Be The Jam

I didn't have a mobile for about two and a half years but recently I was forced to get one, it is really useful I don't know how I ever did without it. Why only last night one of my friends phoned me to tell me that it was cold, "have you noticed?"

"Is it really? Thanks for letting me know". I said shifting as close to the fire as I thought I could get away with without burning my jeans.

It is getting cold now, this happened really quite suddenly. Last weekend I was happily wearing just a t shirt at night but by Wednesday I was having difficulty getting half frozen toothpaste out of the tube. The good thing about it being cold is the fact that one is constantly aware of the fact, why last night I was so in tune with the fact it was cold that I woke up on a number of occasions just to appreciate the fact. Not that the cold was the only thing to keep me awake. I have a new pet mouse you see, this one is better than last years, much more active, jumps around like a lunatic all night long. At first it was quite sweet watching the little thing scurrying about in amongst the leaves, as the night wore on it became less sweet and more noisy.

There were quite a few things rustling in the undergrowth last night, it was a little disconcerting and I wasn't the only one disconcerted. A couple of muntjack were barking out warning calls and every now and again a pheasant would take panicky flight from it's roost. I'm not sure what it was that was out there, it might have been poachers but I didn't hear any shots. It is a bit concerning if there are poachers about as they have been known to shoot walkers / each other by mistake from time to time. I'm going to be really annoyed if I have to spend an evening picking shot out of myself as a result of an over eager poacher thinking I'm a deer. Then again how many deer spend their evenings sat by a fire and listening to the Archers? I might just escape their attention.

Lambs Liver with bubble and squeak.

Serves 1

Quater of a red onion

two slices lambs liver

salt and pepper

balsamic vinegar

olive oil

dollop of double cream

lemon

bubble and squeak

Fry the red onion over a hot fire until turning brown, move to one side of the pan and add in the liver. Sprinkle with the salt and pepper and fry the liver for one minute on each side. Add in the balsamic vinegar and the cream and cook the liver for a couple more minutes on each side. Serve the liver with bubble and squeak and the onion sauce poured over the top.

For desert why not try one of those packets of instant just add hot water custard?

B L A C K O U T  L O N D O N (& other parts of UK)  4th November 2006

Starting at Sunset - 4.30 pm to 7.30 pm You are invited to take part in the
largest demonstration of People Power that London (and the UK) has ever seen
on Saturday 4th November 2006, by turning off all your lights, and switching
off all your non-essential electrical equipment at Sunset.

Somehow I have got myself a job in the Alps for the winter, in Italy. Hopefully this should mean that by the spring I should just about be able to afford to get to the jungle. That's my justification and I'm sticking to it. I am in no way influenced in my decision to go and work a ski season by the fact that it sounds like a whole lot of fun and most certainly a lot more fun than working in London.

I went for an interview on Monday, I wasn't looking very smart. I had a bit of a crumpled look about me, clothes that have spent a bit of time squashed up in the bottom of a rucksack tend to take on the crumpled look I find. I did hang a blazer and shirt up on a tree overnight and so the worst of the creases had fallen out by the morning. I was going for a job as a chef so I diligently wrote up my 12 day menu plan, packed a copy of my passport, made a sample dish (endemame and prawn salad in a Thai dressing), and put them all in a bag together with the calculator I would apparently need. I was less than pleased when at Victoria I realised that this bag was now wending it's way off into the distance on the train I was no longer on. I had half an hour to spare in which to cook a sample dish. Interesting.

I'm not sure if you have ever tried to cook an impressive dish in half an hour at Victoria station, if you have not you probably won't realise that this isn't as simple as it seems. For a start there are not that many useful looking shops - "Whsmiths? No. Burger King? Hmmmm, maybe. Ah! Marks and Spencer's; fantastic!" Only it wasn't so fantastic, M&S are useless. They never have any ingredients worth speaking of just rows and rows of ready meals. "Hmmmm, ready meals - maybe? No". In the end all that I could think to make was a Raspberry Fool.

Recipie

Raspberry Fool

Creme Fraiche

Double Cream

Raspberries

Smash the berries to a pulp and mix in the Creme Fraiche and cream. A higher proportion of creme fraiche will result in a healthier pudding, a higher proportion of cream will result in a nicer one.

I managed to borrow a tuppaware container from a nearby cafe and then make the fool on the train to Clapham Junction. It was only later that I realised that the container was infused with the smell of garlic.

I thought I was going for a job cooking meals for people in Chalets, the interviewers thought I was going for a chef's position in a Hotel. I was briefly tempted but the idea of 12 hour days working hard without a break and stupidly high stress levels didn't appeal. In the end we settled on a compromise, I'm going to be the chef in a large chalet; maybe about 40 people. This means all I have to do is cook breakfast, afternoon cakes and an evening meal and the rest of the day is free, easy. As there are quite a few people to cook for I don't have to clean the chalet or make beds, just cook food and play in the snow.

I asked about living outside and they said that accommodation is included in the package. I said I knew but I wanted to live outside. They said this was most unusual and they would have to get back to me.

Apparently it is not possible to live outside in the Alps during the winter and hold down a job at the same time. I bowed to their superior knowledge and said I would live in doors.

I'm glad I'm a well balanced rounded type of person who doesn't take being told that something is not possible as a personal challenge. If I was that sort of person I might be planning to spend the first month or two in Italy getting the right bits of kit together, checking out how the system works and then going to live outside for a month or two without telling anyone. Good thing I'm all grown up now isn't it.

It was quite cold last night. I had forgotten about it getting cold, cold isn't strictly speaking my best thing in the world. Warm is a bit better. I did make some bread though so it was nice to wake up and have bread and marmalade after a night of being mostly a bit too cold to sleep. I think the Alps will be colder, this isn't necessarily a good thing. A lot of me doesn't want to go, mostly I think it is a bad idea, but weirdly this is what it attracting me to go; it will be challenging. Challenging is good.

I have a few interviews to attend for jobs in the Alps so things are moving on at quite apace. Only. Only I  might have found something even more challenging to do and which would possibly be better training for the jungle.

That's right kids, watch one idiot go and live in the jungle for 12
months and get an extra 5 months free! OK OK, 5 isn't 50% of 12 but I
can't be bothered to use my brain and my fingers are being used to
type so I can't do sums.

Another 5 months in the jungle? I hear you ask, no no, that would be
silly and quite unnecessary. The thing is that raising the funds to
get to South America is taking longer than expected, curiously I can't
find anyone else to pay so it looks as though I'm going to have to do
so myself! So, that means I'm stuck in Europe for a while longer
trying to organise things. I've done a winter living in the woods in
the UK and I'm not particularly keen to do another one - it was
horrible.

The plan is to go to the Alps, big pointy snow capped mountains, and
live in them until March, outside of course and get sponsored to do so
- all money going to Rainforest Concern this time. Whilst there I
intend to work as a chef, barman or somesuch, get the travel guide
running up to speed and raise the funds needed to get to the jungle.

Currently I'm considering my position re "tents are for girls".

Surely nothing can go wrong?


There is the possibility that in the next week or two someone will
come through with a big pile of cash with which to go to the jungle
with, in which case this plan might, might, be scrapped.

My search for work in the Alps has been made very easy thanks to natives.co.uk Click the link and have a look if you fancy working a ski season as well.

At the moment I guess I could be said to be practicing living in the wilds whist living of money earned  from running a web site. That would indeed be a good thing to do, it would be mighty good practice for going and living in the jungle and living off money earned from a web site, it would be handy to have some experience in at least one element of the going and living in the jungle and running a web site thing. The problem is that I'm not making any money from the site, this is probably because the site isn't yet in a position to start generating capital and I think that this could be traced back to the fact that I have irregular access to a computer and none of the necessary skills to make the computer do what I want it to.

I think though that I have found someone to build a web site that will do what is necessary and I might have figured out how to get myself access to a computer, I might also have figured out a way of marketing the site so as to get loads of people looking at the site. It is all going to take quite a lot of work, I had thought that going to the Amazon would be easy. I imagined, naively as it turns out, that it would be quite easy to find a corporate sponsor to put up a nice big pile of cash to fund Mission Improbable and in return the lovely corporate sponsor people would get to put their logo all over the web site and maybe give us a couple of baseball caps with their logos on for when we get photographed by the press. The reality is somewhat different, there have been plenty of people and companies who have very kindly offered bits of kit, reductions in services and what not but no big sponsor. So it seems that Mission Improbable is going to have to pay for itself.

Interesting.

Challenging.

Roll over Lois Pasteur, I have found a cure for the common cold. Once again I expect the Nobel Prize people are writing a cheque with my name on it.

Going to visit Rob and accidently staying for a couple of nights isn't it.

The cure goes a little something like this.

Leave nice warm flat in central London at about mid-day and spend the day walking about in the rain trying to remember in which of the identical looking houses in the identical looking streets that  I left my waterproof coat on Friday; fail in this task. Visit a friend in the early evening and be given a ticket to see "Souls of Mischief" at the Jazz Cafe that night. Go to the gig, bump into more friends and get plied with cocktails. At this point I should mention that I don't think that the Jazz Cafe or Souls of Mischief are central the cold cure, I think the cocktails were. Very spicy bloody mary X lots is what you need.

Having become suitably relaxed take a short but eventful journey on the underground, I highly recommend chatting to any Australians that you might meet along the way, take a bus deep into the countryside. Once dropped off walk for a mile or so through the slide and ooze, a thunder storm at this point would assist with the cure. Remember kids the worse a medicine tastes the better it is. Whilst walking do feel free to stand in puddles just a little deeper than the tops of your boots from time to time to add to your sense of well being. Eventually you should come to the main part of the cure which you will have cunningly "prepared earlier". Two days previously you will have left a sleeping bag and whatever other items that you might need for a comfortable night's sleep carefully wrapped in such a way as to keep the rain out. However, this is a ruse, really what you have to do is leave you things in such a manner as to ensure that they get soaked through but convince yourself that they will be nice and dry when you return. This way you can experience a truly amazing sense of disappointment and woe in the small hours as you climb inside a dank damp clingy oh so thin sleeping bag, if you are lucky then in your dreams the feel of the sleeping bag will turn into the fingers of Zombies pulling you into the earth.

After an hour or two of fitful sleep you will awake with the chest that has been causing so much discomfort over the past couple of days being almost completely blocked and a truly horrific noise, part wheeze part whistle echoing in your ears as you desperately try to get air into your lungs. At this point the trick is to sit upright and engage in a most vigorous bout of coughing until, with a low "whump", the blockage that has been building in your chest over the past few days is eventually cleared. Now you can breath clearly again and by morning you will feel better than you have for quite some time. 

I shall have to recommend this cure to Rob, apparently he has picked up a cold from somewhere.

As a result of all the running about doing endurance training I seem to have ended up with a rotten cold. One of those lying awake at night not being able to breath, feeling as though my chest is filling with water, blocked head, aching ears and general horribleness kind of a cold. Sitting under a small piece of tarp in the rain and mud doesn't tend to make one feel particularly great about life. This has added to a general sense of Malaise that I have at the moment, it has been a few months since I was last working and I think I'm feeling the lack of achievement in my life. On top of this I don't seem to be progressing much with the plans for Mission Improbable so life at the moment is kind of "trudgy". Not to worry, things will pick up soon I'm sure.

I have had enough of good ideas. The latest one was to get in some endurance training over the weekend, in theory this was quite a good idea. There is the potential for all kinds of things to go wrong in the jungle so building up a bit of toughness and resilience to hardship is probably just the sort of thing to be doing at the moment. With hindsight it might have been better to have started off gently  and built up to it as, for all my good intentions, I have hardly done any exercise save carry a rucksack about for months.

Over the normal 61 hour period between 10 am on Friday morning and 11pm on Sunday night I would sleep for at least 16 hours, eat at least 9 meals and walk maybe  4 or 5 miles. This is quite a civilised and sustainable lifestyle, fitting in I hours sleep, 5 meals and a very large number of miles walked in to the same time period is less enjoyable. When I woke this morning I thought that I was mostly dead, somehow I had got dehydrated, I ached all over and my brain refused to reboot for the first three hours of the day.

I'm not sure that such behaviour is wise, maybe it's good to push the biscuit every so often, maybe it's best to conserve energy for when such behaviour is actually necessary.

I had another "good idea" the other day, I'm trying to ignore it. It has plenty of scope to be fun, but that's the challenging kind of fun, the kind of fun that is more fun once it's over. One of those "in years from now I'll look back on this and laugh" type of ventures.