Be The Jam

Two days I spent in the woods, no battery in my radio, no torch, just me, my thoughts and the rain. It was the kind of experience that could very easily have tipped me into a spat of depression, what with it being so boring and wet. Fortunately though I knew to keep my self busy. So the first thing I did was solve the mystery of the missing slugs, they were in my bed - that was nice. The next morning I discovered that I only had two tea bags to last the two days, I rationed myself to one bag a day and made two cups out of each bag. I guess I'm going to have to get used to rationing things as it appears that Tesco's metro have yet to make inroads into the rainforest, it'll come.

Now of course one can't have tea without water so not having any was a bit of an issue, fortunately though it was raining so I lay out a piece of tarpaulin and waited for it to fill, and soon there was a big pool of brown water. I tipped this out figuring that the dirty water was a result of the rain washing the grime from the tarpaulin and that the second filling would be cleaner. So I swooshed the water about for a bit to get rid of any left on grime and emptied the water down my boot, resisting the urge to swear I gently laid the tarpaulin out again and waited for the water to gather. It stopped raining. This gave me the opportunity to do a number of things including, gather fire wood and place it by the fire to start to dry, pace up and down a bit and get a headache. Fortunately it started to rain again and it mostly didn't stop again for the next 18 hours so before I knew it I had enough water for tea, a wash, shave and to make bread and a stew.

For a little while I sat huddled in the shelter I had hastily made when I got back from Italy but before long it was all getting too cramped so I pulled it down and made a better one. All in all it was a rather soggy affair so I went for a walk, well I tried to go for a walk but something caught my eye. A snail (snail A) had climbed up a tree to a branch that was at about my head height, it was upside-down and heading towards the end of a twig, there would be no turning round! What would happen, maybe I would be the first person to witness a snail take wing and fly. It was exciting stuff, I waited with baited breath, that is to say I went and had my second cup of tea and returned just as the snail reached the end of the twig. It stopped, waved it's tentacles for a bit and then engaged in attempting an audacious U turn that would not have looked out of place on any self respecting minister's C.V. After a couple of minutes of this it became clear that it wasn't going to have much success and a closer inspection revealed a hitherto unsuspected lack of aerodynamic qualities and so I moved the creature to a nearby leaf. At this point it withdrew into it's shell and refused to come out again even when tempted with a bourbon cream.

I was about to set off once again when another thing caught my eye, another snail (snail B) on the same tree was climbing downwards! So that was a mystery solved, snails don't fly - as shown by snail A above - they climb back down the tree. This is proper science this is. More interestingly I noticed another snail (snail C) also making a descent and I couldn't help but notice that what with the effects of gravity and all that both snails where moving at quite a pace. What we had here was a gambling opportunity par excellence, I bet snail A the last bourbon that snail B would be the first to make it to the ground. A hush came over the woods as all attention was focused on the race, snail B (who admittedly started off in the lead and was bigger) was making headway and snail C's heart just didn't seem to be in it. Before you knew it Snail B was five lengths ahead with one meter left to go when suddenly out of nowhere it got dark and I went to bed. I never did find out who won but I can tell you this, you can keep your television and your so called DVDs, when you compare them to life in the woods they just don't cut the mustard.

Travel story of the day is by Tom Bullough and is here  Tom has a new book out, details here.