The Afterlife - Alexis Perry

The minibus door clangs shut behind you for the final time (least you don't have to hear S-Club ever again); a sonorous death knell to cruelly end your undergraduate climbing career. You were a larval fourth year, you briefly enjoyed the chrysalis of that final, looooong summer only to emerge, a damp, bedraggled moth in the autumn of unemployment. Metamorphosis complete, and now you have to pay tax. Thankfully, help is at hand, many of us have been through it my son, and useless advice from grumpy old cunts is better than no advice at all. This article seeks to highlight the viable options open to you, a climbing graduate, to maximise your climbing time amongst awkward things like jobs and money that unfortunately get in the way.

1. Become a climbing bum
Think Bodhi in Point Break (except possibly without the whole bank robbing bit, and less of the drowning), half of Sheffield's population, that dude who wrote the Dharma Bums and countless lost souls still on a gap-year. Superficially, this sounds like a perma-holiday but I reckon it's possibly a hard one to pull off (sorry). Aside from moral qualms about scrounging dole and putting nowt back, apart from having no money, away from the fact that five days of every week will see your social viewpoint gradually converge with that of Robert Kilroy-Silk (oh yes it will) and excepting the monstrous ganj (well it might start there, but the cash crisis will force you back onto resin like you were 14 all over again) chonging you'll need to fuel your lethargy, disregarding all of this, the level of self-motivation required to actually do anything with no structure in your day for week after week with no-one hassling is nothing short of miraculous. All the days of middling weather you would turn your nose up at 'cos you can just go out tomorrow instead, all the directionless drifting round crags without the brevity of the weekend to motivate and focus you. I guess it takes a certain type of laconic, laid-back person to make this work. If that ain't you, read on…

2. Become a guide
It would seem that this is quite popular amongst ex-gum clubbers, appropriate seeing as competence rather than exceptional talent is the important thing here. Let's not forget quite how competent mind you; being avalanched down the Ben, bickering about navigation at 11pm on the cairngorm plateau (and, as I remember, being wrong), falling arse-first onto a large rock spike in Ratho (dangerous back then, it was), falling 50 ft off a wee highland ridge-walk, falling off Buachaille Etive Mor's north buttress leading to the exciting situation of two lives resting on one hex and getting lost on the way down and, possibly most amusing, having to climb a large Tremadoc tree to retrieve a whole load of dropped wires after having already lost five of the buggers in the previous three days of climbing. Unfortunately, I can't think of any dirt on Dr. Bain (excluding the Glen Clova incident or falling off on film), so feel free to add your own here before I start to think he's the competence daddy.
Anyhow, it's employment involving a lot of climbing so I guess it's got to be good.

3. Become a post-graduate
Embrace the pain my friend, for this is the way of the warrior. You know you like the student life, you don't mind your degree subject, having "Dr." in front of your name is bound to impress the ladeeeez……..
Well it isn't the student life, you grow to loathe your subject and the only impressed people are your grandparents. All your friends have more money than you yet work less hours, then once your funding has ended you have to write a large book about your pain which gets put in the cellar of a university library and no-one looks at it ever again. And people will never tire of asking you if you work in a hospital.
On the bright side, you're liable to become obsessive about anything else in your life (providing that there is anything else left); very good for your climbing. That or you can focus more on your drinking and so….

4. Become a jakey
The real world is distinctly uphill work and if university has taught you one thing then it's that you're damn good at drinking. You're a recent graduate of the gum club and have appreciated that drinking prestige earns a good deal of respect. You can clearly see that you're funnier when you're drunk, and you must be more attractive because you've pulled more often in that state. Not only this but you can eat hotter curries and get in fights because you're harder and braver when pissed. More subtle too, given the sleight of hand required in stealing, say, a traffic cone. To become a jakey would only be playing to your strengths and allowing you to become the better person you know you can be. Plus you get to hang around with your PhD mates.

5. Rope access / Tree surgery
Because us climbers are so adept at having abseiling accidents we are clearly the obvious choice for employment in the construction of vertiginous buildings. It does look quite fun, you do get to build cool stuff (and won't your grandchildren know it; "not the millennium dome story again granddad; it's shit"), the pay is reputedly not bad and you get very good at prussiking for the next time you end up at the bottom of a sea cliff without a climbing rope between the pair of you (yes, really, and it isn't the only time it's happened). However, of the four people I know who've done it only one still climbs and at that only bouldering. This makes me somewhat worried about the safety of climbing ropework.
As for tree surgery, I like trees, I like saws, I like trees and saws. Couldn't be clearer.

6. Work down the wall / climbing shop
You'll either get tendonitis or have an unhealthy depth of fabric knowledge. You might even consider pertex boxers as an essential item. You'll also get to say, "No, it was always that way up" and, "no rucsac is 100% waterproof" quite a lot. Short people will harangue you because the holds are too far apart, fat people will harangue you because the holds are too sweaty, crap people will harangue you because the holds are too small and slopey and everyone will have an opinion that you must hear about the grade. Other climbers will ask you questions about gear so they can tell you about their favourite taper angle on their favourite size wallnut, all your mates will try to scrounge free gear off you and you will feel a sense of injustice at how many neds you've clothed in better waterproofs than your own. Okay, you get cheap climbing wall access / climbing stuff but then you don't get paid very much either. I used to work at a prawn factory and thus could get cheap prawns; you ain't never going to beat that here.

7. Other options
I 'spose getting a real job figures here somewhere but I guess only after you've tried all the other flavours first. Teaching would seem to be a favourite amongst ex-student climbers, primarily as you can teach anywhere and you get stupendous holidays to go climbing in. Before you do your PGCE I recommend that you pulp the fingers of one hand by battering them with a lump hammer held tightly in your other hand, then go away and find a different career and don't do it again. Capische?
Other good but unlikely stuff would be get really good so people pay you to climb all the time or to somehow make enough money from the climbing media to live on, like making a film about winter climbing for instance. The only other option I can think of is to go abroad "for a couple of years". Remember who The Machine is, anyone?