A while back, I did something a little bit silly.

Alpkit were running a design competition under the catchy title of “CoLab08″. This looked interesting, but the conditions of entry were draconian to say the least and I decided that it would be far more sensible to steer clear and keep my large collection of home-made bodges (most involving gaffer tape) to myself. In any case, the general aim of the competition appeared to be “innovation in the outdoors” and, having failed dismally to invent the world’s first self-stirring mess-tin, I was feeling a little short on inspiration.

So, I decided I wasn’t going to enter, but I kept dipping into the Alpkit site and reading the entries. As you do.

 The early entries were, in general, less than wonderfully inspiring - that is, they had either been done before, solved non-existent problems or required a fundamental re-write of the laws of physics.

Then Alpkit changed the conditions of entry to remove most of the nasty bits.

This seemed a good time to submit a couple of the more practical home-made bodges - ie the ones that actually worked as opposed to proving hazardous to the user, any passing sheep and low-flying aircraft, spontaneously disintegrating, or turning out to be so heavy as to require a dedicated team of sherpas.

So far, so good. Unfortunately, it was at this point that beer became involved. As did a wolf costume.

Yes, a wolf costume.

 Really.

It didn’t work and, yes, it involved large amounts of gaffer tape. But the teeth on the ghastly effort were made out of a plastic with the useful property of becoming soft enough to mould easily at temperatures cool enough to handle.

I’d been thinking about getting new ice tools for a while. I’d had a good fondle in various gear shops and admired numerous funky spiky things with numerous different handles - none of them a particularly wonderful fit for my rather small hands.

Then, on the bus back from the usual climbing club pub session, I started wondering whether that interesting plastic would make a good custom handle. It turned out that it did. So, on the last day of the design comp, I submitted a strange plastic object, built and photographed at 1am while less than entirely sober, that resembled the offspring of a ice-axe and a sex-aid.

Worryingly, it made the final cut. I can only conclude that those responsible for the decision were themselves a little drunk, or possibly just in possession of a very warped sense of humour.

Then the full horror of the situation dawned. I was going to have to actually build the thing.

That was a while ago. Since then, my entire flat - and it isn’t a big flat - has filled up with prototype axe handles, I keep finding bits of plastic moulding in strange places and I’ve managed some impressively bloody self-inflicted injuries with a wide range of tools. (It’s actually quite hard to injure yourself with a tape-measure . . . I still managed it.)

In the unlikely event that I win the comp - which I very much doubt, as it’s too specialist a product to have much mass appeal - I still won’t make a profit on this. The to-do list gets longer every time I look at it and it’s been much, much harder work than anything the company I work for has ever required.

Next week I get to take the tweaked axes off to the UKC Glencoe meet to play with for real. The injury potential looks impressive. I can hardly wait!

But, assuming I don’t get avalanched, fatally choke on haggis, or get strangled by the rest of the meet for snoring, I will be at the NEC for the Outdoors Show, and, if anyone reading this is intending coming, I have one very simple request:

Find me and beat me savagely with a cucumber, malt loaf,  or ice-axe-with-a-custom-handle until I finally get the following important principle into my thick skull:

“1% inspiration . . . 99% perspiration.”

http://www.alpkit.com/colab08/entry/configurable-ice-tool-handles

The boulders stand in a typical urban park, hemmed in by Victorian terraces and the railway line. An old woman, well-wrapped against the rain, plods slowly along the path while her small hairy dog lifts its leg against the rusting goalposts. Hidden amongst the dripping trees, the boulders are new, as yet un-graffitied, the muddy scars their construction has gouged into the grass yet to heal.

You could almost imagine someone being murdered here, the scene immortalised in grainy newsprint monochrome, one abandoned trainer lying forlornly like a memorial to hope. But, then again, hope has led someone to construct – and pay for – five small concrete boulders, which are the whole reason for my being in this muddy wasteland on a wet Saturday afternoon.

We are in Northamptonshire, a county whose principal – and indeed only – entry in a climbing guide is the truly execrable Finedon Slabs. The only climbing walls date from the era when gluing bits of polished rock to the side of a sports hall was considered state-of-the-art. And now we have boulders. Not good boulders, not high boulders, not boulders with interesting features, not boulders with holds other than jugs – but they are, at least, better than nothing.

As a climber, I have a fascination with such things, and so I have sat through an hour-long bus journey and come squelching out into the park to investigate. An hour spent traversing around the boulders, hands numb with the cold, around and around and around like a zoo inmate pacing the cage, and it’s time to pack up and squelch off in search of a bus home.

Why do I do this? It isn’t real climbing. It’s of doubtful value as training. But it is a structure intended for climbing . . . and so, to a climber, this means that it Must Be Climbed.

I love climbing. I love the physical poetry of movement over rock, the craftsman’s satisfaction at seating a well-placed nut, the lazy camaraderie of people who choose to label themselves climbers. I love sunsets at the top of Stanage. I love looking down on trees. I love doing something that is still, to many people, a little bit “different”.

I hate climbing. I hate being cold. I hate training incessantly in an echoing chalky bus garage and achieving precisely bugger all. I hate failing miserably on routes well within my ability and I hate being the rubbish one in any given group of climbers. I hate being scared.

Love and hate, like many extremes, are simply two sides of the same coin.