At last

... there's something to blog about.

It's been a bit stressful, this year, so far, but not in a way that's exciting or worth blogging about. One of the comforting places to go, mentally, has been "our film" - mine and M's project, which we've been talking about, thinking about, planning, working out ... circling the actual doing of it with lots of hatching of ideas. And at long last, after all this thinking, tomorrow we get to do some doing.

This is where we'll be - Black Rocks, near Cromford

Hopefully we'll get some good climbing footage, as well as some of the other material that we want. It's a bit of an experimental day, as we don't really know how our ideas will shape up, but we're viewing tomorrow as a preliminary run, a test bed to see if the rest of our plans will work.

I hope they do - I think we have a great idea, in fact lots of ideas to explore, and having had a chat with one of the Profs at work this week I think we have another couple of projects to think about after this one. But let's get this one done first, eh?

And here's something else that's been a result of "our film" that I'm both enjoying experiencing, and observing with detached curiosity. I've started climbing again. Did a Severe 2 weeks ago, shot up a V Diff this week, and fell off 2 VS's in the last 2 weeks, and have loved it, in all its gut wrenching, muscle straining, finger knackering fabulousness. Am currently reading the stories that make up "The Boardman Tasker Omnibus" and remembering Pete Boardman's talk at school, and buying my first pair of PAs and the sleeping bag I still use from Joe Tasker's shop, am looking at booking a trekking trip to Nepal, and I kind of feel 17 again. Or as if I have refound my 17 year old self. The one who wanted to go exploring. It's funny - last September I went to a conference and met up with my PhD supervisor for the first time in a few years. Her son is a couple of years older than A, and shortly after he had gone off to University, she had gone riding for the first time in nearly 30 years. A week before our conversation, I'd gone out with M to do our first recce for the film, and the next day had scrambled about in Gordale and had the bruises to prove it, and a week later I took A to University. It's as if once our children left, we turned back into the people we were before we had them. This is not a complaint, an "if only"; far from it - having A is the best thing I ever did in my life - it's just a comment on the direction life takes, and it seemed funny and interesting that both Rose and I had gone back to things we had once loved and from which we had diverted our energies.

What do you think?