At first I thought Francis was just an adrenalin junkie, and this was certainly part of his motivation. Physical danger had been restricted to brief cameos in my life, and even then only in its reduced capacity on school playing fields and sanitized mountain slopes. Combating those sorts of risks had been like fighting a drugged bull, the odds neatly stacked, the potential harm contained. The first time I looked down from my perch between two fluted columns and discovered that the distance between myself and the ground would generate a fatal fall, I felt a sweet ordering process sweep through my cluttered mind like the perfect secretary, banishing all but the immediately relevant. With adrenalin manning my chest, sending out extra strength to reinforce my limbs and aching fingertips, my thoughts became cold and hard: left foot, right hand, balance. It was a wonderful release from the throng of little demands and insecurities, whose needs, small but insistent, usually filled up my head. It was as if one great voice, the old imperative of survival, rang out over their heads and awed them all into silence. That, for me, was an adrenalin rush, being brought into proximity with my own mortality, and retaining control over my own salvation. I know the others felt this, because the parties we had on the roofs were always a wild kind of thanksgiving, a celebration of still being alive. We would run up and down in the cold darkness, looking out over the rooftops and the huge grey sky, exploring. There was, however, a more fundamental aspect to Francis’s climbing that throwing himself out of planes or driving too quickly on the motorway could never have fulfilled.

I had assumed that the limiting factor in my ability to join the others would be either strength or nerve, and at first this was the case. These obstacles, however, were easily overcome. Francis taught me a game for building all the muscles I would need: he rearranged the furniture in my room to leave spaces of several feet between the bulkier pieces, and then challenged me to get around the room on the picture rail, a sturdy wooden ledge hammered into place one foot below the ceiling, designed to carry hooks for framed paintings. The rail stood about one inch out from the wall, and had a slight indent on its upward face into which I could jam my fingertips. Under his tuition I began to learn how to distribute my weight, how to turn my body in the air, how to layback and chimney, the basic skills required by the local architecture. The climbing itself, Francis told me, was simple, and did not make the demands on the body that natural surfaces tend to present. Hand- and footholds were plentiful, and pillars, gutters and drainpipes accounted for most of the pitches, with isolated moments of complex negotiation between them. There were few overhangs or fingerjams, and no equipment was needed. When I could do thirty press-ups, fifteen chin-ups and thirty or so squat thrusts without collapsing into a heap of cramps, Francis estimated I was physically ready. As to my fear, I found that if I kept strict order among my impulses for the first twenty feet or so, real physical danger promoted the adrenalin rush that swept fear away with all the other mental debris, leaving my mind clean and efficient.