Apparently, feeling good about yourself improves sporting performance. Wear something that makes you feel like a star, and you climb harder.

With that in mind, I have concluded that my current state of miserable bumbliedom is nothing at all to do with my excessive beer and pie consumption, and everything to do with the filthy and shredded state of some of my climbing trousers. And so I have purchased a new pair. Not any old trousers, but Performance Sport Legwear.

What do people think?

Apparently the club hut was 50 at the weekend. Or possibly it was the hut warden. Or possibly the hut warden’s dog. But, whatever it was we were supposed to be celebrating, it was a good excuse for a marquee in the garden, several barrels of beer, music, dancing, general revelry, and a pig looking somewhat surprised to find that someone had not only gutted it but impaled it on a spit as well.

This also meant that, as well as various newbies enticed along by the prospect of beer and pig sandwiches, members of the club who hadn’t been seen for years came crawling out of the woodwork - all those, ahem, ‘mature’ members widely assumed to have long since died, emigrated, or stopped climbing and taken up morris-dancing. The hut was packed to the point where late-comers found their choice of sleeping spots limited to the toilets, the coal-shed or sharing a bench with the beer-barrels, and for once I wasn’t the last person out of bed.

It also meant that, rather than being the fat weak punter tagging along behind the fit and talented, I actually found myself in demand, due to having brought ropes, rack, and enthusiasm and hence being the ideal partner for  people who don’t lead yet, people who last led twenty years ago, people who can’t read maps, and people who can no longer see well enough to read maps. I had a very pleasant amble up a two-pitch Diff - the top pitch being a glorious slab with just enough gear - abbed off another route in pouring rain, persuaded someone to do his first lead in absolutely ages, and went for a long walk round a reservoir with superb views and endless seas of purple heather while explaining the difference between a footpath and a bridleway to two new members whose acquaintence with the delights of OS maps was only minutes old.

And I really wasn’t trying. Normally I tend towards the view that getting off the hill without recourse to a headlamp feels like a waste of daylight, that climbing in the rain is perfectly possible and that there is always time for one more route, but, on this occasion, I was happy to come off the hill early for tea and buns. There was no pressure at all to perform, which just made it all the more relaxing.

So yes, I got virtually nothing done. But it was still - in a relaxed, ambling sort of way - fun.

Saturday night in North Wales, relaxing on a knackered old sofa in a state of peaceful post-pub repletion, listening to the wind howling, savouring the piquant atmosphere of the club hut (fried food, festering wet kit and woodsmoke) and feeling very thankful indeed to have a nice dry building in which to escape the monsoon. Suddenly there is a knock on the door, from which I deduce that Dan has forgotten his hut key again.

He has indeed, forgotten his key.

There is, however, a more urgent problem. He’s forgotten Luke as well. And where is Luke, exactly?

“Have we got a ladder?” Dan seems to be a little bit excited.

Guddling around in the coal store, fumbling around the coal, wood, bicycles, lawnmower, saws, paint cans, hatchet and ninety miles of entangling hosepipe, it is established that yes, we do have a stepladder . . . which isn’t in the coal store at all, but in its proper place under the stairs. Out into the churchyard with said stepladder, where a horrible vision assaults our eyes. We have found Luke. And he is on the church roof.

And he is Stark. Bollock. Naked.

Apparently soloing the church naked seemed, for beer-related reasons, to be a really wizard idea. And now, of course, he can’t get down, and he’s stranded on the roof like some pale and hairy gargoyle.

The stepladder, needless to say, is far too short. We manage to coax him down as far as the guttering, where he nervously eyes up the rather dynamic move to the ladder and the probability of a groin-first landing onto a rather pointy grave.

“Get your hands on the gutter and swing!” The gutter bends alarmingly. No go. He retreats to the safety of the ridge-line.

“Can you throw me a rope?” No, not that far we can’t. That far would be a bit of a stretch even with some thin string and a weight, which in any case we don’t have. Time for plan B. Luke is to make his way along the ridge, slide down the far end onto the porch and we should be able to get him down from there. (Well, it seemed a good idea at the time.) Luke shuffles “a cheval” along the ridge, cursing far too loudly as the rough slates dig into his delicate bits. Dan and I cower behind the church, waiting for the rabidly Welsh-nationalist villagers of Pant-y-Gyrdl to realise that their church is being desecrated by a naked Englishman and come pouring forth with pitchforks and flaming torches.

Luke is above the porch.

“F*ck! That’s a well long way down!”

“Yep.”

“I’m not f*cking sliding down that.”

“We could always leave you up there.”

“Oh f*ck . . . I’m going to have to do this, aren’t I? Oh, f*ck. Oh, f*ck. Oh, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!”SlitherscrabblecrunchSPLAT! . . . as Luke slides down the roof, fingernails gouging uselessly at the wet slate, misses the porch completely and lands on first the stepladder and then Dan.

Silence.

Followed by a groan as Luke tries to disentangle himself from the ladder. Fortunately neither of them appeared to have broken anything, although the huge gouges on Luke’s bum needed substantial amounts of antiseptic cream and Dan’s shoulder was still sore the following day.

(He’s just lucky he didn’t slide front-down . . . I’m not rubbing cream into *that*.)

Still, to a climber, even the church must be climbed. Even when naked.

I was still laughing about it this morning, when I had to phone the elderly administrator of a local shooting league.

“Hello, can I speak to Mr A—, please?”

“Speaking.”

“I’ve got the list you asked for last night - got anything to write with?”

“Yes . . . and do you mind doing this phone call with your eyes shut?”

“Erm . . .?”

“You see, I was just about to get in the bath, and I’m naked!”

It’s like buses, isn’t it? You wait ages for a naked man, and then two come along at once.

 U wot?

Txt-spk iz gr8! It’s qix 2 typ, it’s EZ 2 rED, it sAvz b&width & U don’t evN hav 2 b abL 2 spL. It mAkz U L%k kewl & modern jst lIk aL d hip & hapNn ppl, n fact it mAkz U L%k so modern dat U do aL yor communic8ing by txt msg & nevr actually TLK 2 anybody. It’s gr8 cuz othRwIz U wud L%k lIk U wrte lIk letRz on lIk papR lIk wot dey Usd 2 do bak n olden dAz. Bsidez, it shOz evry1 dat U’ve got a mob fone & dat’s imprtnt cuz not havN a mob wud b jst so utterly unkewl. hA, Y R U guys trEtN me lIk som sort of illiter8 LUG kid?!

No, I didn’t understand it either. Thank God.