Be The Jam

So there I was sitting by the fire making a cup of tea and listening to the afternoon play on Radio 4, day off work you see, and what manner of amazing creature happened to walk right past my camp as bold as you like as though he had not seen me? A human man is what! The only examples of those I have seen at home have been those ones that I have invited specifically for the purpose of visiting and have gone off to meet at a handy landmark and guided back home myself. I was most surprised to see another human. Deer, rabbit, badgers, door mice, owls, red kite and little flying creatures that bite me on the ankles are all regular visitors at Chez Monkey but not people. I was most surprised that this specimen had walked past as bold as you like without showing any fear.

I spent a few minutes trying to figure out who the chap who had just walked past might be and what he was up to but as much as I racked my brain I couldn't come up with an answer. Not to worry, he came back and said hello and knew who I was, we had a bit of a chat about woodlands and the like. A bit of a common interest as he runs a wildlife management company and in that capacity he happened to have a rabbit he had just shot in the back of his pick up.

"would you like a rabbit"

Would I? I had just been sat by the fire feeling slightly disapointed that all I had to eat was potatoes and butter. Now I had a rabbit as well. Not that I knew how to skin the thing, I was unusually squeamish, I'm used to preparing meat, what with currently being a chef and all that but it doesn't normally come looking fluffy and kind of cute. Squeamish didn't last long, and soon enough dinner was roasting away over the white embers of the fire. Good practice for jungle life.

Other stuff

Met a guy from Brazil today, he is going to put me in contact with someone over there, apparently it should be easy for me to find work if / when I run out of money.

The radio 4 interview is coming up in the next couple of weeks, they are going to pay me £50 which is going straight into the "get to the jungle" fund. It's a small start but it is a start nevertheless.

Today I started fundraising in earnest, there is nothing like a deadline however arbitrary to get me working.

Oh and it snowed, I liked that.

I also discovered that my camp was set out like it was last year for a reason, I only found this out by setting things out differently, the way things are at the moment I can't sit by the fire and shelter from the elements at the same time. I can sit by the fire and sunbathe but it is more snowing that sunny at the moment, besides if it is sunny you don't need to sit by a fire. What I can do if the weather is nasty is sit in my newly constructed shelter that is rather uncomfortable to be in and admire the fact that the wind is blowing the smoke directly at me and I could not have situated the fire in relation to the shelter any worse if I had tried. Well done me.

I seem to be adapting back to living in the woods quite easily, having got used to sleeping on the floor again I am actually really liiing  be back and it is giving me renewed energy to get my act together and get to the Jungle. Having access to the internet again is helping as it means I am able to network and hassle people and so make the thing more of a reality.

I have set an arbitrary date to leave of June the 20th, it is extremely unlikely that I will have all that I need by then, what I don't have will just make life more interesting I guess. I have a couple of ideas on fundraising, one of which being to save all the money I would spend on rent over the next three months and use that to buy innoculations and a plane ticket. I did some rough sums last night and the  Mission Improbable kitty currently contains the dizzying sum of minus one hundred pounds. I do have a rucksack, generously provided by Berghaus, the promise of a jungle hammock and a jungle proof lap top.

There is quite a long list of things that I need but I have to consider the fact that whatever I take I will need to carry so for the moment at least I am trying to keep the list of things fairly short.

I need:

• to get to the jungle
• innoculations and a years worth of anti malaria drugs
• to learn how to fish
• insurance
• jungle proof solar pannels
• a stalite modem / satalite phone (jungle proof)
• money to live off
• a new fire steel.
• visas and other bits of paperwork allowing me to stroll around South America

To get to the jungle I'm going to start investigating the possibility of working my passage accross the alantic on a yatch. The other idea is to maybe fly to North America and then make the way south by land, that would involve going through Columbia, which could be interesting. I'm not sure if Columbia is the kind of place one wants to be discovered living off the land and carrying militarty grade communications equipment.

Last night I thought it would be fun, for old times sake and all that, to spend the night back out in the woods, in the very place I lived for most of last year. I was wrong, about it being fun, It was cold, the ground was hard, I ache all over, there was no running water, it was not that fun at all. I think I just convinced myself I was enjoying it when I was doing it before. Mind you it was nice to wake up to the sunrise and to hear the owls, and the red kite but it would have been nicer to have been in a proper bed and for there to have been a kettle but there you go. I did find myself questioning whether I really do want to spend another year living outdoors, I don't, not really. But there you go, it's to late now so I best just get it over and done with.

The good thing about being back in Bligty, well one of the many good things, is the access to news coverage. Somewhere on the way to foreign the arial broke off my shortwave radio so I had no access to the BBC, newspapers, tended to be days out of date, irregular and off the type that is more interested in Britney Spears hair cut than actual news. I have been catching up on things over the past few days; cash for peerages? You couldn't make that up. Oxford on Sea, did you read about that? Apparently if global warming isn't brought into check Oxford could end up as a sea side city! I'm in Oxford at the moment, it is a lovely sunny day and I must admit a walk along the sea shore would be quite nice right now but I would much rather go to the sea than have it come to me. Apparently if all goes wrong the Mediterranean is going to become uninhabitable and most of the human race will be forced to eek out an existence hunting and gathering about the polar regions. It strikes me then that the need for stupid ventures such as "living in the jungle for a year to raise money to protect the rainforest from destruction" has become even more pressing. Both from a global and personal perspective, from a global perspective every little helps and so we should all do whatever we can; from a personal perspective if things are going to go horribly wrong getting a head start on the whole living off the land thing might well be a good idea. I could spend a year in the Amazon learning how to live off the land before swinging north, via Sweden to pick up some Totty to drag back to my cave. Sounds good.

Hooray I'm but a spittoon away from being one of them survivalist nutters.

The end is neigh.

Water polo ponies are better adapted to the threat of rising sea levels than your regular horse.

Well much to my surprise I find myself back in the good old U of K, it took six days to get back to Oxford which is possibly a little longer than necessary but I did manage to stop for lunch on the Grand Canal, coffee in Geneva and a couple of beers in the Palace of Westminster along the way. All in all a much more eventful trip than just jumping on a plane. Mind you all I was trying to do was find an airport so perhaps taking six days was a little excessive.

Anyway, back now so time to get amongst the planning and fundraising for the next trip. Currently I am looking for some kind of gainful employment, frightful business.

In Venice right now, very pretty, quite expensive, bit odd - they have rivers instead of roads, crazy.

Should have the opportunity to write properly by monday.

Leg is out of the splint now, knee a bit crunchy, might be a while before running and like is on the menu.

bored bored bored.

Read a lot of books and watched a lot of DVDs.

Weather is quite hot for the time of year, it should be around minus twenty, today it is plus three.

I have learnt some things

It is best not to write "Narnia, do not feed the lion" on the kitchen door in permanent marker pen.

Scandinavian girls can be very pretty

Oven cleaner gets permanant marker off doors

Scandinavians drink a lot

Oven cleaner also removes paint from doors

Grappa is wrong, very wrong.

Mulling and planning, planning and mulling. That is what I have been doing of late as there aint a lot else to do in the mountains when you can not get out and about much. The result of the planning and mulling is that the jungle plan has now come full circle, to the idea I first had before even going to go and live in the woods for a year. Plans had to change as what I had planned was just far too expensive. It never really occured to me that going and living off fish and berries would be an expensive past time but it turns out that it is.

The new plan is to live in the jungle in South East Asia for  a year. This is not ideal as they have leaches there I believe, there are none in the Amazon. This change of venue means that the whole venture should cost three to four thousand pounds less.

bored of planning, want to get out there and do things.