Weather or Not
“Should I stay or should I go?”
wake up Friday morning with that bloody song in my head. It’s only 5.30am but I need to listen to the shipping forecast. Sit in the kitchen in the cold waiting for the kettle to boil. ‘German bit fisher sandwich’ the voice drones – as it’s been playing on a loop for a thousand years. “Kentucky fried chicken tikka massala” it continues, the words so meaningless that they could well be an in joke between the fisherman and the BBC. On it goes “Left handed apple magnetism” until a whistling noise wakes me up. Damb!
”Always tease tease tease. You’re happy when I’m on my knees”
I switch on the TV and wait for the weather to come on. I think about Tom Brigg’s attractive weather presentering girlfriend who does the weather on Yorkshire TV and if I could get her number and find out if she knew what the weathers going to be like. Then I remember sending Tom a long joke e-mail about how I was stalking her, and how did he feel about all those blokes who were suddenly rushing home from the pub to check out the weather…presenter. Toms reply was that they’d spilt up, which made me feel a bit guilty. Finally the weather comes on, but the guy looks like he’s just woken up, and damb it he seems to be reading the same auto from last night! He says nothing about cold conditions on the Ben, or excellent snow I conditions on Meggie. And wait a minute…is there one more snow flake on that cloud? If so does that mean that it’s going to snow more, or just that they mended that glitch in the weather computer at the Met?
“One day is fine, next is black. So if you want me off your back.”
Make another cup of tea and go onto the web. I check every forecast I can find. English, Scottish and Swiss (you never know). Bugger none of them have been updated thing 12ocklock last night and its 6.15 already – what kind of service is that! I look at the avalanche forecast and it shows a man in a pare of underpants roller-skating down the great slab. I click on all the web cameras – bugger it’s still dark, I’ll have to wait. I look instead at all the forums for any clues, but the only topic is Scott Muir (I’d ring him up but he’s away doing a course with Hilti). I look on the Scottish forums but no ones saying anything of interest…or are they? The more I look at the pages the more I begin to see a code emerging. Like those WW2 radio broadcasts I begin to that they’re trying to pass on the conditions in code so that us Sassenachs don’t muscle in on the action. ‘Topic - The Eagle fly’s north to a high summit’ stands out, along with ‘The bear sleeps until Wednesday’ and ‘A frog cycles up the A9’. Of course there where posts like ‘Just climbed a 1000 foot grade VI ice line straight from the car’ but these were obviously red herrings.
“This indecision’s bugging me. If you don’t want me, set me free.”
I start ringing people up in Scotland, first of all people I know, then total strangers, mainly emergency doctors out in the far north. “Hello can you help me; I want to know if it’s snowing?” I ask. The usually answer if “What #### do you think you’re doing ringing me up at this time of the morning, of course I don’t know if it’s #### snowing…’ etc, pretty unhelpful in fact. Finally I sit there dejected wondering what to do when the phone rings. It’s Ian. “I’ve been keeping an eye on the weather and it looks crap I don’t think we should go” he says.
I suddenly feel free of the responsibility, the choice now made by someone else. The song that’s been playing in my head stops dead, and for the first time in the last three days since we agreed to go to Scotland I feel at piece. Then I think ‘what would the Clash have done?’
“What do you mean… it looks bloody brilliant – the best conditions for 10 years I’ve heard - I’m all packed and ready to go, you can’t wimp out now, don’t you dare.”
