Be The Jam

laziness is the mother of invention

Agatha Christie

Living in the woods has to some extent made me more resourceful and this is, I suppose, inevitable; having to carry all my water to my home has naturally made me much more careful with this resource. Having to cook over an open fire combined with a desire to eat well has meant that I have learnt to make bread over a fire, design an adjustable pot hanger and all manner of other inventions that make my life easier. The application of the mind to the problems at hand that marks out the human mind from that of the beast and is responsible for our evolution to the top of the food chain. Invention has followed invention, innovation has followed innovation and now here we are wired into the world wide web, curing diseases, learning to understand the human condition,  flying in the skies and sending probes far into the darker reaches of space. It might perhaps seem strange at this time when human endeavor is reaching beyond far beyond the barriers that would have seemed possible only a generation or two ago for someone to choose to regress, to live in the woods, to battle with fire, water and cold. Some times I ask myself what on earth I think I'm doing spending my time out in the hills when I could be be doing something more relevant, more cutting edge, more demanding. A possible  justification for this current lifestyle can possibly come from the new perspective on the world that comes from living largely apart from society yet interacting with it.

Sometimes the answer can be staring you in the face.

A physicist friend of mine once explained to me that the difficulty of understanding the universe is compounded by the fact that we are part of the universe, it is difficult to understand the nature of something whilst being inside of it. Take for example a house, we all have a  fairly good understanding of the way in which a house works, walls on the sides, roof on top to keep heat in / rain out, wires for electricity, pipes for water etc etc. Imagine then that you have spent your entire life inside a house, no one has told you how the outside world works, there are no other houses to be seen from the windows and you don't have TV or a radio. In this situation the image that you built up of how a house worked and what it looked like would most likely differ greatly from the truth.

Similarly stepping away from the rat race for a while affords one the opportunity to examine it and put it into a wider context and, in my case at least, decide not to have anything more to do with it if at all possible thank you very much. Whilst this is of interest and use to myself it seemed to me until today that the perspective that I have gained is not really of any value to the rest of the world as a whole. The one caveat to this might be that this experience has led to some quite interesting late night philosophical conversations and the sharing of knowledge has some inherent value to it.

This morning I was listening to some physicists talking to Melvin Bragg on radio 4 about the speed of light, I wasn't paying full attention but the gyst of the conversation was that the speed of light can theoretically be breached by tachyons but that the limit at which information can be sent is at the speed of light. However, there is some uncertainty about the speed of thoughts. It seems that some people, notably twins, can sense when something bad has happened to the other or when the other is in danger. What is missing is any actuate data on the speed at which such information is passed from one twin to the other. The problem of how to communicate faster than the speed of light remains.

The physicists have been looking at the problem too closely, what they need is to get away from the white coats and equations for a moment and  view the problem from a new perspective, from the perspective say of someone who has been living in the woods and is used to creating practical solutions to everyday problems. Using just two twins, a cave, a torch, a rope, really rather a considerable amount of water and a hungry crocodile I believe that I can prove that thoughts can travel faster than the speed of light! Not only that but I can also build a coded communications device that would be undecipherable by others.

Problem one: proving that thoughts travel faster than light.

Ask the man in the pub what the speed of light is and he will probably answer 1,079,252,848.8 km/h and to a certain extent he would be right, but to an extent much more useful to my hypothesis he would be wrong. Light can travel at 1,079,252,848.8 km/h but often it chooses not to, for instance when traveling through water it travel more slowly, this is why light refracts in water. This might seem insignificant but consider the top speed of your car, it can travel at that speed but how often does it? Hmmm? What we really need to find is the speed of light as is applicable to everyday situations. In our everyday situation we have two twins, a brother and sister who, due to a total lack of imagination we shall call Lad and Lass. Lass is having a picnic on a nice sunny afternoon in a meadow, Lad has gone exploring and is dangling from a rope in a massive underground mineshaft. directly underneath Lass. Now for the science. If Lad shines his torch directly upwards we can find the applicable speed of light (a) by measuring the length of time it takes between the torch being turned on and Lass seeing the light. The torch light starts out traveling at  1,079,252,848.8 km/h but once it hits the granite of the roof of the mine shaft it stops and Lass never sees the light!

so a = 0kph

As we have already established twins can sense when the other is in danger, so lets get Lad to shine the torch straight down this time. When Lad turns the torch on this time he can see down to the bottom of the mine shaft, at the bottom of the mine shaft is the very hungry crocodile, lets start adding the water. As the water level starts to rise so the hungry crocodile starts to get closer to Lad, Lad turns off the torch and tries to climb out of the mineshaft but sadly breaks both of his legs. This time when he turns his torch on to look the crocodile is even closer, he is now in danger. Now to find the speed of thought (t) we need to time how long it takes Lass to sense her brother is in danger. However long it takes the message to get to Lass it will be faster than the applicable speed of light which is 0. Thus we can see that thought travels faster than the applicable speed of light.

Whilst Lad has helped us prove that thought is faster than the speed of light and so is most likely due a mention in the next edition of New Scientist he is in immanent danger, Lass knows he at risk but does not know the nature of the risk or even where he is. This is where the communication device comes in.

When Lad turns the torch on he can see that he is in mortal danger, when he turns it off he can no longer see the danger so he can fluctuate between the two states, peril and no peril. If he flicks the torch on briefly he will briefly be aware of his peril and so will his sister, longer view of the risk and Lass receives a longer blast of the sensation that Lad is in danger. By using long and short blasts of telepathic communtication Lad can communicate with his sister via Morse code and tell her of his predicament and she can call cave rescue.

"What's that Lassie, your brother's down a mine shaft?"

It's amazing what goes through your mind after a few months without tv.

I'll let you into a secret, living under a small piece of tarp in the woods isn't always very nice. Sometimes I'm almost tempted to say that it sucks, on occasion the temptation has got too much and I have even said "this sucks" out loud, quite loudly! Such an unwholesome outburst would normally be precluded by some event such as two or three days of rain followed by waking up in a puddle, school never prepared me for waking up in a puddle so I'm afraid I have to improvise a response and a loud vocalisation of dismay does seem to be an appropriate reaction. Lately though it has been the dark that has been bothering me, since my head torch ceased working I have been left in darkness for most of the day. I wake at around 9 but by 4 it is dark again. The fire throws up a certain amount of life and it is just about possible to knock up a simple pasta sauce by the flickering light but not quite light enough not to trip over one of the logs the sauce is balancing on and so spill the sauce onto the ground. That did indeed suck, but at least making another sauce gave me something to do, for you see sitting alone in the woods in the dark is quite dull, after a week it starts to get a bit much. I'm now sleeping for about 12 hours a day and the more I sleep the lazier I feel, and so the cycle continues. On Friday though I was in Oxford and witnessed the turning on of the Christmas tree lights, ordinarily such a little thing, but to me this year it made a huge difference to my mood, the cheery light in amongst the darkness lifted my spirits all the way home.

That was Friday, you might recall a certain amount of rain that came down that night - try as I might I have not managed to dry those clothes yet. Yet whilst the dark and the wet do on occasion get a bit much there is the odd moment when it all seems worth it, sitting on a hill side watching deer or listening to a couple of tawny owls screech away to each other on a starry night can make one feel somehow complete in a way that sitting in front of the TV just doesn't manage. On Sunday morning you see I had occasion to watch some tv and I was shocked by the constant overpowering Christmas adverts, I would much rather become aware that Christmas grows closer from the lights being turned on whilst carols are sung than by having a bunch of simpering idiots prancing about dressed in red pretending to have fun whilst trying to persuade me to buy some lousy tat that no one would actually want if they stopped and thought about it.

Not that I'm feeling militant or anything, nah, I'm going to go pick some Mistletoe and sell it - I think I even have a Santa hat somewhere.

Some words and pictures on BBC  online

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/oxfordshire/6172788.stm

Some handy tips for walking about in the woods at night, with no torch and no moonlight.

Even if you are walking very fast uphill do try not to breath through your mouth, failure to do so could well result in a branch going into your mouth. If you find yourself with a branch in your mouth try to resist rapidly jerking away from the branch in such a manner that would result in any of the thorns on the branch getting caught on the inside of your lip and cheek. If you do end up with thorns in your mouth remove them very gently.

When vaulting over fences in darkened woodland do not expect to land on an even surface, or even for the ground to be at the height you imagine it will be, keep your legs relaxed and be prepared to fall in any number of possible directions, occasionally for quite some distance.

Things continue to go well, although not necessarily within the strictest interpretation of "going well", I am not, for instance in Brazil right not sunning myself on a beach. I am instead sat in the Bodleian with a very long list of tasks that need to be done beside me. Neither did I manage to meet up with the chaps from This Is A Knife who went out to the woods to do some filming last night. Aside from that, and the brace of angry ex girlfriends and the sore knuckles from when that guy tried to start a fight with me on Saturday things are actually going reasonably according to plan at the moment.

I have decided that whilst in the Alps this winter I will start training in earnest for climbing Mount Cotopaxi (a volcano) by ladder. This will initially start with getting good and fit by doing lots of cross country skiing at altitude and then move on to learning to  ice climb before starting to learn how to climb mountains with a ladder, I suspect it will be quite a complex operation. 

Wayn from Forest Knights has put me on to the Royal Geographical Society and they have a huge list of organisations who offer grants to expeditions so I'm going to be writing off to lots of them over the next week. He has also offered advice on how to go about finding funding for the expedition.

I have possibly sold a 5% share of the travel guide, that would be this site, to an investor and the money raised from this would be pretty helpful to develop the guide into something that could start making money. With my eyes firmly on the target of raising money I have opened a be the jam t shirt shop, and all the profits from it will be going towards getting to the jungle. It needs lots more work but it is getting there.

I have just got an email from the This Is A Knife people, apparently they are still in the woods so I'm going to go and meet them as soon as I find out where exactly they are. I hope they managed to light a fire last night, it was bitterly cold. 

Right then, I best scamper off and make them a cup of tea.  

It's been raining, I have been away from the comfort of the ditch and out and about in the rain. I had been planning to write about all the fun and games that I have been having trying to stay dry without a bivi bag in a two day down pour, falling in a river didn't help my general state of dampness. I was also going to warn of the terrible dangers of not having a torch, suffice to say from now on I won't be keeping my toothpaste in my first aid kit where it can be confused for less pleasant tasting things. Now I'm not really in the mood to write about such things as I have a very important decision to make and I have less than 20 hours in which to make it.

I randomly have a flight to Brazil, whilst I'm planning to spend my time in the North of South America I still had it listed down as one of my assets for Mission Improbable, the problem is that I might be about to loose it.

Apparently the flight has to be taken within 1 year of being booked, that means if I am to use it I have to fly out by 16th of February.

Currently the flight is booked for Sunday morning, if I am to change the flight I have to do so tomorrow, looking at the available dates changing the booking would cost between £150 and £250.

That means tonight I have to decide if Mission Improbable could conceivably be ready to go by February the 16th or whether I should kiss goodbye to the flight, it cost £750.

If it is possible to get Mission Improbable ready to go by February it would not be possible to do so from Italy, where I'm supposed to be for the next five months as I would have to be in the UK to get all my jabs, undergo training, and all the other stuff that needs to be organised before leaving.

So far a few companies have pledged bits of kit/training to support the mission and all this has been gratefully received, but the most valuable asset is the flight. It would be quite a massive set back to loose it but it kind of looks inevitable, annoyingly I can't even sell the thing as the name on the ticket is non-transferable. If you know any one out there called Hugh Sawyer could you ask them if they want to buy a flight to Brazil?

I'm also in the process of making another very tough decision that also impacts on how Mission Improbable will work. It's one of those things that I want to keep secret until such time as I decide whether or not to go down that route, what I can say though that it makes the decision whether to take the flight in February really rather mind bogglingly complicated. I don't think I'll be getting much sleep tonight, too much thinking to be done.

Drat.

I think I shall end on a more cheerful note, cheerful is good.

The thing that is really needed to make this whole venture to work is publicity. The more people that know about this the more money will, hopefully, be raised through sponsorship for Rainforest Concern. The more people visit this site the easier it becomes to get more travel writing for the travel guide. The more travel writing and visitors to the site there are the easier it will become to sell advertising space and thus raise money to pay for things like flights. So it is god news indeed that the BBC came out to interview me the other day and there will be an article about the jungle trip on the BBC news online site quite soon, rumour is that Monday is the day. Not only this, oh no, but This Is A Knife, a weekly podcast beaming out of the Channel 4 website, are coming out to film next week. So, things have taken a bit of a step forward recently as well as taking a bit of a step back.

BBC News online

This Is A Kinfe

Yet more good news!

As I have mentioned previously Think Host have agreed to host this website for free, not only is having free stuff a good thing in and of itself but I was especially pleased about this as Think Host are powered by solar and wind energy so once this thing actually gets to the jungle it will be powered completely by sun and wind power. The only problem I had with that was that I'm far too much of a ludite to be able to figure out how to use their technology, now though that problem is solved. A very old friend of mine by the name of Jer knows all about computers and is forever pressing buttons on things and making stuff happen, he has agreed to do the technical support for Be The Jam so pretty soon this site will be benefiting from free and sustainably powered hosting.

That is all

One thing with this being dark most of the time thing that we have going on at the moment is that it is quite possibly the worst time for ones head torch to stop working. It is really frustrating having to do everything by the light of the fire, I do have a small maglite but compared to the head torch it is next to useless and it runs through batteries at an alarming rate.

Note to self - don't attempt to fix things until they are completely and utterly broken, that way things can't get any worse.

Today started with the usual feelings of "crikey it's cold" and "I'm not going to get up until it's warmer" but moved quickly on to frying freshly picked mushrooms over a fire whilst water for tea, washing and shaving heated. Then I had to leave the woods kicking my way through piles of freshly fallen leaves and that heavy drizzle that comes at you sideways on the rain. The bus whisked me into Oxford and since first thing this morning I have been absent from the real world and residing here in cyberspace, organising the website, writing begging letters in the hope of getting equipment / sponsorship / gainful employment and generally trying not to get distracted by the girl sat next to me.

Yesterday I had a cunning plan. I have used an old piece of camouflage tarpaulin to build my semi - permanent basha, this leaves the proper military basha free to be used on excursions about the countryside. The only problem is that the tarpaulin is a bit misshapen and no mater how much I adjust it it sags in the middle. To keep the maximum amount of rain and wind of me it is stretched at 45 degrees between the ground and some overhead branches, the sag in the middle is sufficiently large to use up a lot of what would otherwise be head space. Sitting under a piece of tarp in the middle of a downpour can get quite miserable after a day or two and having not much in the way of head space doesn't improve matters much. Now before anyone starts writing in telling me that I haven't put it up properly and all that is required is sufficient tension to pull the thing flat I have to mention that no matter how much tension I put on the thing it won't lie flat. To be sure I have put in an awful lot of tension on occasion, tent pegs have been ripped out of the ground, bungee cords have pinged off into the yew tree not to reappear for days or even weeks on end and more than one hole has been put in the tarp as the result of slightly over-enthusiastic tensioning of the thing. What was called for was a new approach. This is were the cunning plan came in. A few sticks put in the ground at 45 degrees should hold the thing out of my hair and indeed they do. I found three strong sticks and sharpened them and stuck them into the ground at the aforementioned 45 degrees, it was soon apparent that this wasn't strong enough to withstand some of the winds that we have been having recently, so I found some lengths of hazel left over from my attempt to make a chair and fashioned some supports out of them. To my utter amazement they worked! I'll take some photos.

I have been forwarded the following - one small step for monkey, one giant leap for politics.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1965569.stm

I went home, back to see the parents, back to the most comfortable bed in the world, home cooking, clean clothes and good company. It was invigorating. When I arrived, covered in mud, rips in my jeans, catapult in my pocket and heavy with the aroma of wood smoke I did feel a bit like I was 14 again. It seemed to be only a moment later that it was time to leave again, only this time it was a clean me, light with the aroma of soap and laden down with big jumpers provided by worried parents that was setting out.

Cunningly I picked up my winter sleeping bag before I left, it's not so much fun sleeping out in the frost in a summer bag. Somehow, and I can't for the life of me figure out how, I have lost my bivi bag (big waterproof sack thing for putting a sleeping bag and oneself in when sleeping out). This isn't normally much of an issue as I usually leave my basha (waterproof sheet stretched between handy branches to create a roof) up in the same place so that I at least have a dry patch of ground to sleep on and the roof keeps most of the rain off during the night. Last night though I didn't make it back to chez monkey and so went to my summer residence (down my the Thames) instead.

Rivers are not necessarily the thing that one wants to be sleeping by when it is cold, the proximity of water tends to lower the temperature, there is usually a bit of mist as well. Last night the river surpassed itself by laying on a supply of freezing fog for my entertainment. The long grass was heavy with dew, most of it already turned to frost at 10pm. I have been living outside for over a year now and believe that I can say with some authority that water and ice are not the first choice of substances to lay down an un-waterproofed sleeping bag on. Ever quick of brain I decided not to take Jamie and Georgia up on their offer of a bed for the night and a ready supply of tea but to tough it out. A further application of thought to the situation revealed that it was not even strictly necessary to lie the sleeping bag directly onto the icy wet grass, I could use the basha as a sheet and stay dry that way. After picking my way about in the moonlight I found a spot that looked reasonably secluded to settle in for the night, hung my rucksack from a tree so that it wouldn't get wet on the ground and laid out the basha. On top of this I laid down the sleeping bag and then, luxury upon luxury, I put one of the big winter jumpers into the bag the sleeping bag come in to use as a pillow. Then, with one of those legendary flashes of genius like what I am prone to, I decided to fold the basha over the sleeping bag to create a cocoon and so keep the fog out. I tied the foot end together so that I wouldn't slide out of the bottom of the cocoon and then used the poppers on the sides of the basha to hold them together - perfect. I had made myself a warm dry place to sleep, I was very pleased with myself as I stepped back to admire my handywork before taking off my shoes and getting into bed.

This is when the problems started.

I had forgotten rule one of sleeping out - head up and feet down is the appropriate arrangement. I was feet up and head down and this isn't good. It didn't occur to me to turn through 180 degrees. Instead I tried to roll to the left until such time as I found somewhere comfortable to lie. As I rolled the sleeping bag and basha became slowly more tightly wound around me. The pillow was soon covering half of my face forcing me to breath from the left hand side of my mouth. I'm not sure if I would have carried on rolling until the blood supply was cut off to my head or not, I guess I will never know as an inconveniently placed cow pat forced me to stop rolling and, rolling to the right now, back up. Soon the bonds around me loosened and breathing and movement became free again before once more becoming constricted as I rolled off past my starting point looking for somewhere suitable to sleep. This time it was thistles that halted my exploration, I swore quietly out of the right hand side of my mouth. I sat up and wriggled a bit to loosen the sleeping bag from around my head. then I lay down, arched my back and wriggled in an attempt to loosen it from around my waist before quickly sitting bolt upright again as I realised that somewhere along the line the basha had worked free from around my shoulders and now the sleeping bag was now soaking up the water from the grass. It didn't take long to work my left arm free and pick up one corner of the basha or for me to take hold of this corner with my teeth as using touch alone I searched for the right corner, it was not to be found. I'll worry about that later I thought and began to shuffle myself along like a worm heading in the direction my feet were pointing in, albeit a worm who is sitting up, travelling backwards with a basha in his mouth and muttering darkly to itself. Shuffling wasn't a hugely successful mode of transportation, I didn't find anywhere suitably comfortable to lie, in fact all I achieved was a further bunching up of the basha.

Before I knew it I was standing up in my bare feet holding the basha, sleeping bag and pillow above my head in an attempt to keep them dry. I picked my way back to my boots, peering into the darkness trying to make out cow pats and thistles before my feet discovered them. Once I found my shoes, hung everything from branches, dug out my head torch, remembered I was going to fix it when I was at home and found somewhere flat to sleep it was relatively straight forward to remake my bed and go to sleep. What it was thought was absolutely freezing, even with a fleece on and in my winter sleeping bag I still woke up shivering on a few occasions, I'm looking forward to getting back to the "ditch", there it won't be foggy and I'll have a roll mat to keep me insulated from the ground.

I'm glad to report that in the morning the sleeping bag was mostly dry. However, I felt dreadful, coming from the comfort of home, running water, kettles, company and the most comfortable bed in the world waking up covered in frost seemed strangely unpleasant. The walk back into Oxford was glorious though and by the time I was sitting down out side the Bodliean with a cup of tea and a chicken and ham pie I was feeling on top of the world.

A friend of mine lives in a tree house in the jungle in Thailand, apparently she has wi fi broadband. She says that from time to time a tree house, for there are many, comes up to rent at about £150 a month. It strikes me that if all else fails it would be possible to live in a hammock in the jungle and then commute to work in a village of tree houses. I quite like this idea, I think if I remember rightly the original plan was to go and live in the jungle in Thailand, party this was because I wanted to go to Thailand and partly because I found someone there who would teach me jungle survival for free. I also have a lot of friends living in Thailand, this could quite possible help.

If I can't raise the money to spend a year in the Amazon the whole thing might have to be relocated to Thailand.

Sites like this also make me think Thailand might not be such a bad place to spend a year.

Have been doing some work on the site today, have added a section called skiing and boarding. There is not a lot there yet as it is not something I know anything about but there are a couple of links. I have also been setting up a shop that will be selling bethejam T-shirts and the like. I know I know I'm selling out but currently this whole venture is running at a loss so something has to give. It is supposed to be a business this web site.

So this is one of the T-shirts. So it isn't necessarily something that has that much to do with jungles, or anything like that but I quite like it.