Comment 27 by Billy Sands … I do not consider my exploits particularly impressive. I was just addressing your point on stairs. …

Hey, Billy, I was joking. And since I live in Norfolk, for some odd reason I rarely meet mountaineers. So perhaps they are different. Around here the sportsmen tend to be the rugger-bugger type: it’s they who are so often broken in some way.

Comment 29 by Michael Austin How does one email Richard?

Good God, I doubt Richard advertises his e-mail address: if he did I suspect he could easily spend every waking hour until the end of his days answering mail from the likes of us on here. Perhaps an automated telephone system might work though: Press 1 to leave a death threat, Press 2 to tell me how wonderful I am, press 3 to sell me solar panels, and so on …

Comment 30 by Jumped Up Chimpanzee The former, yes. The latter, no. Although those heavy hessian shirts and patchwork quilt jackets can make you look a lot fatter than you really are.

Ha Ha! I was referring to etiolation rather than obesity: the people who look like their metabolism needs a decent fillet steak or ten.

Comment 31 by Alan4discussion Orthopaedic wards do tend to be stocked with those from physically competitive sports and heavy construction jobs …

Oh well, perhaps I am a sportsman after all: I did spend this afternoon up a scaffold restoring my chimneys. That’s a close as I ever get, or indeed will ever want to get, to mountaineering. You guys who hang off ropes up mountains do have my respect: just walking about on a roof scares me!

Comment 32 by Helga Vierich I thought Richard's poem was very sweet. It had the courage to be simple, poignant …

And the even greater courage to rhyme ‘fishes’ with ‘Mauritius’.

That takes balls! :)