Facing the Storm
A monologue written for performance.
One character - a man in his late 30’s to late 40’s.
He is dressed in hiking gear including waterproofs.
Location - on a hillside above Ullswater in the English Lake District.
Stage setting - empty stage, or a background projection of a Lakeland mountain scene.
Props - a small rucksack containing a bright orange survival bag (bivvy bag).
Lights come on.
The man walks in slowly, pauses, and looks studiously into the distance.
“There’s a storm coming, big one too, it’ll be here soon. Don’t think I can avoid it, best wait for it to blow over then carry on.”
He takes off his rucksack and places it down then, still standing, continues to stare.
“The weather’s funny up in the hills, like here above Ullswater, you can watch storms moving along the valley below you, actually look down on them as they drench some poor sod on the other side of the lake, but stay dry yourself. Normally I manage to avoid storms but this time I think I’m in for a bit of a soaking.”
He pauses and looks down the hillside.
“She doesn’t like coming up here on the fells. She came with me once but says there’s nothing to see, prefers Keswick or Ambleside but then moans there’s not enough shops. ‘Can’t buy any decent shoes or handbags,’ she says. She’d be OK if she wanted mountain boots and a rucksack, but shoes, handbags! She really prefers cities, nice ones mind, Chester, York and the like, credit her with taste, I’ll give her that.”
He pauses.
“But there are things to see up here. People think moors are bleak, but if you look closely there’s loads to see. All sorts of plants and rock formations and wildlife, birds mainly but ones you don’t normally see like curlew and plovers, they even have ospreys at Bassenthwaite. Nowt bleak about moors, there’s bleaker places in towns and cities.”
He pauses, thinks.
“I love it up here on my own. She says I don’t mix, don’t socialise, don’t join in. She doesn’t get it. I love the solitude amongst the natural world, away from whatever nonsense is currently fashionable. When I’m down there I long to be up here where things don’t change much.
“Anyway, just to please her I joined a walking group, went on a navigation course. It was a bit of a compromise I suppose. I’d be joining something, mixing, but also learning about something I’m interested in.
“There were six or seven of us on the course. The leader was ex-army I think, had all the kit and that solid build and self-confidence that makes you believe this is a bloke who knows how to lead. He talked us through choosing a route and an escape route in case of an emergency, we worked out timing, checked our kit, food and water then off we went.
“It was all right to begin with, we were staying at a hostel in Langdale and drove round to Wrynose Pass to start our walk. We started slowly in a low valley using map and compass to pinpoint our exact position on the ground. We spent ages covering just a couple of miles, but it was interesting work.
“Then there was a climb up to Three Tarns where we stopped to eat our sarnies. It’s a grand view from up there, remote, rugged, beautiful. Anyhow this was last November and it was getting dark early, so we headed down. I always like to be off the hill at least an hour before dark, just to be sure of not getting into trouble, so I thought this ex-army bloke leading us had left it a bit late. We’d gone a mile or so when, looking down the hillside he said, ‘OK who knows where we are?’ as if it was another exercise. No one was absolutely certain so we asked him. He said, ‘No, I meant who knows where we are? I’m not sure.’ Our navigation expert had got us lost.”
He pauses and shakes his head.
“He seemed to have lost his nerve too and everyone else was dithering so I stepped forward, took the map and compass and figured out a route and led us down. Luckily, seeing how it was now dark, it was a fairly easy descent to the road. But we had to wade through a river. Then, soaking wet, it was a two mile slog back to the cars, not picturesque but effective.
“So that was my experience of mixing, of joining in. Trusting others to organise and lead and getting lost. I’ve never got lost up here on my own. Never.”
He pauses.
“Afterwards when I got home I told her about it. I said in future I’d stick to walking on my own. She said I shouldn’t give up on people so easily, that I should try something else new, get out of my comfort zone, wherever that is. She thought it would be better if we tried things together so we went through a phase of joining clubs and classes, to take up new hobbies, painting, bowling, even archery. But I kept coming up against committee types who seem to want to spend more time holding meetings and writing minutes than actually doing the thing their club or classes are supposed to be about. When I started suggesting ways they could improve things they weren’t too pleased. She got a bit annoyed with me too, told me to keep quiet and just go along with things. But it’s in my nature, when I see something’s not working I try to fix it, or leave it well alone.
“I understand what she was trying to do, to get me to take part in group activities but I wasn’t really interested in what these groups were doing. She didn’t get it, that I don’t feel the need to join a group for the sake of joining a group. If I want to paint or shoot a bow and arrow I can do it on my own without forming a committee to discuss it.
“So I didn’t really take to any of these new hobbies. The last one, perhaps the last straw in hindsight, was when she enrolled us in dancing classes. Country dancing, one of those things where groups of people dance in sequences to folk music. Well, she’s a really good dancer, won some medals a few years back, but I didn’t get it. I kept forgetting the sequences and kept going in the wrong direction. It ended badly. She just assumed because she found it easy I’d pick it up. I needed some basic lessons really, but the teacher wasn’t all that patient, said I had two left feet and no co-ordination. But he was wrong. I mean, how can you get over Striding Edge with two left feet and no co-ordination? In the end we gave it up, well I did, she still goes.”
He pauses and looks at the sky.
“That storm is getting close, it’s sure to hit soon.
“I tried to explain to her, I don’t enjoy group things, something always goes wrong or rather things don’t go as well as when I do them myself. I told her about when I did an Open University Technology course. This was when I was much younger, a few years before I’d met her. There was a summer school and we did all kinds of lab work. One day we had to use a computer model to create a simulation of an energy efficient town. We split up into teams to find the best model and what my team was doing wasn’t working too well. I had a few ideas for improvements but no one would agree to my suggestions. So I went off on my own where I could concentrate, and came up with a better model. Actually it was the best on the whole course but it was disallowed because it wasn’t a team contribution.
“When I told her about it she said, ‘You should have compromised to fit in.’ I said, ‘That wasn’t the point, it was a scientific experiment to find the most efficient system, not an exercise in social engineering. The aim wasn’t to ‘fit in’ but to come up with the most efficient energy consumption. Where would we be today if the old engineers like Brunel, Stevenson or Brindley had just tried to fit in?’ She looked blank, had no comprehension of what I was saying. For a moment I dreaded she was going to say one of those phrases I hate, ‘There’s no I in team.’ If she had I would have walked away.
“No I in team. There might not be an I, but there’s a ‘me’ in team. It’s taken apart and twisted around, but there is a ‘me’.”
He pauses again.
“I think this attitude I have against teams goes back to when I was a lad. It’s something I often think about and one thing especially always comes to mind. When I was at secondary school I used to enjoy playing rugby, even if it was Union. Seeing as I was tall the teachers used to put me in the second row. But I was fast back then, used to win at 200 and 400 meters on Sport’s Day, so I should have been playing on the wing. Anyhow, this one game I had the ball and ran through a gap in the opposition’s defence. I was away, sprinting for the try line when the ref, who was the headmaster by the way, blew the whistle and called me back.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘This is a team game,’ he said, ‘you should have passed the ball.’
‘But I was going to score.’
‘That’s not the point,’ he said.
“I can’t remember if he said another one of those awful phrases, ‘It’s not the winning but the taking part that counts,’ because by then I’d thrown the ball away in anger and spent the rest of the game fuming in the pack.”
He shakes his head.
“It’s a good job Offiah didn’t go to our school.
“I didn’t realise it back then, but when I think of it now, that might be where I first got my dislike of team things and disrespect for authority figures, especially ones who are wrong or who aren’t as good at something as they are supposed to be. I suppose it was a ‘formative experience’ as the psychologists might say.
“Anyway back to our team effort at the Open University. It had been a compromise between some who clearly didn’t know what they were doing and others who were too polite or too timid to correct their mistakes. It was a perfect combination for a sub-standard effort. I think that’s what’s wrong with a lot of things down there, too many people without talent rising to the top, mediocrity being promoted and rewarded and no-one saying, ‘This isn’t good enough. We deserve better.’ What a society we’ve made!
“And there’s too much easy money. I’m not really fussed about money so long as I’ve got enough to cover my basic needs and a bit left over. Years ago, when I lived down in London for a bit, this yuppie lass I was talking to was horrified when I said I didn’t want to be rich, she just couldn’t comprehend it. I didn’t see her twice. But I think the real wealth is in self-actualisation. ‘Self-actualisation.’ I learned that phrase from reading a bit on psychology and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
“Maslow was this psychologist back in the 1950’s who tried to figure out why people aren’t satisfied with what they’ve got, and are always wanting more. He reckoned there are different levels of need, seven I think, and once you’ve achieved one you want the next and so on. He illustrated it with a pyramid shape with these levels going up to a peak. At the bottom are your basic needs, food, warmth, shelter, then comes security, then some other stuff I can never remember, anyhow I’ve got the book to look it up. But at the top, at the peak, is self-actualisation. That is, to be able to develop to the full whatever ability you have and to be able to express yourself.
“It might sound a bit corny but I figure when I’m up here, literally on top of a mountain, that’s where I am, at the peak of Maslow’s pyramid.”
He pauses again, looking up as if to a peak, then looks down the hillside.
“So I keep away from it all, all that’s wrong down there, I prefer to be up here, prefer to be on my own, ‘not joining in,’ as she says.”
He pauses and looks into the distance.
“Those rain clouds are closing in. Actually I’m not too bothered if the storm does catch me, I’m confident I can weather it and carry on. If I survive I’ll press on, if not you’ll hear about me in the news. Funny that, I just realised it’s only the things that go wrong that usually make the news. ‘Competent man achieves modest success’ isn’t much of a headline eh?
“Still, you’re OK so long as you know what you’re doing, so long as you’ve got the right kit, like this bivvy bag.”
He takes out the bivvy bag (so that the audience can see it is bright orange) then laughs lightly.
“I heard this story once about a Buddhist bloke who lived somewhere in Mid-Wales. He put on his orange robes and went up the mountain Cadir Idris to meditate in solitude. He’d found an isolated ledge overlooking a valley where he could be undisturbed. It was a tricky place to climb down to but he managed it then sat cross-legged to meditate. A few minutes later he heard a noise and opened his eyes to see a helicopter rising up in front of him and mountain rescue blokes shouting at him. You can guess what had happened, apparently someone had seen his orange robes from a distance and mistaken them for one of these rescues bags. Poor sod, seems you can’t get away from folk anywhere.”
He puts the bivvy bag away.
“I’ve been hiking since I was a kid but didn’t walk up Helvellyn ‘til I was in my 20’s. Reason I mention that hill is that I didn’t go up it for a second time until about ten years later. A lot happened in those ten years. I had to change jobs after I was made redundant, and my first marriage ended, which cost me a few bob. But when I came back up here to clear my head I walked up Helvellyn again. And it looked exactly the same as if nothing had happened in ten years, as if only a day or two had passed. There was something comforting about that, something reassuring that made all my problems seem small. I still get it, that comforting feeling when I come back up here. I can almost hear the hills saying, ‘Never mind lad, just wander about for a bit, clear your head and you’ll be alright, we’ll be here when you need us again.’ They could do with a few mountains down south.”
He pauses again.
“She’ll be in a teashop, bored. I would be too if I was sat in the rain reading magazines or staring out the window at wet streets, even in the rain I’d rather be up here. She should have come with me but said she didn’t want to get her new raincoat wet. She’ll be reading one of them celebrity magazines about famous people who don’t really do anything. I don’t read much except the odd Wainwright guide. I tried some poetry once - Wordsworth I think it was, but I didn’t get it. ‘Lonely as a cloud.’ When are clouds ever lonely up here? If you get one there’s usually plenty more with it, like that lot heading this way.”
He pauses again to look at the sky, then looks down at the valley.
“Shame I won’t have time to make a brew. Better get down before it gets dark. No point in delaying the inevitable. Don’t think it’ll be that bad, might just get a bit of a soaking so to speak, seeing as I’ve prepared myself for it. Best to face these things and get them over with I suppose.”
He puts on his rucksack, takes a few steps then pauses. He seems hesitant, reluctant.
“I’ll have to tell her. I’ve got to do it today really, need to let her know. After spending time trying a few things that don’t suit me, things she suggested, now I’m pretty sure I know what’s right for me. She’s helped me to realise that, she can take credit for that at least. I hope she’s learned from it too. It’s not like we’re really together anyhow, I’m better off on my own, she knows that.”
He walks off.
Lights go down.
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