Sticks and stones may hurt your bones, but words will never hurt you. You’ve obviously heard that one, haven’t you? Well when I heard it in a class room, I quickly interjected with ‘what about giant turds’ I was six, my deaf teacher asked me what I meant by ‘thirds being able to inflict harm’, I gamely repeated ‘turds’, ‘ah turds’ he uttered witheringly, full comprehension dawning, ‘yes indeed’, and here pausing for breath, he clouted me a good one behind the ear, ‘turds can be hurt too’. There had been giggles at my childish interdiction, but now large guffaws where everywhere.
Today many people act and talk in a completely different way to how they think. There is a tyrannical political correctness, and a false faceness everywhere you look. Even when you look in the mirror?
Any way don’t mention the War.
In 1889 the Mauser riffle was introduced and it passed into a deadly service thru two world wars, and was even seen in the hands of the Muhashdeen more than a century later. I have been handed a Mauser that has passed through generations of hands by a Pushtu in Pakistan, and told with gleeful pride of its use against the British. It’s a nice practical breach loading riffle, but its date of issue has now passed into the German vernacular, as a term of bog-standardness. So if you are described as a 1889er, you are ordinary, a kind of dumb shmuck. We are all ordinary in some way, we are all 1889ers! Most climbers in Britain of course, are 1889ers, you know just punters! So anyway, the Mauser, was a word that could, and did, and still does kill you.
Testing the climbing WC
So, back to, turds. In Yosemite national Park there are lots of regulations about stuff, including them making lots of money out of fat people driving around the place in petrol guzzling cars, and motor homes, in a permanent head to tail conga of pollution and congestion. Climbers of course are not even welcome, despite the fact, that fatso from Fresno wants to see dudes hanging off their fingernails, as free entertainment. Anyway you are not allowed to shit in the woods like a bear anymore, but have to dispose of it in a thoughtful and prescribed way. So if you are on a rock climb you have to excrete into a bag, and then carry the turd in a ‘plumbers plastic pipe safe’, and dispose of the odorous contents down in the valley somewhere. The non-carrying of a plastic poop rocket opens you to prosecution. The old method of dunging, was to lower your keks and bombs away. You also had a private chuckle as you watched Fergie from Phoiniwx’, with her expensive binoculars flashing in the sun, as she watched you from the valley floor.. If you were a more concerned individual, you did your number twos into a brown paper bag, which you could save, or jettison onto some poor passer-by. The latter was deemed the more correct method of dispersal by a high percentage of the best climbers, none of whom, would of-course admit to doing anything so utterely disgusting and childish now.. At night the tipsy, or completely boxed out of his cackling brains climber, might add a glowing touch to the ensemble by setting fire to the brown paper bag before flinging it into the void, thus he would create a ‘Shitorite’. Several Shitorites together would constitute a ‘Shitorite shower’, which would then streak thru the azure Californean sky to sublime effect, and to wild cheers from the loons on El Capitain. Similarly, ‘Gardeloo’ from Gardez-vous, was the cry in London centuries ago before fitted toilets, when the uncouth would throw out their night soil, and other unseemly unmentionables, This, is where we get the word ‘loo’ from. It is very sad in my opinion that Loo, and Dream Canyon Handshake, have passed into our lexicon, but not the sublime, Shitorite Shower.
