Crux of the matter

Up at the climbing wall at Salisbury Crags, Geoff and Nick are taking apart this crux problem. Now, I am uninitiated in the black arts of climbing, but each of them is in this picture, oh, at least 12 inches off the ground. How hard can it be?

Well, it transpires that you need muscles in your fingernails, which I soon discover I don't have.

By and by Geoff tells me that today is the last day of summer. Being a stickler for such things, I point out that the expiry of what some of us in Scotland call "the disappointing season" is in fact September 21.

No, he insists, with a withering you're-being-a-bloody-stickler tone, it's the last of the weather. Tonight is it. Kaput. Done. I don't know how he knows this but he is having a BBQ to celebrate its passing.

And so it turns into a great, impromptu night of drinking and eating. Cheers lads!