An encounter in the mountains

2010-01-12T14:36:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'm not sure if you can get done under Trades Descriptions for the title of a blog entry, but I'm going to come clean with you now. If you thought you were going to read about a rugged adventure in the Rockies, abseiling in the Alps or cavorting on crampons in the, erm, Cairngorms, you will be disappointed. This is about an encounter and it did take place in the mountains, but only in the sense that if I lifted my gaze pretty much anywhere above nose-level they were right in front of me, whichever way I looked. But I wasn't actually up one, on one or even leaning casually against one. Just looking, as I always say in the Carphone Warehouse.

The thing is I love mountains, I love them. You know in Groundhog Day when Bill Murray asks Andie McDowell where she pictures herself in five years time and she says living at altitude somewhere. Well, that's me, I'm Andie McDowell. Trouble is, I'm also Bill Murray when he snorts with derision, well, the first time round because of course it is Groundhog Day.

I love the mountains, in any weather, I love them. But sometimes the absurdity of this bald Englishman lolloping about the Alps greased like a pig in August in my factor 50, legs the colour of Nosferatu, trying not to stab myself with my sticks and wearing a lumberjack shirt in a pattern that throbs like a severe migraine and a colour designed to be seen from the Moon, makes the Bill in me want to snort at my inner-Andie.

You might think that alone on a remote mountainside, above the snowline, communing with the Great Unknown, something profoundly poetic would whack me upside the head. You might think. And so do I. But so far the vision thing, if it's up there, is happily hanging out with the marmots, lying in the sun and scratching itself. It hasn't beaned me on the noggin yet.

Instead I am struck repeatedly by the thought that I'm living in someone else's revivial of a Brian Rix farce only in this one Brian is losing his lederhosen and somehow I'm locked naked in the sauna. Talking of which, here's a bit of free verse about my true encounter in the mountains last summer with a fellow sauna user. Beyond that we had nothing in common, as you will see...

Cultural exchange

There’s a little bald bloke in the sauna;

his head, tactile as a nut, has

the patina of a much loved

family heirloom.

I think he might be German; thing is,

he doesn’t speak a word

of English and I don’t

sprechen sie Deutsch.

We smile ruefully, and respect our

cultural differences. I’ve got used to him,

parading about, stark bollock naked,

glistening, ready basted,

and he’s used to my fannying

around in my little towel;

Tony Curtis born again,

in Spartacus.

I’m sure he thinks I’ve

an unfortunate birthmark or

I’m just, unfortunate.

One thing is clear.

Each day, after baking for twenty minutes

at 90 degrees C, he emerges,

a walking red alert,

a fizzing fuel rod,

leaking from every pore,

he marches straight

into the bone cold, drenching

of the showers

where he emits a bellow like

he’s been walloped in the nuts,

with a length of two by four, and

hobbles out, hunched

and muttering; I don’t know

what he’s saying, but

I do know exactly

what he means.

Life...and other problems

An encounter in the mountains