The sun is shining, the good news is that it is generally shining somewhere, the bad news is that your somewhere else! It is (the sun) always above the yard arm, as the drunk says, but hey "Tempus Fugit", or some fink. I was talking to a Beduin man the other day, he was driving a toyota rather than a camel, but his sense came right out of the desert, where you quickly understand "if it is not useful, just forget it"!
Did you see the report of a girl doing 9b? It took my breath away. Is it 9b, if its done by a woman is it not automatically less? What has happened to male chauvinism? And what has happened to our sport, when the Uk has only one climbing "magazine", which seems to be mainly about learning to do knots, or find bits of rock 2 meters high. The demise of Climb magazine Uk is a terrible event for UK climbing, and the industry. If our sport is simply going to be swayed and influenced by internet plonked content, we are certainly doomed. It is no secret that I often disagree with editors, but Ian Parnell, and his very quiet editor who I won't even mention, did much much good, they both matured into extremely adult voices, and their banishment into the wilderness is bad.
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| hello sailor. On my island it is very noticeable that the people we get are often plunkers, there is nothing wrong with plonkers, I have been one, but when you can't abseil down a sea cliff, and don't know what prussic loops are, you are defiantly a plonker, and will become plonked if you haven't taken the other necessary step of practising using knots to ascend a rope. . |
hhI just did my First Aid course thingy, you know, health and safety thing, I always recommend them to people, and people never seem to do them.
Mine was over due, and it's funny, but there are a few new laws, or practises there, which are following the litigation roundabout. It is probably wise for people to keep up.
The natural course of Health and Safety is to produce a society which is completely incapable of working, climbing, or eating anything that doesn't come out of a hermetically sealed packet.
I hear the UIAA is being broken up. Is this true? What is behind this UIAA Brexit. It's long overdue that there was some discussion about this all powerful organisation who are simply a business, but without mags and people with a voice, who will tell us whats going on!
With the rise of plonked journalism came internet fake news, with the rise of weird European organisations came multitiered qualifications for plunkers who sometimes are not up to scratch. When I was in Egypt I was taken out by a diver whose level of concern and care was greater than the average I have witnessed elsewhere, so qualifications certainly in my eyes mean very little. My First Aid course was very good, the first one I took many many years ago was probably deeper and enabled me to do more of actually helping people, they are the same weight. It is very interesting that you must worry about sexual harassment when giving first aid today, and I am very glad that my job was much easier in the past. Will I, in a moment of cruciality, worry about step "5 bis" before I give CPR? Anyway guys and girls, despite what I say, do your first aid course, or refresher course. If I had money I would do the American much more involved course. I wonder if that has been watered down? Is the world being watered down my friends, is the whole of human stuff just turning into so much cotton wool? Will all mountains be Mount Everest's done with Oxygen and aluminium ladder and nannies holding your hand?