I’ve been trying to ignore it for a while but now I’ve had to accept the something is happening “down below.” My inner sanctum has been invaded, dignity lost, genitalia moistened. The unthinkable has happened, my underpants have filled with water. I am, in the immortal words of my old climbing mate Glasgow John, “Soaked to the Ys.” For a while water has been oozing down the back of my neck, seeping into my boots and accumulating in my armpits. These intrusions I can tolerate but the moistening of my underpants summons within me a dark, deep despair.
I am a few miles out of Fort Augusts on the old military road built by General Wade in order to subdue the rebellious Scots. It’s late October and I’m heading for Blackburn Bothy. To be fair the weather forecast had cheerfully predicted, “upland gales with continuous rain,” but I hadn’t been on the hills for months, was desperate to get out and thought they might have got it wrong. Now, with dark, heavy clouds are circling me with malicious intent. These clouds Are not the light ethereal things you see floating around on a Summer’s day, these are serious clouds, they are the heavy mob and they mean business. Most of me is damp by now and I try and cheer myself up, as the boys close in, that I’ll make it before I get much wetter.
Hope may spring eternal but isobars don’t lie. I’ve read The Road, heard The Darkness, watched The Deep and now I’m about to meet The Wet. I’m only a mile from the bothy but it’s a mile too far when someone upends Loch Ness and pours it over my head.
Read more here
http://johndburns.wordpress.com/2013/11/01/the-wet/
