Everything is a contest. Everything is reduced to football. I hate the way Prague has changed and I love the old one, but in reality Prague is the one we now have. I love the old Gozo, the one of my childhood, but the Gozo of today is the one we have now. Yesterday I went climbing with a magazine editor and he loved one of my cliffs, he loved my routes, we chatted at the top of the cliff, starring at the setting sun; talking climbing with swollen fore arms - his especially.
I was worried my routes didn't stack up, but they stack up very nicely. There are routes of great quality here in an ambience Maltese. It's "Mhux Hazin" as we say here, it's ok, Kalymnos is Ok, and Dresden is Ok, too. Given a choice I would have them all -yes I am greedy. I would have the desert and Veedavoo too, I guess, if I was being a glutton.
Conditions yesterday were primo, dry friction on zee sandstone like velcro. Nice and warm. We saw some Germans climbing at a different cliff. Not many Brits. They are all in Kalymnos! I showed Ian, the editor a huge unclimbed cliff. I need a thousand bolts! And glue and time enough. I would like highest quality stainless or Titanium, please. Certainly this is a necessity.
Climbing has gone on for a good stretch of time in Dresden area, first guidebook was in 1908, complete with adverts. I want to put in a claim for Gozo too, we were climbing here in 1650, we had a cable car here for tourists then as well, we were ahead of the Swiss!
It was good to get back to Gozo, to try the end of one of my projects, to battle the stone, the grindstone, to swim in the sea and stare at the sun. The hard work has to start now though, for as I said to Ian as we battled the steepness of the Underworld, "we have been weighed, we have been measured, and we have been found wanting", yep we are weak and zee stone is strong. We need the spirit of Bernd Arnold.
