We are standing at the foot of Lion Rock - Sigiriya. An ancient rock fortress in the heart of Sri Lanka. It's hot and sticky. Which is fine in some situations - like in a Sauna in a five star spa. But not this one. The rock that looms above us seems a bit too big to walk up. It's more of a cliff face.
"Are we really climbing that?" I ask Gihan - our tour guide. Gihan is in jeans and t shirt and does not seem phased at all by the climb ahead of us.
"Are you not hot?" I ask him.
"No - this is not hot," he smiles.
I am pumping sweat and I've only walked a few hundred yards. It is nearly 90 degrees out there.
We buy some drinks before the trek. I hand them out. Monkeys begin to circle us. Hundreds of 'em.
"Get off me!" Caitlin screams as she drops her coke bottle and runs towards us. A monkey has just run up her legs and tried to make off with her coke.
Gihan steps in and takes the bottle. "The monkeys like coca cola".
Caitlin is not impressed. I immediately think of worst case scenarios. If a monkey bites you in the middle of nowhere - it's gonna take a while to find a place to get a Rabies shot. But if the monkeys were rabid. Surely they would be creating havoc. Eating each other, eating random human fingers and exposed limbs. BUT...it would explain their thirst. Their craving for coke. Then again - coked-up monkeys could get pretty aggressive without being rabid. So many thoughts...so many fears...
I have a friend Henrik who also got bitten by a monkey. When he told the story - it did make me chuckle. Just saying "I got bitten by a monkey" usually makes people laugh. But the long drawn out palava of getting a rabies shot reminds me that we want to avoid this. I also met a girl who got bitten by a gorilla once. But that's a different story.
We begin the climb, slightly apprehensive. This is only made more problematic when Caitlin and the boys spot the "Deadly Killer Wasp" signage everywhere. Along with a polite request to whisper. Maybe these wasps have really sensitive massive big ears? Do wasps even have ears?
Caitlin goes into a very devout silent mode. But there are lots of tourists trekking the same route who seem happy to shout out to each other and point out the views.
"Shut up!" I think. Death by killer wasp is not on my list of Darwin Award deaths I would like to experience.
"So Gihan - how many wasp stings before they would kill you?" I ask. My breathing ragged as we wander past thousand year old cave art.
I am assuming a hundred - maybe more. But no.
"Probably nine or ten..." he says straight off the bat.
Shit - that's not many stings really. Not many at all. I think. I also adopt stealth mode as we continue upwards.
Half way up - we meet a school party of about 200 kids. How the hell do you do the risk assessment on walking a bunch of primary school kids up a sheer cliff surrounded by Coked up Monkeys and killer wasps? And school kids make way too much noise. The kind of noise that makes killer wasps angry. There's nothing worse than a bunch of killer wasps. Except - really pissed off angry killer wasps that were having a nice little kip before a bunch of wild schoolkids rocked up.
This means we must then walk incredibly slowly up a set of tiny metal steps that have been hammered into the rockface in about 1892. I decide not to think too carefully about the inspection routines or levels or rust on the stairs, or to look down the sheer drop to certain death. We are so high up that I can tell Sarah's legs have turned to jelly. We are nearly at catatonic phase - when Sarah will just stay anchored to the same spot as the vertigo kicks in.
The monkeys take this opportunity - as we are stuck on a queue that feels similar to the queue right at the top of Everest - to make another strike for the backup coke bottle I briefly took out. The monkey leaps at us - the bottle gets ditched and the monkey is happy. The monkey has won. Bastard. I wanted that.
The views at the top are breath-taking - literally. Apparently - the Sri Lankan King lived up here and every day he walked down to the palace swimming pools and gardens that he had built down there. He would then pick one of his many hundred harem wives for some jiggy jiggy and then walk back up to the safety of his palace.
Now this seems like an awful lot of effort each day. Surely he would have been better inventing some sort of lift system or the telescope. Or possibly the phone. This would have made the daily commute much easier. But I guess it kept him fit.
A few days later we catch a train. It's one of the most spectacular train journey's in the world. Up at about 8000 feet in the tea plantations and then down towards the coast. We are crushed up on the train along with a million locals and tourists.
My Niece Jessica is randomly also in Sri Lanka at the minute. She is on the same train (again -we did not plan our itinerary - so this is all quite uncanny). She squeezes past the throng of passengers and into our carriage.
"Hi Jess! How's it going?" I ask.
"Yeah - good." she says.
"Hi - how's it going. Did you get on the train ok?" I ask the girl with her.
The girl looks at me like I have at least three heads.
"Er Tom - I don't know her..." she roars with laughter.
We watch as a vast Swathe of tourists (mainly from Japan) lean out the door of the train whilst their friends take pictures of them narrowly avoiding certain death.
Some bring their own selfie sticks. Others bring friends to capture the Insta-tunity.
This is madness in my opinion. But grimly fascinating. What will humans do for a good picture.
Well - apparently - most things.
There are a few near misses as we rattle past tunnels and over bridges with sheer plunging drops. But no-one dies. Not on our journey.
A couple of months later there is headline news in the international papers as an aspiring selfie taker becomes the latest victim, loses her grip and falls to her death.
We trek through some jungle the next day and walk to the famous nine arched train bridge near Ella. It is quite liberating walking along the train tracks. No-one stops you. There are hundreds of us milling about walking into the train tunnel - walking along the bridge.
I secretly re-enact that scene from Stand by Me and imagine myself pegging it across the bridge just in time before the train smacks into me. There is a couple in their twenties sitting on the ledge of the bridge. Legs dangling over the 200 metre drop. The boyfriend then gets out a drone, attaches a camera to it and then flies it over the bridge and starts papping her.
This is way too stressful for me. One wrong move and she is a goner. I don't know where this risk averseness came from. I used to be equally gung-ho and wreckless. I imagine it was once the kids came along and you realise that you have someone else to look after.
When we get home from the holiday. The boys have a gig at Devafest. I am greatly excited. And me and Uncle Glenn practice our very best..."We're with the band" sound bites.
I wave my special "back stage-ish" wrist bands aloft and try to play it cool. But I'm just a lowly chief Roadie. Its the lads who have the hard work to do. The gig is in the biggest circus tent. It goes well. And then we can relax. Watching Ocean Colour Scene, Toyah, Sleeper (how I loved Sleeper in my youth!) and a couple of stand up comedians.
One of them picks on me.
"Where are you going?" he yells as I sneak out of the tent.
"I want to see Toyah..." I say sheepishly.
"That's not good enough. Sit down."
"But - honestly - you seem quite funny - but I really do want to see Toyah..." I say. Her husband, after all, played guitar with rock legends like Bowie.
"Where you from?"
"Chester."
"Where abouts?"
"Near the cricket club.."
"Is that near the Chinese?" he asks.
"Sun do?! Yes!"
"I love that - best Chinese in Chester!" I agree! We have a chat about the menu for a bit and then he realises this is not great stand-up.
I sit down for a short while. He is quite funny. He swears alot but has brought his four year old along who keeps interrupting.
He then proceeds to do a Darren Brown on a bloke in front of me.
"Your name is John isn't it? You're best mates with Danny, Baz and Ryan. Your girlfriend is called Lisa..."
This is mindblowing magic from a comedian in a mid afternoon set.
The guy is starting to get a bit worried here. How does he know so much about his life. His friends are roaring with laughter.
Eventually he asks. "How do you know so much about me?"
"I played in the same footie team as you for 3 years you bellend..."
And on that note...I slip away with the boys. Into the glorious Summer Sunshine...
A summer that involves seeing Liam Gallagher at Leeds play Definitely Maybe in it's entirety...despite half of Leeds getting blown away the night before in a storm so fierce it blew the second stage into space. So much so that the security guard at the gates tells me it was like "Vietnam" last night... like some grizzled American war vet. A festival that makes me feel like old man dinosaur surrounded by so many young people. But what a great gig to share with the lads.
A year that involved riding camels in the Moroccan desert. Of Fintan managing to ride a camel up-side down at one point. Of magical sunsets and elephant clouds in the sky. Of Paul McCartney bringing the year to a close with the most sublime acoustic rendition of Blackbird and the Euphoria of Hey Jude. Does it get much better than that? Probably not.
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