Chamonix in 1971…. remembered

John Porter was rescued and we had to rescue him through the window of the hospital because he couldn’t afford the rescue and hospital fees

It was a year of a monumental piss-up at Maurice’s – which would have been on the Saturday night of 14 August. It ended up with the Japs and the Brits standing on tables facing each other, singing very obscene versions of various well-known songs (the Brits led by Pete Minks, IIRC). Actually, it didn’t end there, because someone fell off the balcony into the river, and I ended up driving Al Rouse, Brian Hall and John Syrett on a crazy late-night escapade.

As a result, the gendarmarie came up the track to Snell’s field the very next morning and lined everyone up in front of the huge boulder to take a group photograph of ‘suspects’. It just so happened that I was in the woods taking a crap, so was fortunate enough to miss this. The most incredible thing, though, was that, on top of the very boulder – a bit bigger than the largest of the Cromlech boulders – that was a backdrop to the photograph, was sitting a huge park bench that had been stolen the night before from somewhere in the middle of Chamonix, and the police never spotted it! They obviously never looked up!!