24 January, a little past 1pm. Steve and I are waiting at Oxford station for the 13:21 arrival from Sheffield. We are meeting Johnny Dawes, who will be running a bouldering masterclass for eight members of OUMC.

25 January. Huw's bedroom in Brasenose. Someone wonders what time it is. "Quarter to six." Everyone is rather surprised. It seems only a short time ago that we got in from a night's clubbing. Johnny Dawes parties as hard as he climbs, and we've spent a rather surreal three hours arguing over physics and metaphysics and swapping climbing yarns, and figuring out just how fast it's possible to get from Plas-y-Brenin to Nant Peris. 7 minutes, anyone?

The station announcer tells us that the train will be delayed by 40 minutes and is expected at 2pm. 2pm comes and goes. We've been sitting in Steve's car for a while in case someone tries to clamp us. Steve looks up to see a car just in front of his own at a strange angle. It's empty. "Was that there a minute ago?" We don't know.

We're having a curry in the Moonlight Tandoori. It's a good curry house and we've had a couple of beers. The conversation is sort of Daliesque, often surreal in the paranoiac-critical sense. Sometimes we even talk about climbing, and various top climbers who Johnny does/doesn't like. He definitely doesn't like hold chippers! Tigresses, on the other hand...

3pm. No train. The car turns out to have rolled back on its own. Wierd.. Eventually the train arrives and Johnny doesn't seem too annoyed, on the contrary he says the delay was useful thinking time. We drive down to Iffley, providing him with lunch en route. The masterclass kicks off gradually. Johnny climbed on the wall when he lived in Oxford in 1983 and takes a while to familiarise himself with the holds again. He sets a few problems, all odd single-move dynamic moves which could easily be done statically. The thing is, that isn't what this class is about. It's all about how you do the problem rather than whether you get the final holds. This is new to everyone and takes a while to get used to, but once you start thinking about the right movements for each problem the moves turn from impossible to not all that hard.

We're on the way to Iffley. Johnny is annoyed that he might not be able to climb really hard stuff as he hurt his shoulder and arm the other day while sledging down the hill in Sheffield in a two-man canoe. He was saving a kid from being crushed between the canoe and a wall. Only in Dawesworld..

A couple of months afterwards. Huw has on-sighted E5 since the masterclass; my own bouldering has improved and become rather more fluid, and my trad grade has leapt up. Gillian is climbing with a lot more confidence and Steve recently set a 6c problem. Phil is now climbing 5c pretty solidly.

It's later on in the class. I've become much more solid in my climbing and I've been running up the wall to hold poor slots. Steve and Huw have cracked their latest project. Gillian has landed a 5c dynamic move and Phil has got closer to "The Matrix", but his arm is playing up again. Johnny is taking time out from a hands-free ascent of the wall by balancing on the rail overlooking the gym. The odd thing is, this doesn't seem particularly unusual any more. Everything you think you know suddenly becomes up for grabs again in Dawesworld. Little did we know it but, standing on the platform waiting for power to be restored at Leamington Spa, we were entering the Twilight Zone.

© Adrian Baugh 2001, reproduced with permission