of which, could be seen our path, forming a diagonal upwards. Mousthwaite Combe. At the top, we found ourselves on a broad whale-back, with a deep valley below. In it, the gloriously Tolkienesque River Glenderamackin. [Tolkienesque to me that is, not to the younger fellow who wrote this account in 1985; he knew nothing of Tolkien when he was 20.]

Along the left side of this valley, before climbing steeply up into the corrie of Scales Tarn. This is really impressive rock scenery, particularly Sharp Edge. One member of our party, somewhat afraid of heights and exposure, went up the screes to the summit. The rest of us went up Sharp Edge, with K. and R. at the front, and myself and T. J Walmsley shepherding one or two less experienced walkers in the rear.

It was my first time here on what became and what remains probably my favourite route. I found it passably sharp, suitably impressive and very exposed, but too short. It looks a lot worse than it is from a long way off. When you think of the great ridge walks in the British Isles, the Sharp Edge of Blencathra is by no means least among them, though is one of the shorter routes, the crux of it being only a hundred yards long. Even Crib Goch is only a few hundred yards of really sharp rock ridge mixed in with a mile or so of reasonably narrow ridge walking. For sustained narrow rock edge work you have to go to the Aonach Eagach above Glen Coe, which is miles long. But that’s not passable in winter conditions for walkers.

The route lies up over some gendarmes and up onto the summit where we had lunch. To the north there are many kilometres of wild moorland, but not particularly exciting hill country. At the top, it started to mist up. Blencathra has little to recommend it but Sharp Edge, and the descent was tedious. This being a Sunday, it had to be a short day – 4 hours on the hill. But satisfying for all that.

11/2/89

On a windy day, myself and J. Parkinson walked into Blencathra through low cloud. There was a fair amount of snow visible in the corrie of Scales Tarn. Sharp Edge itself was in cloud and the rock was exceptionally greasy to the fingers and to the boots. There was little snow on the ridge itself, but a fair bit on the face at the end.

We did not reach the summit: My friend noted that he was in his element roofing, sitting on the crown of a house in the urban environment, and had no problem with heights, but the conditions here put us both out of our element. The rock cold and greasy, we withdrew safely.

Always know when to turn back. A key lesson for the mountaineer, learned here at no cost. I’ve been fortunate over many years to learn some important lessons in mountaincraft at very, very modest cost.

9/1/91

Myself and R.C.E Ball, in heavy standing snow but clearing weather, climbed up into Mousthwaite Combe. It was windy; spindrift was troublesome to us the whole day. The path round to Scales Tarn was barely visible under the snow. In places, folds in the land caused very deep snowdrifts to form, hindering our progress considerably.

We got into the Scales Tarn corrie about 1.30pm. Scales Tarn itself was frozen. The main part of Sharp Edge was great sport, if spoiled somewhat by constant spindrift storms. There was hard frozen snow from previous falls, as well as fresh snow. The crest up to the summit was technically very difficult in winter conditions, as we neither of us were carrying ice axes or crampons. An axe would have been a great help. The snow was very hard, the rocks iced over to eliminate all handholds, and footholds were hard to make.

The summit plateau was lethal verglas. We got up and off quickly but with considerable difficulty, via Scales Fell, and good glissading (or bumslides in this case) down to Mousthwaite Combe. We were the first party on the hill after heavy snow.

The previous day, 8/1/91, we’d taken a short stroll from our camp at Braithwaite, up Stile End to Overside (1863′), before retreating before a blizzard in late afternoon. A warming up stroll terminated abruptly by a heavy snowstorm.

10/3/92

We were on the hill (that is, into Mousthwaite Combe) by 12.15pm. We arrived in the Scales Tarn corrie around an hour later. There was an attack of hail as we climbed up to Sharp Edge. The conditions were excellent. Up on the top of Blencathra we could see Styhead Tarn glinting in the distance. We detoured around for extra hill-walking – Blencathra is a short route. However, the weather worsened and a snow squall forced us to shelter. So we came down and were off the hill by 4p.m.

I think this is the time we went to camp at Castlerigg, but decided to go to a B&B in Keswick instead. I recall getting wet even opening the car door, at the campsite up at Castlerigg, and we thought, “No.”

26/6/15

We drove through to Scales and set off up Blencathra at about 2pm, in good weather.

As we got into the corrie of Scales Tarn, the weather broke big time, and our scramble up Sharp Edge was lethal. Conditions were very greasy and slippery underfoot. The mist was down, and for a time it rained quite heavily. My young colleague had never been here and struggled with confidence. We got up Sharp Edge only after long meditation and careful consideration. In any case, to withdraw from Sharp Edge in those conditions would have been more hazardous than going on. An ascent of the Sharp Edge of Blencathra is no mean achievement in any conditions.

So, on and up we went, and we were soon finished. We were further encouraged by three friendly men making their way slowly up the ridge behind us with much talk and laughter. After the summit we descended through pleasant afternoon sunshine to the car and drove directly to Honister Hause YHA. We checked in and had the cup of tea we as Englishmen had been desiring for some time. I saw that Youth Hostels are now licensed. Supper was at the Fish Hotel in Buttermere, taken outside, on a very clear and pleasant evening.

Thirty years of long-haul flying

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Here’s a few words on flying after more than thirty years being paid to go on aircraft at someone else’s expense, both at the front and at the back of the bus. I worked for 17 years all over the world as field crew in marine seismic survey, and have worked for the last 18 years for a maritime trade association – again, all over the world. I’m on the way to Singapore and have just boarded the aircraft for the first leg – a Gulf Air 787 Dreamliner bound for Bahrain. On this occasion I am at the front of the bus, in seat 2A, a window seat. There is effectively infinite legroom. Interesting to see that the aisle seat has much less leg room, in order to leave space for the window seat customer to squeeze into their seat.

A row of Airbus A380’s at DXB (Dubai)

The first aircraft I ever went in was a British Airways Hawker Siddeley 748 “Vanguard” from Aberdeen to Birmingham in May 1988. My first long-haul flight was in February 1989. We flew in a UTA 747 combi, from Brazzaville in the Congo, to Paris, stopping along the way in Doula and Marseille. We boarded the aircraft up steps from the apron – no jetway. Because De Gaulle was fog-bound, we were four hours on the tarmac at Marseille, with no refreshments or anything. From Brazzaville to Paris took 12 hours. You can read more about that trip here: https://plateroom28.blog/2020/05/31/marine-seismic-in-the-tropics-1989/.

Hawker Siddeley 748 (image: Wikipedia commons)

The route I’ve flown most often is probably London to Houston, generally Gatwick, generally Continental Airlines. In the five years between 2000 and finishing offshore in Autumn 2004, I crossed the Atlantic something like fifty times, in Economy. I say that – it was actually 49 times. When my dad died the company flew me back home at less than 24 hours notice, from where we were working offshore Trinidad, with British West Indian Airways.

There have been some standouts over the years, though I’ve never been involved in any airline mishaps or near-misses. I know people who have. I know a guy who missed a flight that ran off the end of the runway at JFK and ended up in the water. I know someone who told me he was in a KLM DC-10 when all three engines spooled down mid-flight. I know someone whose dad was stuck in traffic and missed Air India flight 182 from Canada to London, that crashed with total loss of life in 1985.

British Airways flight 74 from Lagos to Gatwick was always a favourite in the mid-1990’s. I’m no fan of BA today and avoid flying long-haul with them, but back then, getting safely onboard that flight could make you start singing the national anthem. As the Lonely Planet guide of the time said, “every flight out of Lagos is like the last flight out of Saigon”…

I once flew in an Alitalia A310 Airbus from Dakar to Rome and the inflight meal was still half-frozen. The steward just looked blankly at me when I complained, and moved to the next customer. A remarkable and almost Soviet disinterest in the customer which sticks in my mind over thirty years later. I’d still avoid Alitalia to this day if I could. I once flew from Rio to Europe with VARIG – the national carrier of that proud nation Brazil…and was served instant coffee. You couldn’t make it up!

I flew from Addis Ababa to Heathrow with Ethiopian Airways. Sat in departures, a fellow turned to me and said, “Is this your first time?” I replied that I’d been on many aeroplanes in my time. He said, “No – I mean with Ethiopian Airways”.

“Are you scared?” he asked. “No”, I replied.

“Well you should be”, he replied, “I’m an aircraft engineer and I’ve seen their maintenance”.

Charming! For political reasons the aircraft could not overfly the Sudan and detoured up the Red Sea, and had to refuel in Athens. Ten hours from East Africa to Heathrow.

I once flew first class from KL to Amsterdam with Malaysian Airlines. More champagne, Mr Nick? Well seeing as you’re asking…That came about because my employer’s travel agency, organising an already heavily delayed crew change out of Songkhla in Thailand, messed up the flights for two of us. The local agent told us that there were no flights from Thailand to London. I said, you’re not thinking deeply enough: think Southeast Asia to Europe, not Bangkok to Heathrow. They came back with two tickets from KL to Amsterdam. One of them was first class at a cost of $5000. I said to the travel agent – just do it!! I didn’t actually lose my job over it, but the vessel manager arranged for me to be immediately “posted” elsewhere to a less salubrious role. Life-changing, but I neither apologised nor ever regretted it. The other guy messed up was a German fellow called Christof. He said, “you can’t treat field crew like slaves” and he was quite right. The principle still applies. That trip was fun: we had to take taxi from Songkhla in Thailand, across the border to Alor Setar in Malaysia. I was sat in the little provincial aerodrome at Alor Setar, waiting for the domestic flight up to KL in an hour and fifteen minutes. In the departure lounge it became very quiet all of a sudden…where was everyone? I realised at the last moment that there was a one-hour time difference between the two countries. Whoops!! I made that flight with minutes to spare.

On a BA leg from ABD to LHR I was upgraded from business class to first class. That was OK although the first class experience with BA is probably about on a level with the business class experience with a front-rank airline like Emirates or Cathay Pacific.

We once took a leg from Buenos Aires in Argentina to some provincial airfield in Tierra del Fuego, in what was effectively the Argentine equivalent of Airforce One. A remarkable and never to be forgotten luxury experience. Others have had to fly for four hours from Puntas Arenas to Port Stanley in a twin Otter with no lavatories – we get “Air Force One”.

The aircraft have changed. The ground-breaking Boeing Triple-7 came out in 1995, with its twin engines rather than four, and extensive use of composite materials in the body. We’ve seen the 400-series jumbo jet with the extended bubble. Upstairs in a 747 was always a special, rather intimate experience for a wide-bodied aircraft. And then of course the mighty double-decker A380. There’s nothing on earth like those lumbering monsters. I’ve often flown into Gatwick on A380’s. On one occasion, I made the mistake of selecting the forward-looking camera to my display screen. Let me tell you, an Airbus A380 needs EVERY SINGLE INCH of that runway to land safely. When the aircraft turned to taxi after landing, all I could see on the screen was green Sussex grass…

An airbus A380

In all those years I never missed a flight because of my own error. But other people’s errors? Well! In the early nineties some of us made a flight from Arlanda (Stockholm) to Heathrow only because there was an “air conditioning fault” on the aircraft. In 1993 I was flown by my employer from Manchester to Gatwick, taking the 10.30a.m flight. It was heavily delayed. Once aboard, I checked my car park ticket stub, and saw that I’d parked the car at 9.48a.m…that would be completely impossible in the post-911 world. That one WAS my mistake, misjudging the traffic driving into Manchester airport. In 1997 an idiot member of the opposite crew overslept in a hotel and quite deliberately left his phone off the hook, delaying a crew change flight from Hurgarda to Cairo. We caught the onward flight from Cairo to Heathrow ONLY because our agent had an uncle who was a Colonel. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Several of us once made a flight from Mexico City to Paris, after it had closed, because the check-in lady was in a good mood and was attracted to one of my colleagues. In 2015 two of us flew from Luanda to Johannesburg, on a plane delayed by four hours. We raced through O.R Tambo International to the gate for the ongoing leg to Heathrow, to see the BA 747 just being pushed back from the gate. So close!! Only after considerable difficulties with my employer’s travel agent did I secure an economy class passage from Johannesburg to Schiphol with KLM.

Air travel: it’s been a fun journey…or has it? More of a love/hate relationship. I’m 194cm tall. Whilst I enjoy meeting people and visiting faraway places as much as the next person, I have to say that if you told me that I’d just been on the last long-haul flight of my life, I don’t think I’d be crying into my beer for more than about thirty seconds.

Idwal Skyline, summer

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“If it stops raining by eleven, we’re going mountaineering” I said, at about 9.30a.m. My colleague just grunted in reply, his eyes on his book. The rain pattered lightly on the tent; the clouds looked oppressive. Eventually he deigned to put his book aside and get ready, and we set off around 10.30a.m. Measured steps along an old track saw us at the base of Tryfan, my dear friend having tried without success to charm a lone young lady from Southampton who we met along the way. I grinned inwardly and steamed upwards over the heather. It was 11a.m. The lower slopes, heather and grass, give way to bands of cliffs up which we eagerly scrambled. The A5 soon shrank to matchbox car proportions, a thin line winding along the lake.

Eventually the rock proper begins. I clambered onwards, far ahead of my friend who chose to take his time, savouring the delights of scrambling up the best mountain in Wales. Tryfan never fails to delight the scrambler or casual climber – a veritable delight of routes up good, rough grey rock. Quickly I gained height, choosing, as far as possible, the testing bits rather than the worn pathways. The summit of Tryfan is rarely visible whilst on the north ridge, as the ridge is stepped into terraces. Grey towers up ahead are the tantalising target. The cross-cutting clefts – one of them called “Heather Terrace” are one of the few places where everyone follows the same path. I got to the summit in 77 minutes – a personal best for Tryfan. My companion arrived, at a more leisurely pace, almost half an hour later. He polished off my remaining orange and set the food-consumption rate for the rest of the day.

We continued, trying our best to down-climb rather than walk, down to Bwlch Tryfan where my companion insisted we stop for lunch. I gave in graciously and we sat quietly eating lunch at the col. Then, quivering in anticipation almost, for the afternoon’s work, we arrived at the foot of Bristly Ridge. We climbed and climbed, enjoying ourselves. This section was most enjoyable – an almost endless progression of easy rock that grew sadly easier as we approached the summit. Behind us, Tryfan was a tooth. From the sun-drenched summit of Gylder Fach, though, it looks positively diminutive. Strange shards of slate stand up in clusters on the summit, giving it a rather fantastic look, as if in a scene from “The never-ending story” or other such film.

Out in front again, I continued along to Glyder Fawr in warm sunshine, seeing Snowdon dark on the left, and the Nameless Cwm on the right. Arriving on the summit, we met again with the young lady from Southampton, who complained of a painful knee, and continued downhill in her company, ostensibly helping her. My potential philanderer of a close friend and climbing companion abandoned his position as obliging gent as soon as it was clear she was quite happy on her own; he stampeded off down the screes at a suicidal rate. I went downhill a little slower, particularly after falling on my a**e at one point. At the bottom he gazed wistfully up at the slopes, to the girl with the painful knee, and we continued.

Up Y Garn, where there were a few specks of rain out of nowhere, it seemed. Oddly it’s always cold and windy on Y Garn. Today was no exception. We sat at the top, looking down the slopes into Cwm Idwal, noticing the grey clouds swirling over Glyder Fach at 3200′, whilst the Carneddau on the other side of the Ogwen valley, remained clear of cloud at 3400′ and higher. The last movement of the Idwal Skyline is down the sharp arete above Cym Clyd, which is again as on the Glyders, punctuated by sharp upstanding slates. A wise place to walk with your hands out of your pockets. We arrived at Idwal Cottage well satisfied, at about 6pm. Chips and steak pie at Idwal Cottage, made us feel brighter by far, and deeply content, we tramped back along the A5 to our tent on the far side of Tryfan.

David

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Samuel said “The Lord sees not as a man sees: the Lord looks on the heart” 1 Sam.16:7

When he was anointed as a youth, David was a shepherd boy of good family, the youngest of eight sons. He “had beautiful eyes and was handsome” (16:12). As a shepherd he fought lions and bears to defend his father’s sheep (17:36) and he must have had plenty of time for prayer and for lute practice. Samuel the prophet risked his life anointing David. The Spirit of God was upon David from the moment he was anointed (16:13). As a youth David then worked for Saul as a court musician. Then there was the matter of the encounter with Goliath (ch. 17). After that, of course, David’s stock at court rose considerably. He was able to marry the king’s daughter Michal. He became close friends with the kings son Jonathan. And everywhere David went, in everything he did, he met with success. This was because God was with him (18:14). Saul became jealous, even as David became more and more esteemed by the people (18:16). They fell out and Saul tried to kill David several times (18:11, 19:1).

David fled, aided by his close friend Jonathan. He became the leader of a band of rebels and adventurers (22:1). He sent his parents into exile in Moab to protect them (22:3). David prayed to, and enquired of, the Lord (23:4 etc). Saul’s attempts to kill him continued, interrupted by war with the Philistines.  But in all of this conflict, David was careful never to let Saul be harmed or raise a hand against Saul.

Eventually he could take it no longer and fled to work for one of the kings of the Philistines (chapter 27.) But war broke out again between Israel and the Philistines. The Philistine generals didn’t trust David at all and sent him away (29:9).  David and his band trudged back to their base at Ziklag, but when they got there, they found it burnt and raided by desert raiders, and their families kidnapped (30:1). David was at rock bottom here. He was “greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him…but he strengthened himself in the Lord his God.” (30:6). His prayers were answered in full. They recovered their families and property, and even got loads of plunder from the raiders. (30:18-19).

Meanwhile, in the war with the Philistines, King Saul and his son Jonathan were killed in battle. You might think David would rejoice at this, as his enemy was finally dead. But no – they mourned deeply (2 Sam. 1:11). David sang: “The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty fallen!” 2 Sam. 1:19

After Saul’s death, David became king over the Tribe of Judah, based at Hebron, for seven years. During this time there was civil war between his party and that of Saul. Abner, the leading politician of Saul’s party, defects to David, and delivers the other tribes into his hands. Three of David’s nephews – the sons of his sister Zeruiah – are introduced to us. David’s complex and stormy relationship with them persists to his deathbed – and theirs. Abner kills one of them, and in return, the two remaining brothers kill Abner. But David is astute: he positions himself well, carefully avoiding getting the blame for this killing, and he remains popular with the people. David is diplomatic and sure-footed, and sometimes acts in a counter-cultural way to do what he sees as right. He was crowned king over all Israel aged 37, and reigned for 33 years.

His first act as king of Israel was to attack and win the fortress of the Jebusites, the city called Jerusalem. He lived in it subsequently and it became known as the “City of David” (5:9). God was with David (5:10). He had military success, and became more and more powerful.

His second act was to bring the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem. Initially, he acted impetuously, and he did not do it God’s way. A man died as a result (6:7). But, David learned the lesson: doing it God’s way is costly. (6:13). He worshipped with all his heart, mind, soul and body. If you were to read just ONE chapter about God, about David, and about what we can learn from his life, it should be 2 Samuel 6.

He decided to build a temple, and it was made clear to him that he should not do so – it would be for his son after him, to do that. But God made a covenant with David, that his kingdom, his house, would endure for ever. This is why Jesus is sometimes referred to as the “Son of David”, as he fulfils this promise.

David went from strength to strength (8) – everything he turned his hand to went well. Then came the matter of Bathsheba. Nathan the prophet was told by God what had happened, and brought God’s terrible punishment down on David’s family.  But the Lord took away his sin. (11:13). Later David showed his remarkable ability to change his heart and mind – to repent, in effect – that is in my view a key to his being a “man after God’s own heart”. (11:15-23).

David for all his greatness as a warrior-king, statesman etc, was no father. His sons were a mess; spoilt and arrogant sons of privilege. His beautiful son Absalom killed one of his own brothers, and later conspired against his own father. David had to flee for his life. Even then David could see no wrong in him and mourned when his enemy, his son, was killed – stabbed when he was caught in a tree by his long hair. His prime minister, his very able nephew Joab, told the mournful king to put his house in order, wash his face, and face the people – and again, David repented and moved forward.

Things started to fall apart: there was rebellion after rebellion. There was famine, and endless war with the Philistines – God’s promise to David that blood would follow him after the matter of Bathsheba, was coming true. But in the midst of all this, a startling song of praise in chapter 22 (which is also Psalm 18). David was a man of contradictions.

One of the last things David did was to buy a threshing floor, with his own money (24:24) in order to build an altar. It was a significant threshing floor, because on that very site, David’s son Solomon built the Temple.

David’s life and greatness dribbled away into old age. His final act was to install his son Solomon (rather than another of his sons) on the throne, as a shrewd means to avoid more civil war. On his deathbed, he encouraged Solomon to exact revenge over Joab, his nephew. (1 Kings 1:5-6). But in spite of all that…

God testified concerning David: ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.’ Acts 13:22

Seismic survey in the North Sea, 1989

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Starting work at midnight, everyone piles into the instrument room at the absolute last possible minute. I’ve been on crews where you start work at 11.35 and your oppo leaves exactly at midday or midnight. On this crew, it was the other way round – you start work exactly at just before 12, and your oppos leave about 12.25 or so, earlier if possible. It doesn’t matter which you do – so long as everyone does the same thing.

We’re in a long line change. The first thing we learn is that all the starboard guns are on deck for repairs and the gun mechanics need a hand. Us two assistant observers head for the gun deck on the instant, followed later by the Observer, once the handover is complete. There are several problems. A supporting U bolt needs replacing and welding into place. One gun has a water leak in the umbilical line. Another gun needs it’s actuator replacing. This last we can do; it’s just heavy work with spanners. All three observers and all three gun mechanics work hard for a while, and eventually all the tasks are completed. The guns are launched at the last minute – only just in time as the survey line starts.

We shoot the survey line; it is mostly uneventful. An observer watches the tell-tales on various computers, of the seismic cable and the guns, and the navigator (or surveyor) steers the ship. It is 3a.m and blowing Force 5-6. There is some swell noise on our seismic recordings – that is, the sea is rough enough to start distorting the reflected noise from the guns when it appears on the seismic streamer, which is towed around 8m under the sea surface.

After the end of line, I perform a set of daily diagnostic tests on the recording instruments. This is a contractural requirement. It’s routine work but we do it for a reason, to spot problems as they crop up. After the test, it is 7.50a.m. My colleague replaces me watching the streamer, and I go for breakfast: sausages, bacon, tomatoes, chips, toast and marmalade, and tea.

We come round onto the next line, and prepare to start shooting, but the wind has risen to Force 7-8, and the swell noise in the direction of the line is unacceptable to us or the client’s representative. We have some options on this prospect – we can swing round to try a line in a different direction. The new information is programmed into the navigation computer by the trainee navigator, his boss keeping a watchful eye. Time passes: the swell noise is no better.

Then there’s a call on the intercom from the bridge, about the rising wind and worsening sea conditions. We agree; it is too rough to continue shooting. I’m despatched to the mess to tell the gun mechanics to stand by to recover all the guns. By now it is Force 8 outside and Seismariner is starting to move. The guns are recovered in stormy weather. Driving rain is hammering down, hissing on the surface of the sea. Because of the weather it takes a while, about an hour, to get all the guns aboard safely. Next, I accompany the chief mechanic and a gun mechanic up onto the quarter deck to help bring in the booms. These extend 21m either side of the vessel and are controlled hydraulically. It is pouring with rain and a sharp gale is ripping at our clothes. We’re all glad to get back inside afterwards and clean up.

I sit down shortly afterwards in the instrument room with a cup of tea. Everyone is sat around, talking. The wind is still Force 8. It’s not a BAD storm, but storm warnings are being broadcast on the teleprinter. The words “cyclonic depression” are seen. It is 10.30a.m. Suddenly, Phil, the deputy party chief, makes his decision – “get the cable in!” We stare: it’s a three-hour job in the wet and cold, and hard work. We finish work at noon…

But Phil has a hunch about the weather; that’s what they pay him for and he is right. There’s a delay about then as a trawler crosses our stern about a mile back – on top of the cable. Crash dive the cable. Fire flares into the rain and wind. By the time we start recovering the cable, it is 11.15a.m. One or two out of every five waves or so is slopping into the back deck and getting us wet; it is quite rough. Progress is slow, pushing and shoving with no hydraulic support. It seems to be getting calmer outside. It IS getting calmer; the sun appears. We wonder at our bosses decision. He appears on the back deck, telling us that Seismariner is in the eye of the storm – the “cyclonic depression” he saw on the teleprinter earlier. The sea goes down to barely 8 or 9 foot waves.

All of a sudden though, just about noon, the wind comes up again, from a different direction. Foam and spray are everywhere all of a sudden; the sea is white. Phil’s boss, the Party Chief, makes a rare visit to the back deck and endorses Phil’s decision: “Get it in QUICK” he says. The wind is now Force 10 and gusting to Force 11.

Marine seismic in the Tropics – 1989

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Getting up for work at 11.30p.m, I’m happy, because I know this is the last shift of the trip. At midnight I join my colleagues on the gun deck and help the mechanics with recovery of the starboard side seismic guns. For me this is mainly a business of pulling in towing strops, and fixing the hook of a “concertina winch” in certain places on the gun array to bunch the array up or “concertina” it. The gun deck of this old vessel is too short to fit the seven gun array when spread out to its full length.

By 12.30a.m the booms are raised, the big Norwegian buoys are stowed out of the way, and the towing strops have been tightened to pull the slack loops out of the sea to avoid them being caught in our propellor. Shortly, we will recover the seismic cable, and for that, the vessel must be driven backwards.

In a flat calm the single short cable is recovered swiftly. Mostly just a matter of pushing and shoving to keep it neat on the winch drum, which is driven hydraulically. Newer seismic vessels have fairleads and winches which can be used as ways to mechanise this pushing and shoving, but not the Seismariner. What can take hours of potentially hazardous and unpleasant grafting in cold and wind of the North Sea, is forty minutes of tedious work in a flat calm in the overbearing heat of equatorial Africa.

Cable recovered, the ship starts to steam towards Mayumba in the Congo, where we will off sub-contract navigation radio receivers by ship’s boat. (This was a couple of years before differential GPS navigation equipment became commercially available). We all adjourn to the crew mess for a well-earned pot of tea. An hour later, work restarts, and I join the mechanic Eric down in his domain in the guts of the ship. Starting at 3.a.m, I help him strip down and replace the big end bearings in four huge water pumps – 12 bearings in all. It takes three and a half hours and two pots of tea to finish the job.

By now it’s 6.30a.m and it is pouring with rain. This is quite usual at this time of year in this part of the world. Our FRB (Fast Rescue Boat) is made ready to transfer the navigation equipment. The sub-contractors gear – receivers, cables, antennas etc – is made ready on the foredeck. The rain stops, but oppressive clouds remain. The jungle close by is steaming and looks threatening. A short break for what we call “breakfast” (though working nights, it is the main meal of the day), and then the crew is ready. It is an assistant observer (myself), the mechanic (the late Eric Gray), and the Assistant Party Chief (Mick).

We lower the boat, and Eric takes her round to the boarding ladder. I climb in along with our client’s representative, the Texan Dave, and we’re off. The ship grows smaller in the distance as we move inshore. We can discern – with eyes, ears and nose – more detail of the jungle and the beach ahead. As the seabed slopes up to the shore, a huge swell develops, white rollers crashing onto a sandbar. We search without success for a way into the lagoon beyond, passing as we do so, the wreck of a coaster bigger than Seismariner. Her rusted bridge is all that remains above the sand and water. We know that getting into the lagoon will be easy – but getting the boat out again through the immense surf will be impossible.

It’s exciting stuff for a young man: the small boat, the sea, the strangeness of the African jungle close by. We can see people waiting for us ashore, but defeated for the present, we head back to the mother ship. On the way the outboard engine stops, and Eric toils to fix it in heavy, pregnant silence, except for the slopping of wavelets against the gunwhale. The four of us in the boat breath a sigh of relief when the engine whizzes into life; we make it safely back home, and are lifted out of the water.

A while later, a second attempt is made at a slightly different location, and all the equipment and the client rep. are safely dropped ashore. It takes three separate trips to move everything, but all is complete by 10.30a.m. The FRB is recovered once again, and we leave the bay at once, steaming for Pont Noire in the Congo, some ten hours journey away at 12 knots.

After another brief tea break, I spend the final 45 minutes of my shift conducting electrical tests on cabling removed from the gun arrays. My results recorded on a scrap of paper, it’s time once again for “Swarfega” at the close of my 63rd consecutive twelve hour shift – and the last one.

My journey home was instructive. I had no ticket for the last part of the journey (from Paris to my home) and more cash to cover this was offered. I was counselled by my colleagues to refuse this offer as the actual ticket would cost more than the cash being offered by the company administrator. Several of us were taken to the airport and flew in an antique 737 with Lina Congo, to Brazzaville. They did not even pressurize the 737 and it flew at 6000′ the whole way. As it was only the 4th or 5th time in my life I had been in an aircraft at all, this passed me by. Those who knew better were petrified. At Brazzaville we changed onto a 747-combi (half passenger, half freight) of UTA. This was in fact the first long-haul flight I ever took. The flight was to Paris via Doula in Cameroon, and Marseille. All was well until we landed at Marseille at 6a.m the next day, and that’s where we stayed. Owing to fog in Paris, we remained on the tarmac at Marseille for four hours, with neither refreshments nor breakfast served. We eventually arrived at De Gaulle early afternoon. It was February in Paris – foggy.

I spent the rest of the day trying without success to get a flight to England – anywhere – Heathrow, Birmingham, East Midlands. Late in the evening I gave up and took train into central Paris, and secured myself a train ticket to London via the Bologne-Dover ferry. This was 1989 – LONG before the Channel Tunnel. I remember several things about that journey. One of them, is buying a Croque Monsieur from a vendor near Gare St Lazaire, and the second, is sitting in a compartment on the train (that dates this story – compartments??) with a number of men – clearly pilots and aircrew – who claimed to be from Mauritius but who were clearly Scythe Ifrican. This was in the days of apartheid when everything and anyone remotely white South African was considered rather bad form in liberal society. These gentlemen, it must be said, were perfectly upright and pleasant fellows.

We took train from Gare St Lazaire (the first and only time I’ve ever been to that particular station in Paris), crossed the channel, and then on a cold winter’s morning, more trains, from Dover to Victoria and on home. I arrived home on 3rd February 1989, having left on 27th November the previous year. A good trip.

Thirty days of lockdown

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Have I traded the muse of the poet, the heart of a prophet, the freedom of a writer, for the mess of pottage we call a regular income? Maybe not: everyday things like a regular income have a higher value than we imagine, at any time, and particularly in these times. Others have been and are being blessed, in many ways, because I keep on keeping on.

Thirty years ago a band called The Lilac Time released a song called “Return to yesterday”. It is a delightful song, but the words have told a story ever since and are apposite for today, more than ever before. As I’ve written elsewhere, there’s no going back to yesterday – though we none of us, not one of us, have quite realized it yet. They sang We’ll face this new England like we always have / In a fury of denial / We’ll go out dancing on the tiles…

There follows some personal reflections from the first month of living in this new England.

16/3: “The road ahead gleams in the rain like a silver ribbon. It holds endless possibilities”… I’m sure this date will live for a long time – the day when the closed-in living began. I dislike the expression “lockdown”. Today an old man fell over and I helped him home. I missed the PM’s broadcast when he told us all to stay indoors.

18/3: Each day, writing for ten minutes on one single subject. Today – weariness. The variety of weariness is not thin: it falls from the sky in many forms. I have known it in many ways, some good, some bad. Waves of sleepiness. An alert, diamond-like wakefulness. The unwillingness to talk; the irascibility. The pleasant weariness of a job well done.

20/3: “Revolution, slow time coming” – Buck 65 – Blood of a Young Wolf. Today it feels like defeat being snatched from the jaws of victory. We need to find a way, in this time of sameness, when many of us are living AND working at home, to mark the beginning of the weekend – which otherwise seems to be just the same as the week.

22/3: Listened to a heart-warming Youtube address from our friend Bishop Andrew Rumsey, in which we’re encouraged to “plant seeds and stay grounded”. In the garden, fantastic, delicate patterns of filigree, in the skeletons of last year’s leaves. Friendly robins come close – and when I find a piece of flint, I am drawn to reflect on wealth. What is wealth?

25/3: Today is my wife’s birthday. We had tea together in the morning and she opened her presents. Dinner out will have to wait, perhaps. A good day at the office, although I found it literally, not metaphorically, somewhat tiresome. At 4pm, tired and I’m not going to go for a run. It seems inappropriate. In my object writing I reflect on visiting my grandma by omnibus, in the mid 1970’s.

27/3: Another sunny morn: the light remains beautiful at sunrise, grazing the stalks in a nearby field, highlighting the folds of the land. I am daunted and awed by the compassion and the creativity of others. I feel borne down by endless lecturing on social media – STAY INDOORS they say, and then I block them or hide them. I will be run over yet by the grinding wheels of collectivism. Though I do mostly stay indoors.

28/3: But what do I know of isolation? I fear for those in tower blocks with north-facing windows in a sea of grey tarmac; for those in damp and dingy bedsits. For those crammed in one or two rooms with squalling kids and sullen or angry partners. We have become, perhaps (as a Dutchman I know once said) “a nation of wuss”. We ought not become a people who are perfectly capable of controlling negative thoughts – but don’t…

29/3: Today I built a desk and shelves in the garden shed. It looked just like the image my wife printed – make it like this picture, she suggested. I am no joiner but it looks well enough. Building it did wear me out though – a long physical day in the cold actually made me dizzy. But that was low blood sugar. We dealt with that with some hummus and a very strong Gin and Tonic.

30/3: Today I broke a tooth, upper left molar, Oddly enough I am not the only person who has done so amongst my social media circle. There is no discomfort. Yet. Just as well.

31/3: I do love the early mornings. Never thought I’d be a lark rather than an owl. Heartened to read of pushback against the way the police have interpreted Boris’s Coronavirus Act 2020. I long for the day when it is repealed completely, but I confess I do not find that likely. What really depresses me is that there are people who fully approve of these new restrictions on our civil liberties.

1/4: Though I took a good day “at the office” I am depressed. I read an article in “Wired” about the future, and this has cast me down. I ought not have read it. Lord, fit me to serve You faithfully and set my face like flint to the task ahead.

2/4: I ran 10km in 58 minutes. I read about metaphor – a collision between ideas that don’t belong together. In metaphor, conflict is essential. Later, I read a senior lawyer who reminded us that it is the job of the police to uphold the law, not ministerial preference. The Prime Minister’s word is not law. This seems important to me, though perhaps not to others.

4/4: Weary with my own sense of individualism, my own ostensible lack of interest in what the community thinks. Make a better team player, O Lord! Teach me how to care. And yet, like “Blurry Face” from the American band 21 Pilots? I DO care what you think.

5/4: My birthday and Palm Sunday. Liberty – “it’s my birthday, and I wants it”. Now is not the time to release your inner Gollum, Nick. But what a lovely day; some gifts of railway books and a case for one of my guitars – though this lovely gift will only come into its own later. Technology provides a chance for my wife and I to meet and chat in a virtual space with all three of our kids.

7/4: Milder weather. I feel a tangible sense of guilt that I am less disciplined in the afternoon than in the morning. I’ve done my best work by 10a.m. In the late afternoon, my heart and brain are mush.

8/4: Sat for the first time this year in a little bower we have created at the end of the garden. A neighbours’ daughters are playing. One can hear the inherent bossiness of little girls, and perhaps of the first-born, as the older bosses the younger around. The sound of children playing is one of the greatest sounds. What is your favourite sound?

9/4: I ran 10km in one hour before 0700 and collected a birthday beer from outside the house of a friend. Thanks Paul!

10/4: I come into the kitchen and hear some politician on the radio droning away about how many items of PPE have been made – 325 million items of this or that – and for a weird and unpleasant moment I actually become Winston Smith. This feeling I have to shake off: Dylan writes “if my thought-dreams could be seen, they’d stick my head in a guillotine” and it were true of me on occasion.

12/4: Easter Day: So many others have more positive attitudes than mine. What with the endless bad news, with the police overstepping their powers, with social distancing and the twitching of social media curtains, my heart remains heavy for Merrie England. On the plus side, my daughter recommended Margaret Attwood’s “Oryx and Crake” which I started reading immediately.

13/4: It is now a month since I was at the offices in London SW1! The weather breaks to grey, flat skies and gusting wind. Today I ran 10240m in 56 minutes which is fighting fit.

16/4: We’re all finding ourselves, from time to time, in difficult places. I remember again – or at least try to – those who are less fortunate. I finish work and find I cannot face looking at computer screens anymore. ’twas ever thus perhaps. I want something physical, tangible. I shall practice guitar.

18/4: I’ve finished Anthony Lambert’s “50 great train journeys” and Andrew Martin’s “Night Trains”, and I’m reading Tristram Hunt on the English Civil War. Along with “1984” it is possible that this last may lead me in directions that are not entirely constructive – but I can do no other.

It is fully spring now. Flowers are coming out; seedlings are sprouting. We may hope that such growth is not only horticultural but cultural as well, in the months and years to come.

Riders in the storm

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It all started with my son. He got into bicycles from a very early age. In fact he was only a little over four years old when he got his first bike, which was a hand-me-down from one of his older sisters. I took it all to pieces (for it was pink, and no use like that to a small boy) and sprayed it British Racing Green. He was proud of that – and so was I. That I paid more for the spray paint than I did for the bike is neither here nor there.
But then one day it broke. With an old bicycle of such low value, quite often a fault can develop that costs more to fix than the bicycle is worth. So it proved in this case. Without any real difficulty I bought another second-hand bicycle. When I got it home, I discovered that the bolt for holding on one of the stabilizers – included in the sale in a plastic carrier bag – was missing. I soon discovered it, snapped off in the frame. It would have cost me more than I had paid for the bicycle to go out and buy the stud extractor needed to remove that bolt. So I told my son – you learn to ride that bicycle without stabilizers, and I’ll buy you a bell.
Less than one week later, I had to take him to a bicycle shop, to make the promised purchase of a bell, and both he and I were pleased as punch. That was some achievement for a boy of his age. And so started our rides together. Perhaps one of the funniest occasions that has come out of my son’s cycling was recounted to me by a friend. My wife and I were out of town and left the children in the charge of my mother. One day, our friend and neighbour was strolling along near the local park, when up and over the hill comes my son, pedaling furiously, his little legs going nineteen to the dozen. Quite a time later, recounts my neighbour, a respectable lady of a certain age – clearly the boy’s grandma, my mother, came running and panting past, struggling to keep up with my son’s newfound enthusiasm.
As the boy grew older I found myself doing a lot of running to keep up. It became clear that I too needed a bicycle. Not long after that my older daughters got them too, and pretty soon I found myself with quite literally a shed-load of bicycles. When my wife bought one too I knew then that the boy had started something special. Sometimes we get them all out and load them on the back of the car, and drive off for a ride somewhere. But not too often – mostly my son and I go riding. As he grew older we moved up the scale of bicycles, eventually deigning to buy him a super-duper all singing and all dancing mountain bike with “gel filled tyres” (about which he never tired of telling me) and many gears. He had a digital speedometer from his uncle, and of course a bell. Cycling is a big thing for us two.
One day I thought we would go to see my father. On this occasion, I deemed it too far for him to ride – when we did finally make that journey entirely by bicycle, some months later, he was conspicuously quiet at the journeys end, after a ride of seven miles along canal towpaths and along the banks of the river. We went to see my father by putting our bicycles on the car and driving over. Then, we would greet his wife, my step-mother, and cycle off to see my dad at the Allotments, a more modest mile or so from the house. It was a hot summers day.
I remember the occasion because it was around that time that I made my father a gift of an enormous pouch of pipe tobacco, cherry vanilla, which I had managed to buy for a very low price whilst at work in Louisiana. The smell of such tobacco is very fragrant indeed, and entirely pleasant. So then, we cycled to the Allotment and in we went, along the rutted path between the scare-crows and little huts made of old front doors and plastic sheets, past the inevitable rows of Runner Beans and reflective older men wearing flat caps. The sun blazed down – but there was thunder in the air.
I like the Allotments because there are good, dry, garden smells – old twine, onions, dust and soil, creosote. My father has a little hut to sit in, though there is room for only one. A visitor might perch on an upturned bucket or rest himself on a tussock of grass, whilst contemplating the farmer’s domain with an appraising eye. We’ve had good stuff from that Allotment. All kinds of potatoes and onions. Lettuce and radishes, carrots. Even Sweetcorn. One year the raspberry bushes growing wild around the perimeter of each plot were laden to bursting. This time though, the only things laden to bursting where ominous thunderstorm clouds amassing overhead.
We did some weeding, and talked some, and found the boy something to do appropriate to his age – this generation of children, exposed as they are every day to technology, computers and other wizardry, have a short span of attention. When my father was his age he might have happily spent all afternoon on such an Allotment, and I likewise when I was a small boy. Though if truth be known, we only like to think that that was the case. Really, when you’re a seven year old small boy, whatever the generation of your upbringing, fidgeting and impatience is inevitable.
Perhaps the electricity in the air was making us all edgy. We decided to pack up and retreat – my father and I judged that a downpour was now imminent, and we would do well to retreat home before it engulfed us. So we set off, back along the rutted and bumpy unmade road, to the gate and onto the main road. The sun had gone now, and the atmosphere was decidedly gloomy. Too gloomy – we had not ridden more than a few hundred yards when the first tell tale spatters of a summer storm began. That smell of rain on hot dry tarmac, characteristic of the first minute or so of a thunder shower in hot weather, filled the air. And the heavens opened.
My father was in shirt-sleeves, my son and I hardly better dressed. We were soon soaked to the skin as we battled along through the gusts and the rain. Yet, it was warm rain. My son was a little distressed, but he toughed it out – I think he will remember this storm for many years. I will – it was actually quite a sight, quite a significant thing, for three generations of one family to cycle along a road in a drenching downpour of summer rain.
We gained the shelter of my fathers house, where his wife could not quite decide if she should berate us for our foolishness or cluck with sympathy. Once toweled dry, we grinned at one another – really it had been quite fun, to make such a journey in such weather. We had more fun in ten short minutes than we’d had in years, almost, as riders in the storm.