I first met Dougie at Primet secondary school where we both somehow achieved A-stream tuition. Dougie always managed to do just enough, never too much or little that would draw attention of the teacher. In the latter years of school he was a bit of a loner, which we later suspected was because of his home life which could have been more pleasant.

On one occasion during school holidays a group of us caught a bus to Malham which was quite a long way then and a long day out. We walked on the river bank to a place called Janet’s Foss which was a waterfall and a deep pool. Dougie, being short of money accepted a bet of sixpence to walk out up to his chest. When he did this he shouted that he would go up to his chin for another threepence. Nobody took him up on this bet as someone pointed out he could not swim. It became obvious from then on that we would try anything that took his fancy.

On leaving school he had not decided which path to take and set about finding a job that would suit him. There were plenty of jobs about then and he tried lots of them. One of them was at a plumbers. They asked him if he had a driving licence to which he replied of course and got the job. Just a couple of days later when delivering parts to a plumber working a couple of miles away he turned the van over on a corner. Investigation revealed he only had a provisional licence. His explanation to his employer was they never asked if he had passed his driving test so on he went to another job. Dougie could turn his hand to almost anything and was quite skilled at all of them.

Much time and several jobs later he announced he was going on the fishing trawlers with another one of our crowd who was called ‘Ginner' because of the colour of his hair. They both ended up working in the arctic fishing grounds. It was a very hard job, chipping ice off the rigging to stop the trawler tipping over. He stuck at the job for quite a while sailing from Fleetwood and Hull. During this time he ended up having a star tattooed on each ear lobe. Something that was completely unheard of in those days.

Eventually he ended up on dry land doing any jobs that took his fancy. During one of these jobs he met a work mate whose weekend pastime was climbing. He joined his friend climbing and really took to this. He moved away from this area and moved to Derbyshire.

I lost contact with Dougie for a long time until the last few years and this is been about playing catch-up.  The highlights of which was meeting Sue who finally managed to settling him down. He told us about the hobbies he had taken up, photography and making musical instruments and told us about Sue playing instruments which he had made.

Until the very end he was still doing something other 75 year olds would not even think about doing.

 Rest in peace Dougie.