Be The Jam

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.