Do you remember the days of string vests, ulstron rope, pencil rung ladder, porridge, choc jokes, chicken and chips in the Golden Lion at Horton, beer at 2/- a pint or Brackenbottom without central heating? If you do you are older generation by CUCC standards and ought retire gracefully to your carpet slippers. If you don't remember, then you fall into the category of "young enthusiast" who probably finds caving exciting, challenging, even romantic. This article about the older generation is a response to the President's Bit last year; it simply attempts to cast light on the terminal stages of speleological senility.

Who are the older generation? You can see them in the Yorkshire Dales most weekends - ask in any pub any time between opening time and closing time. If you've been on a meet in their presence, they are are the ones that don't get up until the pubs are open, and then find innumerable reasons for not doing the cave you have got in mind; it doesn't matter what the cave is the reasons are the same - "too easy", "too wet", "too long", "too short" or most smug of all "done it". It's fairly obvious that the older generation is past it - speleology drowned in alchohol.

First it must be stressed that the older caver enjoys much of the caving life. Name dropping Grade IV and V trips that he has done (or wishes he'd done) is very satisfying. Underground he takes pleasure in doing Baptistry without touching the walls, or climbing Diccan through the water instead of to the side. He enjoys the social side of caving too - heavy nights and macabre mornings.

Unfortunately the older generation lose out on enthusiasm - the idiocy that can persuade some to do a day trip to P.8 from Cambridge when they could have a better trip down Hobson's Conduit. The new factor that creeps in after a few years caving is COMFORT. Now comfort and caving are obviously mutually exclusive, a fact that leads directly to speleological schizophrenia. For example Jont (see fat men) has been heard arguing at the Dump with J.Leach Esq. (respectable schoolmaster):

Jont.

Oh f...... h..l, let's get this bugger of a pot done.

Leach.

What about lunch?

Jont.

So we get p...ed at the Helwith, then do the pot.

Leach.

But my brain hurts.

Jont.

B...s, you need beer and caving.

Leach.

How about afternoon tea in Settle?

Jont.

Are you jacking again?

This last gets no reply as by this time both of him are fast asleep again in one of the least desirable sleeping bags that CUCC has ever been graced.

The same personality problems go on underground - a few examples from trips in the last few months.

Oxlow - Giants Link

Y.E.

Well lets get going then.

O.G.

OK but we are off out Giants.

Y.E.

But we're here to do a double link.

O.G.

(With derision) Why?

Y.E.

Because it's more heroic, a better test of our ability, and in any case Baden Powell would want us to. . . . .

O.G.

(From half up the Crabwalk) Baaaaaaaaa........ls

And so out to de-rig Oxiow and back to the White Hart where Y.E. was off his beer and O.G. were once again working on Sunday's planned hangover.

Ogof Rhewl

For the uninformed this is a dig about eighty feet in to an active sink with a straight line distance to resurgence of 1+ miles and vertical drop of about 300 feet. The passage is standing height and the rubbish, soil infill. Very promising you might think, so do we, so we spend a lot of time there. But near the dig is the B Inn which chicken and chips, and of course beer. Now how do you fill fertiliser bags with s......l when your bladder is threatening to overflow and the cave will not stand still in front of your eyes? The dig is of course perfect for the older generation with its Catch 22 logic:

1. The cave is promising but needs lots of digging.
2. Lots of digging means lots of weekends in Wales.
3. Lots of weekends means lots of beer.
4. Lots of beer means little digging at weekend.
5. Little digging at weekend means lots more weekends are needed.
6. Lots more weekends means lots more beer........

Pippikin and Dow Prov weekend

Serious caving you might think and only older generation there too. Well Pippikin including Cigalère and Gour Hall succumbed in four and a half hours. This time included allowing Dave to dislocate and relocate his shoulder whilst trying to overtake Ann in the second squeeze ... or something similar. And so to the Helwith for a drop of refreshment and mutual self congratulation before Dowbergill on Sunday. By midnight the writing was in the bloodstream. J, the oracle spoke from his sleeping bag on Sunday morning:

"You know this trip is so quick we can call in the Queen's Legs on the way." He then went back to sleep until eleven thirty which in view of the distance from the Dump is about perfect. The quick pint in the Legs was OK in theory, but there were problems with the darts, Double One to be precise....... in fact it took four pints to work up the inspiration to hit it by which time Dowbergill had about as much attraction as Nick Reckert's wetsuit trousers. Just one more example of what might have been had we been young and enthusiastic.

So where's the moral? Well if you want to be an older generation caver you can forget the heroics - you will never be a Martel a Casteret, a Brook, or a Lefebyre. We have our great moments - setting a club record time for LNRC on four pints per head, caving in T-shirts and shorts so we don't have to go too far, mysteriously losing boots on the way to 200 foot pitches, it's all in the logbooks. But such moments can at best only illustrate the acute pathos surrounding the older cavers:

"Tired and old, they went on existing, unwilling and ungraciously, simply because they were too weak to die."
(Sartre)

So young enthusiasts show a little understanding, the next time you hear a faint "I'm tiiiiirrrrreeeeed" from the back of your party, it might be an old caver in distress, or even Carole. Wait a while, show a bit of friendship, perhaps even by him a pint, or two, or three......