The curse

The Curse

Tom Curtis

A

flash outside lifts my eyes from the flicker of the screen to the dull darkNewcastle skies and the fat drops of rain on the office windowpane. Iwon’t cross the Town Moor tonight. Just the thought of being exposedon that familiar urban pasture in this weather creates a pit in my stomach. So Icycle 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

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Image by Dermot Somers

the air buzzed in front of my nose and the ether ionised, before the flash-bang and the kick in the face. Shock and fear and panic all come at once. We sit up and make a futile attempt to save ourselves by flinging the metal rack and axes down the ledge. But there is nowhere to go and nothing to do. I lie face down.

There is a big shock, a really big shock. It instantly and involuntarily invokes a childhood memory. A violent and dangerous jolt of mains electricity from the bare wires of an old clock at home. But this is worse.

And the storm begins to play with us. Little shocks are interspersed with those inflicting severe pain. This is not simply fear. I am used to fear. This is fear x helplessness x anticipation.

I have no agency, no tips. no tricks, just cowering impotent dread of the blow I know will come. The shocks are hard, so hard; the next one must surely kill me.

I count to cope. Not all the electrocutions, that would be too many, just the big ones. Four.. five… six….was that eight? Is this what it is like to be tortured? To bear pain upon pain, not knowing what you can endure or what you can survive, when it will stop. But there is no torturer. There is no one to blame or to appease. This is just physics.

But there is always some one to blame. Some bastard had put a metal Madonna on the top of the mountain: a sanctimonious sacred lightning conductor. In a flash of anger I know who, or rather what, to blame. I curse loudly, and I remember those words with a clarity borne of shame.

“When this fucking storm is over I am going to climb to the top of this FUCKING mountain and I am going to find that FUCKING Madonna and throw it down the FUCKING hill!!”

Dermot responds in soft, composed Irish tones. “Tom, I don’t think this a good time to be cursing Madonnas!”

I stop. And in that instance I find comfort. I may have been too proud to pray. But simply not swearing was an admission that more than physics could be at play. The presence of forces that I would not explicitly admit to believing in, but in my terror I would not now dismiss.

Were we struck again? I don’t remember, but I think we were. But I was not quite so frightened - I had brought something on to my side. And eventually the storm slunk away to other mountaintops and other victims, and we slept.

The morning brought sunshine, tea and a calm methodological descent, our normal irreligious feelings seemingly restored.

I was left with no visible scar; just a fear of lightning, a present, lingering fear, and a silent respect for those that pray.

Tom as St Patrick (photo: Dermot Somers)

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FootnoteThe author wonders whether Dermot Somers was inspired by the following poem to create theimage of him as St Patrick:

“At Tara today in this fateful hour I place all Heaven with its power, And the sun with its brightness, And the snow with its whiteness, And fire with all the strength it hath, And lightning with its rapid wrath, And the winds with their swiftness along their path, And the sea with its deepness, And the rocks with their steepness, And the earth with its starkness All these I place, By God’s almighty help and grace, Between myself and the powers of darkness.”

“The Rune of St. Patrick”, derived from “The Lorica”, both traditionally attributed to St. Patrick

Translation by James Clarence Mangan, published in Lyrica Celtica (1896); also in Celtic Christianity : Ecology and Holiness (1987) by Christopher Bamford and William Parker Marsh, p54

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As many will know, Tom Curtis is Professor of Environmental Engineering at Newcastle University (with a focus on ‘the science and technologies required for the treatment of water and wastes’) or, as he calls himself, ‘Professor of Poo’, and in recognition of that status, here is a photograph of a toilet in Pamirs of Tajikstan taken by local photgrapher Clare Rowntree.

‘I’ve experienced a lot of rather bizarre toilets on my travels and this one in the Pamirs of Tajikistan ranks with the best of them. Built from old Russian car parts it’s fully recycled, colourful and offers a modicum of privacy. You just have to watch out for the rusty bits.’

Clare Rowntree