This account is entirely fictional and any resemblance to real people or events is of course, entirely coincidental. 

The following episode took place in the wild years of my (relative youth), when I was not only young and extremely fit, but also totally carefree. All my disposable income (ie all my income!) went on pleasurable things, one of which was climbing. Short, brutally cold days spent climbing on frozen Scottish cliffs in the depths of winter being the flipside to those long summer evenings in shorts and t-shirts, lolling on warm rock, climbing and laughing until the air grew dark.

A trip to Scotland in the depths of winter was an annual tradition for my circle of friends. I remember a trip to Ballachulish in about 1986, around New Year. It was cold but there was no ice to climb, and the hills were blasted all week by the breath of the North Atlantic, laden with shards of ice which stung our faces and rattled off our jackets on the bleak summits of the Mamores.

Coming down off the hills on days like that, your face burns and you feel like you've been through something indefinable, elemental.

Our reward for the hard work and endurance; your 'warm relaxing bath', metaphorically speaking, was centred around beer, whisky and, at that period of my life, the hallucinogenic fungi we had accumulated and dried over the preceding months, in the fields and moors of West Yorkshire.

On New Year's Eve, after being flayed by hissing whips of sleet on the ridge of Am Bodach, we sought our ambrosia. Rice pudding duly eaten, we piled into Graham's car (he who would later shatter both knees falling 80ft off a seacliff in Pembroke) and headed up the Pass to the Clachaig Inn for a few bevvies. Along the way, the 7 people in the car divided into two camps: those who wanted beer and whisky in the pub, and those who wanted beer and whisky in a seething, mushroom-induced kaleidoscope of movement, colour and sound. I joined the latter group, and chewed stoically on my handful of leathery, strangely marmite-esque fungi, washed down with a swig from a bottle of 100 Pipers which appeared in my hand.

I rattled around in the luggage area of Graham's estate as he swung it around the dark bends of the Ballachulish road, until a blaze of orange light announced our arrival at the centre of the West Coast climbing scene, the Clachaig Inn.

Inside the pub, I could feel the mushrooms taking hold. That sensation in the pit of your stomach, or thereabouts, like being in a lift which is descending too fast. The immensely solid walls of the pubs were beginning to billow and heave, like ocean swell in slow motion, and things at the periphery of my vision were fizzing like the scenery from Roobarb and Custard.

I looked at my mates. The pure drinkers were looking amused, obviously seeing something in my eyes or face they found funny. A twinge of unease; could I sit and join in their conversations whilst everything around me turned into a finger-painting? Whoops, bad vibes! I looked at Andy, who was staring at the wall beside me, mouth open. I caught his eye and suddenly the train was back on its track. I didn't need to speak. His black, huge pupils said it all.

He grinned. I grinned wider. His grin stretched so wide it disappeared round the sides of his head and suddenly we exploded snottily into laughter, spraying beer from every orifice as we did so. We cried and gasped, laughing at nothing, at everything, at ourselves, each other, existence. Andy's face was a stretched mask, a comedy rictus with teary eyes as he fought to draw breath against the laugh. I guess mine was as bad.

We were beginning to attract odd glances from some of the other people around us, who weren't part of our group, especially when Andy mate suddenly announced excitedly that a pair of tiny climbers were scaling the stone fireplace. Yes there they were, clinging to the shimmering stonework! My dozing logic told me it was just some old black nails in the joints, but they did look like tiny figures moving against the writhing stonework.

The faces around me in the pub were becoming grotesque, like caricatures, and I was finding it hard to speak coherently, much to my 'straight' companion's amusement. Words hybridised on my tongue, seemingly coming out like I was speaking in bad arabic. The bubble of voices in the room had become a cacophonous wall of animal sounds, from stentorian bellows to excited birdlike shrieks and gibbon wails.

I was aware that some people would find this frightening, but for me, it was exhilarating, every bit as much as standing up on the mountain, with the air roaring in my face.

At this point, my glass emptied. I'd been drinking my beer, mechanistically but not enjoyably. As mushrooms tend to do to most foods, the beer's flavour was almost eliminated, leaving a vaguely musty/metallic taste, so I resolved to get something with more "oomph"! Whisky!

"I'm off to the bar", I leered, and stood up on legs which felt ridiculously long, lurching off through the crowd towards the bar.

It took an age to reach the bar. I couldn't find a direct line between the people and meandered, squeezing apologetically through tiny gaps (which in reality were probably 2 feet wide). Time had ceased to have meaning. It could have been twenty seconds or twenty minutes, I had no idea. Bizarre looming faces and beast noises were all around me and I began to feel some panic. Every time someone looked at me I felt they KNEW.

I got to the long, busy bar and stood, staring at the heaving array of colourful bottles at the back of the bar. Jesus! How was I going to pick one! I could hardly make out the bottle, let alone what it said on the label! It all seemed to shift and slide and I found it hard to pin one bottle down with my eyes.

A small sane voice in my mind told me they sold a whisky called Glencoe (I'd had it the night before), so I carefully sculpted my lips and long tongue (keep it in! Don't let her see it!) around the words "Glencoe please. Double!". "Ice?" She asked, unexpectedly. I panicked slightly but shook my head. "sstraight" I hissed, smiling in what I hoped wasn't a sinister fashion. I think I got away with it. There were people either side of me and behind me. I could hear their breath, hissing through their nostrils, and feel strange protruberances pushing into me. I ignored them. Just the mushrooms, that's all.

The barmaid poured the stuff, everything happening so slowly, the sounds of the bestiary behind me momentarily receding into the background as my focus was drawn to the length of her fingers and the glowing gold she was pouring into my glass. But then she turned and looked me in my staring black-hole eyes and, placing the glass on the bar said "£1.95, please."

I looked back at her, not sure if I should stare into her eyes or avoid her gaze altogether and study the bottles behind her.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a handful of change. This was in the days of pound notes, but I never thought to go for the wallet. Somehow I had to make £1.95 out of the thousands of coins which seemed to fill my hand. I stared at them. My hand seemed alternately huge, like a sunfish, and uselessly small. How could I count out £1.95?!

I could feel myself starting to giggle, trying not to, which made it worse, and she was looking at me strangely. A snort burst explosively out of me and I looked at her sheepishly. 
With a massive effort of will, I concentrated on the money, and began to count out coins with my left hand.

Shit! Where to put them all?! Aha! Logic deserted me, replaced by its mad cousin, as the solution presented itself. Oblivious of the huge expanse of bar in front of me, I started laying the coins out in a line up my outstretched right arm, the one holding the coin mountain, all the while trying to add them up in my head, and failing to do so, even though I could recognise the individual coins. I just couldn't add 10+10, let alone get to 195. 
I was sweating now, and looked at the barmaid, terrified that she KNEW. I seemed to have been there ages, HOURS, and now I was in trouble.

The coins had reached my elbow, and the slope of my upper arm was too great for them to stick! A couple of shiny 10p's fell to the floor, as I lifted my arm to the horizontal, and tried continuing the line of coins.

Just then, a slim hand reached over and took some coins, 50p's I think, from the half-metre line of metal arrayed along my arm. She said nothing, and brought me my change; me still standing there with my shiny display of coin of the realm along my rigid arm. A small group of people looked on, some giggling and sniggering. I felt they were all talking about me. I had to get away, fast!

I tipped the coins onto the bar and floor and scooped most of them up and into my pocket, having to crouch beneath a canopy of stares to rescue rebranded shillings from beery flagstones. I slowly stood back up, seized the scotch and thankfully escaped back into anonymity.

A big grin came to my glowing face as the sense of accomplishment settled into place. I'd BEEN TO THE BAR! Wow.

I worked my way back through the sea of monsters and gargoyles, hoping that no-one had noticed anything unusual (after all it was the Clachaig on Hogmanay!). 
My friends were as I had left them. As I sat down, Graham, who was driving and totally straight, said casually, in his Norf Landon drawl: "I was just goin' to the bar. You should've said! It was my rahnd anyway!"

The laughter exploded out of me like Old Faithful, as I fell off my stool.