Au Naturel

The Peak District is a hotbed of depravity and salacious behaviour as any fule kno. You can't move without stumbling into the Devil's Arse or coming across priapic pagans, mashing exotic mushrooms into their faces and prancing around obscene outcrops of ice age rockery in the altogether. While the rest of my earnest group of budding landscape photographers were fiddling with their f.stops and peering into the haze to capture the definitive shot of a wall, a tree and a sheep, my eyes were strangely drawn to the rocks and their saucy ways. The Roaches are the Peak's slightly inferior answer to the The Matopos and would be lovely if they weren't covered in the blood of failed rock climbers and suicidal sheep. After Peaking for four days it was nice to come down to the relative sanity of Manchester and the questionable sanity of the relatives. Nothing like a rousing game of full body contact netball to get the blood racing (out of various gaping wounds). I'm particularly grateful for being included in the ancient family tradition of cremating the dried out Christmas tree at the first Barbie of the Summer(TM). I'm sure those burn marks on the second floor will disappear with a lick o' paint and the neighbours weren't too alarmed by the six foot column of fire randomly whooshing up over the fence. I also thoroughly enjoyed the loving exchange of cups of water in the face between two of the brothers, a curious way to express one's affection some might say, but who am I to question familial customs.

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