Sleeping on Helvellyn

I used to belong to a kind of social club called Spice, although it's quite a few years ago since I was a member. We did all sorts of things though the bits I liked best were the bowling and the rambling. I went on all of those. There was one ramble, more of a day-hike really, up Helvellyn - a peak in the lake district - which I especially remember, though not for any very good reasons. The weather was miserable as we ascended and worse when we reached the top. As we were spending the night up there without tents and with only bivvy bags for protection this was not good news. It was, I can fairly say, one of the worst nights I have spent in my life.

By contrast I spent another weekend on a writing course a the Welsh cottage of one of the Spice founders and that was considerably more comfortable, apart, perhaps, from the snoring from the others sharing my dormitory accommodation. The connection between the two things is one of the writing exercise that we did while we were there which I have just discovered afresh while clearing out some old junk files on my computer. The exercise was to write a short piece in ten minutes about a personal experience written in the present tense. Having re-read it, it seems to well sum up the experience.

So here it is, dusted down and presented for your amusement.

The one about an experience, written in the present tense

I haven’t got the faintest idea what time it is and I don’t care. I’m too busy spending all my energy on caring about how bloody miserable this whole experience is to spare any on worrying about the time. God knows what possessed me to think this was a good idea.

Ten minutes ago I’d managed to fall asleep. Somehow I’d found a point of balance on the narrow bench of stone and started to doze, but I’m awake again now and in spite of being in my clothes inside a four season bag inside a bivvy bag I’m still about as cold and wet and miserable as I ever remember being.

What woke me was a rock falling from the top of the wall and hitting me on the head. It was probably smaller than my clenched fist but it felt like a boulder. It could have fractured my skull, or if I’d been laying face up instead of on my side with my arms curled like a boxer protecting my face, it could have smashed my glasses into fragments, ground the glass into my eyes.

We had put a huge plastic sheet over the cross of the wall, pinning it in place with wedged stones, but it had been a futile gesture. The wind had torn it away leaving us freezing and exposed. It was probably in the next county by now.

I hate this.

It occurs to me that lying on the windward side of the wall may not have been the brightest idea I’ve ever had and awkwardly, blind and clumsy in the darkness and rain, I swing my feet to the ground and try to bunny hop round to the lee without letting go of the bag.

Somehow, and I don’t know how because it feels like it’s taken for ever, I get round. There are six other people huddled in their cocoons against each other and the wall.

I force my way into the middle and no-one says anything though some of them must be awake. They probably don’t want to spare the energy either.

I check that I’m not too close to the wall. I learned my lesson from the last rock.

I haven’t got the faintest idea what time it is and I don’t care.

I just want it to be dawn.

I just want to go home.