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Monkey Fist -- a TR of sorts 23-Oct-2010 At 7:35:54 PM hargs

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Francois, that's some impressive topo work right there. We used to go "buildering" at lunch time when I was at school. Angry security guards would chase us off premises. Cops hauled me off one of those big chimney stacks at Vaucluse or Diamond Bay once. People really don't like people climbing stuff.

PART TWO -- The wobbly pole is a bust. I can get the rope up to the roof, but there’s no way I can poke it through the gap and leave a long-enough loop hanging over the beam. Back to the drawing board.

For my 40th birthday, a good friend gave me a beautiful present: a monkey’s fist tied the traditional way from three-strand sisal rope, whipped, spliced, and smelling like just seagrass matting. (A monkey’s fist, in case you haven’t wasted years mucking about on wooden boats, is a knot tied in the end of a rope to form a solid ball. Sailors used them to weight heaving lines which they’d throw down to wharfies on the dock as their ships came alongside. Climbers used them too, for jamming into cracks before modern metal gear.) It occurs to me that the monkey’s fist could sneak through the gap between the beam and the roof.

I bend a length of old climbing rope onto the sisal tail, feed out a pile of loose slack, and weigh the monkey’s fist in my hand. At first it feels too light to carry far but as it whooshes faster and faster around my head it seems to generate some extra heft, and I start thinking it might just travel all the way to the roof.

The launch position is directly underneath the beam. It’s kind of cramped, half on a step and hard up against the brick wall. I have to swing the ball hard; hard enough to launch it and ten metres of rope two floors into the air. And I have to release it at just the right moment so it carries up far enough, and across far enough, but not too much, to find the gap. I wind up a couple of solid swings and let go. The monkey fist flies up, but only halfway up the brickwork before turning around and diving into the garden. I crouch down for half a dozen big swings, full force, but this time the monkey fist flies off at the sky, way off course. It tops out at roof height though, providing a sliver of hope this might work. I’m gathering everything up for another shot when my wife appears behind the vast expanse of glass on the upstairs landing. She observes proceedings for a few moments, furrows her brow and then walks off shaking her head.

The next throws are variously uneventful, tantalisingly close, and way off again. Once, the monkey’s fist travels just far enough to clout me on the head -- I’m inadvertantly standing on the rope -- and then the next fifty or so throws follow much the same pattern as the first few. Some have all the right vectors but not enough oomph; others have plenty of oomph but the angles are all wrong. The sun is dropping lower in the late afternoon sky, I can hear the rattle of pots and pans in the kitchen, and my shoulder is starting to ache.