In Which Eloise Reprises Her Urban Climb Birthday Party Experience

As if it were possible to top the Pepe's Mexican Birthday Experience, for her tenth birthday Eloise chose, for her public party - her Official Celebration, if you will - to entertain a select gathering of her close friends to a rock-climbing experience the likes of which we have not seen since the last time we had a rock-climbing birthday experience, in 2012.

We found the Urban Climb experience much expanded, with towering cliff faces all around, and a rock-arch taking centre stage, all lowering over us in probably rather less than fifty shades of grey, studded with hand- and foot-holds and ropes and people.

Eloise wasn't as acrophilic as I remember her being last time, even with her musculature finely honed by swimming and dancing, but perhaps she just didn't place as much faith in my abilities as a belayer to keep her safe, or else (and perhaps understandably) her factual safety didn't resonate with her subconscious fear of being ten metres up in the air on a sheer rock face, unable to reach her next hand hold with her muscles complaining and her tired reach withdrawing.

Some of her little chums however were spidering up the climbs like rats up a drainpipe, a toute vitesse, particularly the newbies. Beginners' luck, I should think.

Anyway the time flitted by like a flighty fly, and before we knew it we had to go, sweaty and sticky and filled up with sugar. Another birthday bites the dust.