Middle was always scaling the heights – and still is

I’m standing in the climbing centre foyer watching Middle Child working. He’s sending a group of mini-mes beetling up and down the walls, all his attention is focused on his charges. I don’t disturb him – I can’t watch without gasping and puffing like a breaching whale anyway – and slip out. I’d only dropped by to check if he was eating properly now he’s moved out. Looks like he is.

I should have known he’d grow up to be a climbing instructor. I credit/blame Berlin architect Conrad Roland for this. He invented the Spacenet in 1971, the threedimensional bouncy rope climbing frame that’s a fixture in playgrounds around the globe, hunners of kids stuck to them like flies to a spider’s web. You hope.

Middle and his siblings were obsessed with ‘ours’, the one in ‘our park’, from the moment they could toddle towards it arms upstretched, eyes glazed, like tiny Richard Dreyfusses in Close Encounters.

At first they dangled and bounced on the lowest ropes, then too soon were climbing all the way to the top and sliding down shouting, ‘Look, Fireman Sam!’ Watching, heart in mouth, it was all I could do to summon the oxygen to shout back, “And Firefighter Penny Morris!”.

When it was too wet for the park, there were our door frames to wedgie climb, and the tenement’s stair walls. Up under the ceiling they perched, legs locked on parallel walls as I stood powerless on the “very hard stone floor!” below, pleading with them to come in for their tea.

It was only when Middle progressed to climbing onto the roof that we introduced him to supervised climbing. It’s been uphill since then.

Middle and I drove past the Spacenet recently and I said to him, “Remember?”

“Yeah, but it’s not as good now they’ve made it safer,” he said.

“Safer? Mutter, mutter...”

“You can’t climb to the top and slide down the pole to the bottom in a one-er any more. It’s got hammocky things at different levels to stop you.” “Good.”

“Yes, but if I hadn’t done it, I’d never have learnt how to do it. It’s about estimating risk and doing things safely and... ” “Well, just so long as you…

“I know ma. Remember To Hold On.” ■