Douglas Foot, Duckless Feet And More Sniffing Around The Chalk-Face

Douglas Foot. How could I have forgotten a name like that? Foot was a sniffer. (“On Powdering Your Nose”, 31/10/09; where all the names of the glues just ‘stuck’; but I couldn’t recall the names of any of my fellow glue- sniffers.) And it was always Douglas, never Doug; because Doug Foot sounded too much like Bigfoot.

No, we never called him Doug Foot, even when we were “glued out of our Meindl’s” (Meindl is a reputable brand of mountain boots - “Meindls get you high”). This is the Meindl Eagle.

I can’t picture Foot - and I don’t have any photographs to remind me (we rarely snapped and sniffed – too much camera-shake); So I’m left with nothing but a name; there’s a gap where Foot’s face should be. The nearest thing I have is a photograph of some ‘duckless’ feet.

The duck has become unstuck. All that remains is dried glue (like semen), and a gap where the duck should be - “this bird has flown” (Lennon & McCartney, "Norwegian Wood", from “Rubber Soul", 1965).

Years ago the climb ‘to do’, was a route called “Footless Crow”. All new rock climbs are given a name by the climber who makes the first ascent (many are named after rock-albums or song titles; the Lake District boasts some truly dreadful rock & roll route-inspired names like, “Sultans Of Swing” and “Gates Of Delirium”; This is how the rock-rag, Crags (no.8, 1977) broke the news of the third ascent of “Footless Crow”.

Mick Fowler (an appropriate surname, given the name of the route) is a Taxman as well as a climber - he’s very high up in the revenue – used to police the whole of South West London; : "Taxman", also the title of another Beatles Song, from "Revolver" (1966).

Mick Fowler’s autobiography, “Vertical Pleasure – The Secret Life of a Taxman” (1996), chronicles his rise to fame on and off the rocks: from the tiny (but desperate) sandstone outcrops of East Sussex, to the snow-capped peaks of Patagonia. But there is one utterly eccentric style of climbing Fowler has made his own: desperate and extremely dangerous ascents of chalk cliffs in South East England: Beachy Head and the White Cliffs of Dover.

The revenue inspector treats the vertical chalk as ice (dry ice?) and ascends it with the aid of ice axes and crampons. This form of climbing is very much ‘an acquired taste’ and unsurprisingly, has few imitators. Apart from dealing with the extreme looseness and unpredictable nature of the vertical chalk (massive rock-falls are common on these one hundred and twenty metre cliffs!) the revenue inspector is often attached by angry, nesting Fulmars (fulmars eject an evil smelling stomach oil over their victims!). One of Fowler’s ‘epics’ on Beachy Head was even reported on News At Ten. Here’s our heavily powdered taxman (more Yeti than revenue inspector) after a difficult day at the chalk-face.

Sometimes Fowler climbs ‘real’ ice – but in the most unlikely of locations: back in the late 1970’s Fowler made the first and last ascent of a freak ice stalactite (the result of a burst frozen drainpipe) on St Pancras Station, London.

What's a 'Wool Competition'? Wool; ectoplasm; noses; glue; chalk; drainpipes; Douglas Foot (I wonder if he’s still alive and sniffing?).
Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row links drainpipes and sniffing: “He looked so immaculately frightful as he bummed a cigarette then he went off sniffing drainpipes and reciting the alphabet”. And there are several routes (on cliffs as far apart as Cornwall, Lancashire and the South of France) all named Desolation Row.

But by far the best new-route-name I know of was conceived and first climbed by a one-time climbing companion of mine, Chris Plant. Where Douglas Foot used to get ‘high’, Chris Plant would ‘creep across’ (I was friendly with Plant the same time I was friends with that other more famous traverser, Jerry Moffatt – see “Dogging, Spotting, Buttering and Buildering”, 22 October, 2009 blog).

Chris Plant was literally, a ‘creeper’ as well as a climber - a creeper with a weight problem: he traversed across the back wall of Lawencefield quarry (known as the ‘Great Wall’) in Derbyshire to produce his very own “Heavy Plant Crossing”.

A Pair of Drainpipes and a Trouser Press

Just received a communiqué from a photographer - a well-known art-photographer, from the 1970’s. He’s all excited about “The Excited Young Caddie” (27/10/09). In fact he became so excited about the ‘excitement’ in the young caddie’s trousers, he traced it - look!

As well as physically tracing the “bursting out”, our old art-photographer went a stage further and traced his tracing of the “bursting”, historically, back through his own negative files, back to an image he made in the late 1970’s titled “Pinocchio” (and remember, photographs were starting to be ‘made’ and not merely ‘taken’, back then).

“Pinocchio” is the shadow cast by a neighbour’s drainpipe, photographed through a kitchen window.

The black and white world of late 1970’s, art photography was a world in flux, a tough (yet sensitive) world where photographs not only had to stand-up for themselves, they had to stand in for the ‘soul’ behind the camera - “self-expression” via a machine. Their exposures were ‘made’ towards the reflection of some “personal truth”; photographs that attempted to tell you more about the photographer than what was actually in front of the camera; photography as a vehicle of “self-expression; metaphors, equivalence and personal resonance were mined out of patterns on rocks; transcendence, myth and essence blossomed in the trees – you could even tell whether or not a drainpipe was merely dripping, or really fibbing!

Rather than views of, photographs served as meditations on. Furthermore, these shamans of self-expression often quoted and appropriated Buddhist principles – “the sound of one hand clapping” etc. But not, ironically, this old Buddhist saying: “To the man with no knowledge, rocks are just rocks and trees are just trees. Yet to the man with a little knowledge, rocks are much more than just rocks and a tree is never simply a tree. But to the man with complete knowledge, rocks are just rocks and trees are just trees”.

But as I ponder Pinocchio (as a drainpipe) it’s not noses fibbing (“Lie to me, lie to me Pinocchio” she moaned, as she sat on his face”) or drainpipes dripping (or visa versa), or even the uncanny similarity between my caddie’s excited groin and the drainpipe’s extended nose; it’s Vivian Stanshall (1943-1995) of the Bonzo Dog Dog Doo-Dah Band, and their song: “My Pink Half of the Drainpipe” I sing.

My pink half of the drainpipe

Semidetaches us

My pink half of the drainpipe

Oh, Mama!

Belongs to moi

Hey, neighbour!

My pink half of the drainpipe

I might paint it blue

My pink half of the drainpipe

Keeps me safe from you!

The name of the band came out of a Dadaist word game (sentences were cut up and the juxtaposed fragments were used to form new ones). But the band had to drop the Doo-Dah after becoming tired of explaining what “Dada” meant to audiences with no knowledge of art history. Thus they became “The Bonzo Dog Band” – later “The Bonzos”. “My Pink Half of the Drainpipe” appeared on their 1968 album: “The Doughnut in Granny’s Greenhouse”, side 2, track 9.

But look at the preceding track, “Trouser Press”, track 8. “Trouser Press” beautifully iron's out the creases; the excited young caddie pressing against his own trousers; the 1970’s art-photographer’s more recent pressing/tracing (rubbing?) of the said young caddie’s groin; the 'Pinocchio effect' on the drainpipe. All of these images are sublimely sandwiched together under the "Trouser Press" (not forgetting, Drainpipes were the fashionable style of trouser when "Trouser Press" was penned.

Through the association of drainpipe, trouser, groin and nose, we are driven back onto the golf course where it all started getting exciting, just a couple of days ago. And if all this is not enough, look: one Roger Ruskin-SPEAR wrote “Trouser Press”. What's it coming too? We'll be performing press-ups over golf holes whilst reading (coming down hard-on?) Freud next. But lets not get started on the subject of Freud and noses - enough has written about that already! Finally, Vivian Stanshall often carried a euphonium and wore pink rubber ears...