Answer: When a light bulb pings on on in the man's head and the lady doesn't unscrew the bulb, change it for an energy efficient one, put a nice shade on it and make the man put the step ladders away.
This is a story of Not North Face Route, Not Jenny's First Scottish Severe on the best climbing day for a month but instead a ponder on gender differences.
We woke on an idyllic plot of turf on the shore of a sea loch and prepared for 'a 325 metre link-up of climbs en-route to the summit of one of Britain's finest peaks'. (Tom Weir's intro to North Face Route and January Jigsaw in Classic Rock).
This is a story of Not North Face Route, Not Jenny's First Scottish Severe on the best climbing day for a month but instead a ponder on gender differences.
We woke on an idyllic plot of turf on the shore of a sea loch and prepared for 'a 325 metre link-up of climbs en-route to the summit of one of Britain's finest peaks'. (Tom Weir's intro to North Face Route and January Jigsaw in Classic Rock).
I bought time to photograph the guide-book by being more than usually efficient at packing and washing-up. My light bulb moment was to ditch the guide book and just use the pictures on my camera - select the right jpeg and zoom in - eh voila! Jenny whiled away time making our lunches while I made final vital checks that my idea would work (some of the photo's had to be taken again as the brilliant sun washed-out minor detail like route lines on the topo and some of the pitch descriptions).
Whilst climbing the approach path from the Water-Slide, a sickening feeling began to grip my gut like Chris Sharma on a pinch. The van (containing the guide book) was now a good km and a half behind us at Lagangarbh, across the blistering glen, beyond a conga of like-minded but less well-organised optimists.
Sweat drip-fed sun-cream under my contact lenses as Jenny enquired as to the particulars of our objective. The way she breathed as I simply selected the correct frame and zoomed-in to flesh-out my vague response caused an 8a tightening down-below, the only sun for a month making the screen difficult to read without faffing to create shade with my hat. A guide with two clients in tow was now upon us and, to Jenny's escalating frustration, I engaged the guide in conversation eventually procuring a peek at her proper book. The twinge downstairs now pushed 8b as the guide confirmed having never climbed on Central Buttress so couldn't advise best approach for North Face Route.
Desperately I latched on to the guide like a tick in the crease of her knee - the difference between me and a tick is that on its host the tick would be transported to a land of milk-and-honey, whereas my parasitic desperation carried us 300m away from North Face Route and any ensuing taste of sweetness.
A glimmer of reprieve presented itself as we arrived at the foot of Rannoch Wall and the guide expressed no preference between Agag's Groove or January Jigsaw; ok we weren't going to link-up two starred Severes but at least we'd get one, Jenny's first on Scottish rock. But that hope of redemption was dashed, as brutally as a kid at the campsite had converted a crab into bait, when I consulted my photo-guide to find...
... an atheism-confirming lack of completeness in the description of January Jigsaw. Salvation would have been assured if my photo had captured it in full. It is too painful to document the spread of malaise from the gut to the head as Jenny's 'tutts' and 'huffs' destroyed all hope of me retaining any dignity that fine and terrible day.
The trailing hopefuls had now formed an orderly queue behind, as I tried to lead-off on the only route now available, the wonderful in all other circumstances yet disappointing in these, Agag's Groove (VDiff)(Not Severe). Sometimes in dreams I am chased by a lion but escape is desperately slow and torturous like running through treacle and so it was that I could not emerge from the brain-fog onto sunny rock until a consultation with the queue brought me 5m back from my false-start onto the route proper.
The pics below do not do justice to the bountiful panorama across Rannoch Moor that rewards ascendants of this classic climb and they cannot touch the paradoxical emptiness that I felt as I took in metre after metre of seething, connecting me to Jenny like the umbilical of an unwanted pregnancy.
On the M8 south through Glasgow I was struck by the futility of a Vauxhaul Chevette with a body-kit - the driver obviously male. This is not an lesson in auto-flagellation for me or my gender but I had to muse, 'what the hell are women doing while blokes are having great ideas like photographing the climbing guide or expressing their virility in fibreglass?'
