Tom Wiggins, Letter Carver & Writer

Imagine for a second that I am a cyclist on the final stage of The Vuelta a   Bolivia .  I have climbed to the summit of 4,496 metres above sea level, through the high plains of Altiplano, Lake Titicaca and finally   La Paz .  It is the highest and arguably the most challenging tour on the cycling calendar.  When I first arrived, the locals had told me in hand expressions and broken English that the summit climb would make my lungs scream.  This morning, I saw Padre Perez anoint every ambulance with holy water.  Such is its intensity, I’m told he does it every morning during the tour.  I know the task ahead, but knowing this did little to settle my nerves.  The apprehension mostly leaves me when I’m on the road.  All I can do now is focus on the game plan and the wheel of the man in front.  This is the final stage.  For all the pain a rider has to push through on a climb at altitude, we always hope the final ascent ...

When you frown, your face screws into a knot not dissimilar to that of a clove hitch, though to compare you to a knot as useful as this one would be to labour it with a comparison it doesn’t deserve.  There is beauty in seeing a well-groomed, happy, obedient horse tied neatly to a hitching post outside of a saloon. There is no beauty in your frown. In fact, I do not know a horse, rope or post in history that has been afflicted with the separate or collective ugliness  of your scowl. I am reasonably confident of this supposition and I will stand by it. However, I must distance myself from objectifying matters, because it is an overly simplistic device used to derive an element of humour from a place where there absolutely is none. And therein lies my problem.  Or rather, your problem. So for fear of comparing you to something marginally favourable, it is only fair that I compare you to yourself, because the only thing that comes close...