Anyone for Caving?

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ANYONE FOR CAVING? Bob Cockeram Before being introduced to the finer points of masochism some call tramping, both my good lady, Norma, and myself could often be found exploring the vast labyrinth of natural cave that exists in the Yorkshire Dales of Northern Britain. Those of you who have been unfortunate enough to be unable to escape from me on my sorties to Kime Hut (and back) will already know there is a weird form of humour emanating from this strange troglodyte. The good news for Tongue and Meats is that most of my peers are still 12,000 miles away, but to act as a warning, if you ever venture into the never never land of stuck cavers, be prepared to suffer a fate worse than death if you require assistance from the Cave Rescue Organisation (CRO). This warning speaks for itself as can be seen in the following extract from the book Race Against Time (Jim Eyre and John Frankland, Lyon Books, 1987, pp 103-4) which commemorated the first 50 years of the CRO. The story revolves around a pretty young thing a little time before our paths crossed (and when she reads this the path will no doubt be a dead end!). "Animal rescue can be boring, I decided, after rescuing a particularly smelly goat, especially as my best Harris Tweed sports jacket was used for packing under the rope around the animal's belly. For weeks people avoided me and I could empty a pub in two minutes even after dry cleaning. Suddenly, to brighten up ourdays, came the call "Female caver stuck in a narrow rift". As we hurried to the scene there was much discussion about which parts were stuck and how we couldfree them or it. It seemed that a young lady of fairly generous undulating proportions had advanced quite a long way along a similarly undulating rift passage in Earl Pot. Unfortunately at one point she had slipped and her 38, 24, 38 bits no longer matched with the 38, 24, 38 bits in the cave passage, and just like mismatch (sic) when hanging wallpaper she didn' 't look right, and what was more important, she didn 'tfeel right, and could not move. After some discussion we decided with some envy to send two of our younger and more hot-blooded members in to free her, working on the assumption that they were both fairly smooth and used to handling young ladies delicate parts. A more ulterior motive for this action was the fact that the hapless female knew both of her would-be rescuers and the fact that they were going to start manipulating her body would be enough shock to cause her to strugglef free. She did - but later refused to emerge from the cave when we informed her that a BBC TV crew were waiting to film the bits that had got stuck!"