Yeah, Doug always seemed like Mr. Indestructible to me. A rock lands on his
head when he's climbing, pierces his skull, and he drives himself to the hospital, covered in blood to have the rock removed. That sort of thing.

But when he and Sue came to visit a few years back, I guess that would have been around 2014, maybe earlier, and the doses of his Parkinson's Disease medicine hadn't yet been fully worked out, it was painful to see him at dinner, bringing his fork to his mouth as if he were in a slow-motion film. That shook me up a bit. But when I came to visit them in Sheffield some time after that (I can't exactly recall off the top of my head exactly when it was), the slow-motion movements were gone and he was proudly showing me the motorbike that Sue had gotten him for his 70th birthday. We even toured the Kelham Island Museum, which I *loved*. And on one of those trips to Sheffield they drove me all the way up to the Lake District (in the pouring rain) and we went to see the lakes that are the centerpiece of Arthur Ransome's wonderful Swallows and Amazons. We stayed at a stone cottage reserved for members of the Lake District based 'Fell and Rock Climbing Club' and their guests only and sat around a coal fire in the fireplace of the lounge of the place. Such a thoroughly wonderful experience. We even stopped in a pub somewhere or other there. It was pouring rain -- naturally -- and a bunch of young lads came in, took off their wet coats and sat around the fireplace. "Birmingham lads", says Doug. "Really?" says I, "How do you know? They don't seem to be speaking English."      I'm not really sure what else I can add.

I have loads of recollections: Like when we did White Slab at Cloggy with that utterly unique "move" where you throw a tangled mass of rope at a spike of rock, and at the end of the day, I recall we went down to a little lake at the bottom of the crag. As soon as we got there I took off my clothes and dove in because it was really hot. Doug only got in to his knees. I said, "Come on in, the water's great, cool off a bit." He said, "Can't swim...," which, given all of his other sporting talents, flabbergasted me. I'd pretty much never heard of anyonenot knowing how to swim...  

So there you have some other minor snippets. One time, when our kids were still little, he went up to the place on one wall where we had been marking the progression of the kids heights over the years. He put his back to the wall and in blue felt-tipped pen, drew a line that marked his height and wrote, "Doug", considerably above, "Bob", my high-water mark. Well, just this year, my boy, a competitive wrestler, almost 18 and 100% muscle (with a perfect climber's body, but he's in love with wrestling, sigh...), finally made it past Doug's blue mark of years ago!