They did indeed have some suitable cracks. Mostly a little wide for her palming jams, so it became FISTS for LC. The place was apparently an old water pumping station, tricked out in the old fashion to look like an extravagantly Gothic Castle, the huge chimneys embellished as ‘towers’. Apparently they run courses inside them for very long abseils; the sort of trick used by those nutters seen on the end of a rope window-cleaning on glass skyscrapers.

There was a great bouldering area on one floor, overhanging hugely in the centre over a serious crash mat, lead routes of a decent length with fixed ‘quick draws’ for those who wanted to lead rather than toprope, and those walls ranged from reasonably easy angles to overhanging. There was also a plethora of ground anchors. It would do me.

Some of the ‘set problems’, of course, would be impossible for LC, as the reach between some holds could exceed her entire body length, but that wasn’t the point. I pointed them all at the bouldering wall, one eye open for sandbaggers, people who only ever climb one thing over and over again until it is routine, then suggest it to newcomers as a ‘simple local problem’ so they can enjoy the ensuing failure before demonstrating how easy it really is.

LC almost bounced up it, and certainly bounced when she fell off from about ten feet up. I was spotting her, so it was a simple thump into the crash mat and bounce back to her feet for another go.

That was our girl.

We found the jams, of course, and one of them, to my delight, was a full-height affair on the lead wall, almost reminding me of Amazon Crack at Burbage North. The little board called it ‘Darth Sidious, 5b, features only’, which set me laughing happily and puzzled Clara.

“What’s funny, Mr Rhodes?”

“Ah, bit of a tale… Some people have noted that the Darths in those films have got second names that should start with an ‘in’. Invader, insidious, so on. ‘Insidious Slit’ is a climb I like, so this is a sort of combined joke”

“Where do climb names come from?”

“Whoever puts them up—climbs them the first time. Sometimes they’re a joke, sometimes a local link, sometimes just a description. Caroline liked one at Stanage just called ‘Straight Chimney’, for example, and there’s that place those four got engaged. Famous photo of that has a couple on the long traverse as breakers foam over the bottom. ‘A Dream of White Horses’. Not all the jokes are obvious ones, though”

“Example?”

“Um… ‘Kipling Groove’ in the Lakes, place called Gimmer Crag”

“What’s the joke?”

“It’s ruddy ‘ard. That’s it. That’s the joke. Me, I prefer the poetic ones, like ‘Dream’ or ‘One Step in the Clouds’, as long as they don’t get too pretentious. Anyway, you going to try this one?”

“Watch how Ishy does it first”

“Okay. This is what’s called sport climbing, so no runners to collect. I’ll lead, Ish will lower me off, I unclip the rope from each runner as I descend and the others can decide whether to lead it or have a toprope”

Steph was halfway up another route, so I called the lad over to sort out anchors, and then spotted the cheeky little note on the route description: ‘seated start’.

It was an odd move, feet wide apart on a couple of bulges, allowing me to set a couple of hand jams that I couls pull on to pivot myself almost upright, slapping a hand quickly into a higher part of the crack before I could peel. Transfer feet, and then the old fun of jamming steadily up a single crack. The crux was after a bulge, where the crack shrank to finger width for about five feet, entailing smearing my feet on the slight purchase of the top of that bulge and trusting to balance rather than thuggery. There was a runner right there, though, so no real risk.

It was a fun route, and both Maz and ‘Ishy’ decided to try their hand at a lead. Each in turn peeled as they rounded the bulge’ each in turn hung on the rope for a few seconds before making second, successful attempts. Clara only made it as far as the bulge, but there was no shame in that.

FISTS and HANDS fairly flew up, as the finger crack that had stalled ne slightly was simply a hand crack to LC, and heads were turning throughout the centre as we lowered her off.

“DO IT AGAIN!”

So we did, at least in her case. It was the start of a very intensive and fun day, and as we rode the train back down to Gatwick, I was really glad I wasn’t driving, as I had almost no strength left in my hands and forearms.

Two nights to go before we had to. Where had the time gone? I settled against my wife, just as Steph leant across the aisle.

“We made a choice for you, Mike, Maz”

“In what way?”

“Farwell do. Didn’t want to pour you onto a plane with a hangover, so tomorrow we thought we’d offer Maz more bucket list”

Maz wriggled a bit so that she could see past me.

“And?”

“Historic ships museum. Victory, Warrior and Mary Rose. Just about direct trains. And if you’re lucky, you might get a real treat. They have reintroduced a bird to the Isle of Wight”

“Oh? What species?”

“Believe it or not, white-tailed eagle. They sometimes come round into the Solent”

I looked down at a salivating wife and mother---so easily pleased---before trying to fix Steph with a gimlet stare, which she just laughed off.

“Remember my job, Mr R! What?”

“What have you NOT told us?”

“Oh, plans for tonight”

“Are these small-P plans, or, as I am starting to suspect, Capital P with extra serifs?”

“The latter. Naomi is coordinating things, along with Annie. Our place, lots of people to say goodbye to you. There will be multiple tents and, well, a barbie”

“These the same people we met before? Cubans and dogs and stuff?”

“Yup, plus another family; Neil as well. Get some of your packing done early doors, and by that I mean offloading the climbing kit we need to return as well as the stuff you need shipped, then it’s beer and barbie time. This way, you’ll have something over thirty six hours to recover. We made an informed choice based on your previous pattern of behaviour that music, beer and greasy food would be acceptable to you all”

It was Clara who laughed hardest that time, so much so that she ended up with hiccups. A day and a half should indeed be sufficient for the purpose thereof.

It was indeed the same crew, others steadily arriving as we showered in relays and Ish, LC and I did another relay to the Woodruffs’ double garage-cum-cycle store with the mass of camping and climbing equipment.

“Dad?”

“Yes, love?”

“Does Kawan have to leave his helmet?”

“Not this time, love, but your lantern has to go on this side. This is the stuff that Mr and Mrs Woodruff will be putting into boxes and posting to us. Like those extra rock shoes Enfys gave you, so you’ll have something to grow into”

“Where are we going?”

“Home, love. Where Mr Smiley Beard lives”

“Why can’t Clara come?”

“Because her home is here, Carolyn. She’s learning how to be a teacher, so she has to keep learning until she’s ready”

“Ish isn’t happy”

“That is why we need to be a strong family together, love. We can talk with Clara like we did with Mr Smiley Beard. And Clara has a lot of friends here to help look after her. Now, do you want to keep the rock shoes you’re using with you? And the harness? That way, you can go climbing when we get home and not have to wait for the box to come”

Not a subtle change of subject by any means, but it was the best I could manage. I glanced towards the boy, and he tried a shrug.

“Nobody’s dead, Dad. One bonus, I suppose. Now, these bits: are they from Auds or Enfys?”

“That bit’s from Bethesda, son. In fact, all the gear marked with black and red tape is theirs”

“Right. I’ll do a secondary sort, then, just in case. You take Elsie and get her ready, and I’ll finish off here”

I translated that as ‘I’m about to break; please go away for a bit’. I didn’t argue, leading his sister back to her room to make the important decision as to which of her princess dresses would be the best for the party.

I was back downstairs in good time, though, and tried to do my best as sort-of-host/guest-of-honour, remembering several but not all of the names, but some of the questions were a bit sneaky. Sarah, for example, Elaine’s sister and mother of the lad with the ‘Pie’ dog, wanted to know all sorts of stuff about domestic arrangements in Carmarthen, while Annie wanted to discuss, in what felt like obsessive detail, how Diane’s daughter was coming along after her illness. I had no sooner escaped from discussions of infant bowel movements and hen party problems (Sarah had been given chapter and verse about what had happened to Ish), and managed to rejoin my wife, than we were collared by birdwatchers.

More birdwatchers, I mean.

“Darling, where are we going tomorrow?”

“Portsmouth, love”

“Caroline here says we should go to the Isle of Wight”

“Time available, love. We’ve managed to cram in a lot, but time’s up”

The tall woman, Caroline, nodded.

“I know that story, Mike. When Pablo and Rita first visited, I tried to get in as much as I could, including a drive around the island”

Her husband laughed.

“She is going to speak of the ferry prices and world records now”

“I’m sorry, my love, but it just happens to be true! Mile for mile, that is”

She turned back to us.

“Second most expensive in the world, mile for mile”

Maz bit, asking where the most expensive was located, and Caroline laughed.

“You’ll see it when you get off the train. Foot ferry to Gosport”

It was obviously a well-rehearsed mini-rant, so I smiled in response. Caroline grinned back.

“Mike, we were more interested in the wetlands around Lymington than the ferry or Osborne House, to be honest. The bird stuff bores you, doesn’t it?”

A little chunk of my heart twitched, appropriately.

“No. Not really. My first wife was also a birdwatcher. It’s… I can see the attraction, but I haven’t got the focus. For me, it’s seeing how happy it makes… Seeing how happy it make my wife, and remembering how happy it made my first one.. We had a lovely time, for example, on a Welsh island, even though it was out of season”

The tall man, Pablo, laughed.

“Yes! We have taken notes. All that I now need do is persuade my employers that there is a commercial benefit for such a visit”

“You need permission?”

He grinned, and for once I could see the woman’s side, why his wife loved him, as his jester’s soul shone out.

“I do not need their permission, Mike, no, but getting them to pay for the trip is always useful”

Steph’s voice rose above the hum.

“Barbie’s ready! First stuff is coming off, room for more as we work! Tuck in! And Albert’s off on a supermarket run for more beer, so please, please, please go and insult him by pressing cash into his hand!”

That broke up the little puddles of people, as melamine plates were loaded with the first stack of cooked stuff, mostly snags/sausages and burgers, but with a mixture of some of those feta/chili concoctions Maz loved as well as some veggie shishkebabs, which Ginny almost collared for her own personal feast. There was a bulkier woman with Dog Walker Jules, and her man started setting more elaborate stuff onto the hot coals, while the tables in the conservatory filled with Naomi’s finger food.

Oh, and there was beer; Steph and co hadn’t just sent Albert up to the supermarket, but had a small tent with racked casks of proper beer, served via gravity, my mind asking how much it had all cost.

That was knocked out of consideration when even more people started to tune up, and I found my daughter by my side after what seemed like hours of cuddling her new doggy friends.

“Dad?”

“Yes, love?”

“Is there going to be dancing?”

“I think so”

“Am I allowed to dance?”

Firing squads, Rhodes.

“Of course, love. Probably not with the doggies, though”

She looked at me with a stare that clearly said, ‘is he stupid?’, and my heart soared In response. A memory erupted.

“Have you seen Shan?”

“Yes. She’s helping to serve the beer”

“I think she could teach you some new dances. Want to ask her?”

“Would she want to?”

Fuck.

“She bought you your princess, dress love, so yes, I think so”

That was the start of the real evening’s events, as the tuning up spread into a few actual tunes, morphing into what felt like a full-on concert before Jan started to call for ‘four couple square sets’ and our evening became an active one. I collared Steph during a pause in our exuberance, and asked an obvious question.

“Don’t the neighbours say anything about noise?”

“Airport’s right there, Mike”, she said, pointing, “And they’ve actually paid for things like triple glazing for some of us. Besides which, I use a simpler system”

“Which is?”

“Invite them over. Beer, barbie, live music: what’s to dislike?”

People were everywhere, including an awful lot I had never seen before, so I expected that Steph’s ‘invite the neighbours’ actually meant ‘invite the whole village’. I didn’t mind, especially as most people seemed remarkably chilled out, even Shan’s Mum Ginny. Odd little things caught my eye as I looked around.

Stewie, arm over the shoulder of another man who simply screamed ex-military. The taller of the two had his own arm around the waist of another man, one hand in his arse pocket. Looking on were a pair of older women in a similar posture with a third, almost mirroring the men’s posture, apart from a slight look at distaste at what had probably been a typically forces joke.

I could spot any number of obvious coppers in the ebb and flow, including one woman with a bust that almost seemed unreal, along with several smaller children and a flock of adolescents that had homed in on our pair as soon as they had spotted them. By the time I had run my first little catalogue, noting that LC was now being steered by Shan through a set dance with a number of similar small persons, beaming with delight, I found my wife in conversation with Pablo, Caroline, the three cuddling women and what looked like a straight couple, together with a shorter man. I armed myself with a couple of fresh beers and joined Maz, slipping my free arm around her waist as she took her beer from me.

“Thank you, darling. How doth the offspring?”

“Carolyn is dancing in a kiddy set. Lad and las are doing teenage stuff with teenagers”

“Normal as, then. Got more birdwatchers here”

“I shall go and check the barbie then…”

She carried on as if I hadn’t spoken.

“Jill and Larinda, their friend Siobhan. Her kids are off with the rest. Terry and Karen, ditto. And do you remember John?”

I must have looked a little lost, because he simply offered a hand to shake with the words “I do guiding at Barnes Wetland Centre”

“Of course! Maz is the birdwatcher in our family, I’m afraid. Not so much me. How do you know this lot?”

A long arm came down over my free shoulder, and it was Steph.

“Interrogating my party guests, Rhodes?”

I hugged my wife a little, just to make the point.

“Thought this was our party, woman”

“Details. Minor details. Anyway, short answer re John here: we were both patients of Stewie’s wife. I know John is open about that, but I didn’t want him worried about outing me. John, Mike here has known me from well before I met Sally, if you take my point. Safe to chat. See you all later; I want a lamb chop before they all go. Bye for now”

She clearly wasn’t just right in her skin, but absolutely right in her job. The other man stuck a hand out.

“Hiya. Terry and Karen. We’re friends of Jill and Larinda there, Vonny’s their sister in law, and she’s Welsh, so watch what you say. John and Jill--- sounds like a nursery rhyme. They’re former colleagues, and John is a dear friend to us. That cover it, love?”

There were all sorts of dances going on there, but not something that needed a poke just then. I did my duty, as the conversation flowed around various birds, but I caught John’s eyes almost boring into Maz every so often.

“Maryam?”

“Yes, John?”

“I have never been to the Southern Hemisphere. How is the birding?”

She thought for a while, before offering the single word “Complex”, then embarking on a longer explanation.

“When I first came here, I had problems with the bird book, especially with what Caroline here calls an SBJ, a ‘small brown job’. The books are usually in taxonomic order, by family. I’m used to it now, so I see an SBJ with a chunky bill, and I an assume it’s a finch or a bunting, and they’re at the back of the book. There’s an awful lot more diversity back home, and many more families, and we’re a continent, so lots of localisation”

“What sort of families?”

“Um… Aussie chats, and robins, neither of which are chats or robins, lots of wrens of different families, none of which are wrens, and honeyeaters. Lots and lots of species of honeyeaters, a lot of them incredibly similar. Separating them can be really hard work. Huge number of raptors, and a lot of parrots…”

She went on for a little while longer, and rather than his eyes glazing over, he simply locked onto every word, and that is when I recognised another Neil in him, just as the original appeared, clearly having snatched a shower. I quickly introduced him to our little circle, breaking a description of speciation and despeciation of ospreys.

“Delays?”

“I decided to use the M6 again. Can’t be as bad as last time, I told myself. I was wrong. Hi all: I’m Neil, and I am a photographer”

Maz snorted.

“Tell them the rest, Neil”

“I’m a caver as well”

‘Vonny’ shuddered as Maz added, “And the rest?”

“Cave diver”

That brought a general shudder from all of them, just as I had expected, and I left him to fight his own corner. It broke the flow of details about genetic analysis of white-naped honeyeaters, or relative bill size in two species of white-tailed black cockatoo. I squeezed my wife once more, ecstatic that she was back and available for such squeezing. Ah.

“Neil, want to tell this lot what our place is like? I am suspicious here, in a nice way. How many of you have been to Australia? Put your hands down, you two: we already know that. Well, this is our… You will all know what happened. Not announcing this to the whole village, but this trip has been part, the major part, of our healing. People have been our medicine. Now, we can’t put everyone up, BUT! We know a lot of people in Perth, and Maz and I would be happy to offer a bed if we have room, or just advice, support, a friendly face at arrivals, if you want. Steph has all our details. So thanks, all. Pablo?”

“Yes?”

“Your employers? Funding?”

That typically broad grin.

“I had not thought of this, but now that I have heard your words, oh yes!”

“Right. I have seen someone I haven’t seen for a very long time, and he may not remember, but I am off for a catch-up. Meet you all later as the night gets going. Neil?”

“I have a lot to ask John, Mike. He takes photos”

That fitted.

“Later, then”

Maz was happy to stay and ornithologue, so I made a beeline for the man I had spotted, which hadn’t been difficult as he even made me look small. He was sitting with Sarah’s husband, as that man watched her dance, smiling happily.

“Hiya, Tony”

“Mike! How are you feeling, trip nearly over?”

“Like I haven’t done enough, mate. So many places to come back for”

“And there aren’t better ones down under?”

“Different, mate. This trip, well, seeing it through the family’s eyes makes a difference”

“Where’s the missus?”

“Talking about birds. In detail”

“Ha! Won’t mention that to mine, then. Oh, being rude. This is my old mate Steve”

I shook the proffered hand.

“Actually, he’s why I came over. Steve, I think we’ve met before. Do you ride?”

“I do. Not as much as I used to do, what with family and that, but yeah”

“Did you have an 850 Guzzi?”

“Still have, mate. Take it out when there’s no rain forecast anywhere within a thousand miles, of course. How’d you know that?”

“Dunmow? Bum Freezer rally?”

“Oh god! When it really, really snowed?”

“Yup. I decided to leave all my bike kit and come in my mountaineering stuff. Bloody cold nights”

“God yeah. Only time I’ve ever had a Camping Gaz stove refuse to light up. Got you now! It was in the scrumming game, wasn’t it?”

I nodded.

“And you bloody beat me in the final. I remember that”

“And I remember you getting so pissed all you could talk about was how you had two sleeping bags, one inside the other. I found a better solution”

“Which was?”

He looked around, clearly for awkward eavesdroppers, then murmured, “Remember that despatch rider? She had her arm in plaster?”

“Yes, I do!”

“She had an estate car with a mattress in the back and curtains at the windows, along with a big pile of quilts. We, um, economised on loss of body heat”

Tony was chuckling.

“By generating a lot more, no doubt, you randy bastard”

“Were you there as well, Tony?”

“On a bike? With deep snow on the ground and black ice on the roads? In a tent? Oh, and if I remember correctly, on the wrong shift to actually get away to it, he adds more truthfully. Anyway, it’s like the old saying: cold weather is just god’s way of telling us to add more BMW drivers to the fire”

That one, I couldn’t argue with.