Incident Report #15 1995

Some incidents go down in Team Folklore. This one has become the "1 Olb. of potatoes" job. Once upon a time their were four adventurous young men who decided to go on an expedition. They packed their bags very full. They packed 10lb. of potatoes. They weren't going to go hungry on their expedition. They set off late in the day and made slow progress. (Remember, their bags were very heavy). As darkness fell they found themselves at 2000ft. on the side of Great Rigg Man. They put their tents up, and the wind took them down again, so they sat and shivered for an hour or so. Then, as the condition of two of them started to deteriorate, the other two descended to raise the alarm. This is where we join the story. It takes a few minutes at 03.43 to work out what that noise is. It's the pager going off! Get up, get dressed, get undressed and put clothes back on the right way round. Get car keys. Put shed key back and get car keys. Find car. Find Grasmere. Find two adventurous young clowns who had plans to bake their 10lb. of potatoes in a fire lit from wood collected from the fellside. They did have kitchen foil - it's a start! It hadn't occurred to them that they could have opened some of the dozen or so tins they were carrying and warm the contents on a stove. Anyway, we got them down, pointed out the error of their ways and took the p### quite a lot. Someone once asked "What does your wife say when you get called out in the middle of the night?". "Don't forget to lock the door", on the way out, and "Don't even think about touching me 'till you've warmed your hands," when you get back.