Climbing Cliff

As a boy I liked to climb - trees, rock faces. One holiday when I
was 13 or 14 I decided to climb up from the beach. It was more of
a steep slope than a cliff. And it was soil, not rock, with clumps of
gorse and grass here and there.

It was easy to scramble up - until I came to a steeper section
where the soil crumbled under my feet and there was no good
handhold I could reach. I found I couldn't move up without the soil
threatening to give. And I couldn't move back down either. The soil
was slithering from under me at the slightest move. I pulled on a
grassy clump, avoiding a thistle, but any weight on it made it start
to come away in my hand.

I realised I was stuck. And there was no one around - no one near.
I realised I was a long way up. I realised I could fall and that I had
somehow never thought till then that I could. I imagined my body
on the beach, slumped, my family running up to me. I realised I
could be killed.

The sky was blue, the air clement. Seagulls drifted over the sea in
their nautical whites. The coarse tufty grass shook and nodded
gaily in the wind.