As far as I am concerned, insurance can sod off and die. It bores me to think about having to insure my own stuff, never mind processing hundreds of other people's irrelevant, and mostly inane, ramblings. "It wasn't my fault...I only moved over to the other side of the road to see what it would be like. He should of checked before driving straight into me...blah, blah, blah..."

Anyway I had to put up with a whole summer of this in an attempt to fund my over-ambitious drinking and drug-taking habits that all good and dedicated students are involved with. There was nothing worse than sitting in front of a computer screen, not really understanding - or to that matter caring - what I was actually inputting. In fact the only satisfaction I got from the whole experience was about three months after I had finished, when I learned to my complete adulation, that a single claim I wrongly processed cost the company a cool ten grand!

Anyway, I digress.

This particular day - towards the end of the summer - was beautiful. Blue sky, burning sunshine, and all the other stuff that usually goes with a nice day. I was absolutely desperate to get out climbing, which wasn't helped by my dole-boy mates, sunning themselves in the Lakes while pretending to climb.

Come five I was out of there in a shot, and set off home a little bit depressed that none of my mates were around to go for a climb, when T rescued me. T was, and still is, a top bloke but in many ways he was also an annoying bastard. He could climb traditional E4/E5/E6 without too many problems, but would constantly slag it off in favour of sitting in the pub with a fag and a pint. Its not that I'm adverse to this attitude, its just annoying that he would hardly ever climb, and then all of a sudden, shoot up an E5 in his slippers, while smoking a rolly, and with no protection.

Anyway he pulled up beside me in his battered out old Metro, and suggested that we drive over to Langdale and attempt The Crack on Gimmer Crag. Made up! We figured that we would have enough time to drive up there, do the route, and after a brisk decent, make it to the Dungeon Ghyll pub before it got dark.

When we got to the bottom of the route which, for anyone that is interested, is a three star traditional Lakeland VS, it was decided that I should do the first pitch. Well, off I went up what should have been the first of three pitches, and made it to the first stance with very little problems.

And then it was over to T.

No sooner had he lifted himself off the ground than the whether closed in. The clouds descended, the rain started, the wind picked up and all of a sudden things were a little bit less attractive than they were. We decided that it would be alright, if we just hung around for a minute or minute or two to let the weather pass. This turned out to be a big mistake, as the rain did stop, and the wind dropped enough for us to think that the weather was changing for the good permanently.

So off went T again. I don't think we were jinxed, but about five or six metres up the second pitch it started to rain again. Now I'll be honest here. I wanted to retreat. It wasn't very nice, the route - as is always the case with Lakeland VS's - was far harder than it should have been in the dry, never mind the wet, and my feet were starting to hurt.

A brisk "don't be a puff," taunt from T soon got my head straight and he disappeared up into the greyness to appear at the next stance, at the foot of the final pitch. After bringing me up to the ledge T agreed to do the final pitch as well, which is an evil slightly over hanging corner, that requires hand jamming and a whole manner of painful looking foot work.

And this is where the fun and games really began!

The final belay stance is a lovely wide and long ledge, known as The Bower, which sits directly below the 'bastard crack'. While I made myself comfortable, T set off, but made it only a third of the way up before sliding all the way back down again. He was not amused, and with a determined look set off again in order to defeat this pesky and impetuous piece of rock. This time he got about two thirds of the way up, and wasn't able to slide back down - falling was the only option.

It was now getting quite late, by the way!

T hung from his last bit of gear for quite a while though, waiting for some divine intervention. He was still determined to conquer the route - I was tending towards the pint and fag idea.

T finally conceded defeat after about three more attempts - with each one he got the leg shakes, and swore he was going to fall off, which he did. Anyway I lowered him back down, as down climbing was impossible in those conditions. When he reached the stance, we had a contemplatorary fag, and planned our next step.

For once a unanimous decision - abseil and fuck the hex that we would lose, we were struggling to make last orders.

And then it happened. The ropes had become so tangled that an abseil was out of the question without a dedicated untangling session. We set on to this so fervently that we only succeeded in taking the situation from bad to worse. Unclipping ourselves, and starting again was now the only way we could go and this time we were a little bit more patient.

11.05pm.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

When we finally got the ropes untangled, about 20 minutes later, we were just about to get started when T realised that not only had he clipped out of the rope, but he had also clipped out of the belay.

"Aaaarrrrgh," he said.

"What?" I asked.

"I'm not fucking clipped in for fucking fucks sake," he shouted.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

This was a bad moment for us both. The fact that he was quite happily jumping around for about an hour while unclipped, on a six foot by three foot ledge, two hundred feet up a sodding cliff had little impact on logic here, and we panicked. After clipping in, T pushed me out of the way and got down the abseil pretty sharpish - I didn't take long to follow. Even so we didn't get back to the battered out old Metro till about quarter to one - last orders had well and truly been missed.

What was that about those drugs.