The Curse Tom Curtis
A
flash outside lifts my eyes from the flicker of the screen to the dull dark Newcastle skies and the fat drops of rain on the office windowpane. I won’t cross the Town Moor tonight. Just the thought of being exposed on that familiar urban pasture in this weather creates a pit in my stomach. So I cycle home down the back streets of Gosforth. Hoping the tall houses and trees will be more attractive to the malevolent electrostatics than my hunched figure. Still, I flinch like a cowed dog at the thousand and 1, thousand and 2, thousand and 3 mile-off storm. I don’t swear. My eyes are on the road but my mind… My mind is on the ledges near the top of the granite alpine peak. Bedding down for the night with a wary, weary satisfaction from of an ascent of Dermot’s sixth north face. Old hands of tender years, we are sanguine about the clouds billowing up from the Chamonix valley. This is not our first bivouac- not even our first storm - and we slip Goretex covers over our sleeping bags. We joke and play with words, describing our precaution as prophylaxis. Happy that tonight we will lie down head-to-head on the long thin ledge, drink tea from melted snow and slumber as the clouds gradually obliterate the stars. There was no warning. Perhaps I had a quizzical thought for the moment when
Image by Dermot Somers
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