Church Tower Abseil

I hadn’t intended to take part.  It’s a mad way to raise funds and I hate heights anyway, so I planned to take pictures of those who were brave enough to attempt it.  But then I had reckoned without the atmosphere on the day.

The weather was perfect.  The 100ft-high medieval tower of All Saints Biddenden, Kent, was bathed in late summer sun.  There was not a breath of wind and all of nature, still green, seemed to cry out for celebration.  Among the onlookers, the tone was quietly jocular as the first batch of abseilers received their instructions.  Children played among the slanting grave stones, grown-ups rested their cameras on stone tablets where the dead were forgotten amid this profusion of colour and life.

As the morning wore on and triumphant abseilers, many of them novices, either stepped or sagged off the end of ropes, joining them became a matter of community spirit.  It looked easy too, I thought, as I watched the harnessed candidates crawl backwards down the wall like spiders: people of all shapes and sizes had succeeded.  If I didn’t try now I knew I would regret it.

At least that’s what I told myself as, duly trained, I stepped out onto the flat top of the tower.  The wind was no stronger up here but the sounds of people were much further; the tower exuded its own special tension.  Our mouths went dry and I began to wish there were a toilet nearby.  Jane, ahead of me, joked through gritted teeth about witches as she ascended the scaffold that would launch her into the void, tethered at the front but with nothing behind but a bit of harness.

My turn.  I am hooked up, twice, for extra safety.  My instructor is calm and reassuring.  As soon as I push against the ropes I am hovering over the edge, and then I can no longer see him.  Keep my right hand on the rope behind, my left in the loop in front, concentrate on loosening the right a bit at a time.  I am told to straighten my legs when all I want to do is curl up in a ball.

But I stand up straight and then the world goes quiet.  They are all watching me, the scattered matchstick-sized people I know are waiting below, but I won’t look at them.  There’s just a wall, a set of ropes, a lot of sunlight, and me.

Going down is harder than I thought.  I pass the landmarks made familiar by watching earlier abseilers: the windows, a couple of ledges, a bee’s nest in the rust-stained stone.  My weight is still supported by my gloved hand but I can’t reach the wall with my feet; instead of making a fluent descent I am swinging into nothingness, the ropes threaten to tip me on my head or spin me round altogether.

I reached the ground shaking but exhilarated, sound rushed back into my ears and time began to move forward again.  I felt I had earned my round of applause.

Moleskine mania

I wrote the following on 2nd September 2008, at 12.40 precisely:

“I have just bought my first Moleskine notebook and I can already feel the romanticism oozing from it. I’m sheltering in an arcade from the rain that has kept up all morning. Canterbury (Kent, UK) is a dirty grey and groups of bedraggled pensioners are forced to pause before launching themsleves on the weather, umbrella to the fore. I’m sitting on a borrowed café chair to eat my lunch and write, and I’m trying hard to keep the famous acid-free pages dry.”

After trawling the internet on the the subject of Moleskines, I have struggled to find something new to write about the little “cahiers” whose cost (£9.99 in WH Smith) is out of all proportion to their size, 9×14cm. Neither the sturdy cover, the closing elastic nor the back pocket would seem to justify the expense. It was even surprisingly tough to find, tucked away on a special carousel dedicated to travel notebooks and even that, said the sales staff, was an experiment. So why have I pursued this object throught the pages of Bruce Chatwin’s writings and several journalist blogs that have sung its praises?

The Italian manufacturers, Modo&Modo, declare to anyone who will listen that their product is the inheritor of Chatwin’s favourite notebook, despite a 12-year gap in production after the writer himself was last able to locate one, and the fact that the originals were made in France. They would even have us believe that the very same was employed by Van Gogh, Hemingway and Picasso for random jottings that became major works of art. These claims are dismissed by detractors as so much humbug.

It is a fact of modern life that marketing a product to a niche customer base is likely to involve the internet, preferably via an interactive website for users to exchange ideas. After endowing the Moleskine with a romantic pedigree no one is seriously in a postion to argue with, Modo&Modo must feel their attempts to do just that have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. On their own website moleskine.com as well as others such as ‘SkineArt and even Flickr and YouTube, the artistic contents of the Moleskine, that epitome of private journaling whose symbol should be a writer hunched over in private concentration, are laid bare. The challenge seems to ring out: what can you do with this?

So what do I think about it? Expensive it is, but classy and highly portable. It opens well and has a pleasant feel in the hand while writing. Now I’ve got it, I’m already using it for brief notes written on the move, to develop later. Whether I’ll buy another one when this is filled is a different question.

At least Chatwin’s belief that “the Moleskine is no more” is no longer true. The Moleskine, or a version of it that may or may not be recognised by him, is here to stay.