Be The Jam

Date 8th May

Stage Planning Expedition

Location Oxford

Weather Variable

Health Good but need to work on fixing my knee

Fitness Poor but working on it.

Advertising revenue Yesterday - £0.03

• Total  £5.54

Readership Increasing steadily

Prospect of Mission Improbable happening Reasonable

Today's "genius" idea None

Today's travel offer Cuba, Mexico and the Dominican Republic only at thomascook.com

Well the earth oven pork was, er, interesting, but I ate it anyway once it was done on account of there bring nothing else to eat.

Recently you see I have only been in the woods to sleep, the rest of my time being spent working or messing about on the internet trying to organise Mission Improbable, so when I got home at about mid-day on Sunday I was pleased to find that as a result of the prolonged dry spell lighting a fire was easy as anything. All the wood that I gathered from around and about was dry as a bone and soon there was a roaring blaze going, i settled back, listened to the radio and busied myself with eating all the food I had brought for the next couple of days. Well not quite all, the 1.5kg pork loin joint was mostly froze so I couldn't eat that, although I did manage to cut a few slices off and grill them over the hot coals.

The rest of the day passed pleasantly enough with little more to do than contemplate how nice it is that it is not raining as much as it did last year, feeding the mouse and listening to my neighbour, the Tawny Owl feeding it's young. Before too long it was dark and I headed to bed under the temporary shelter I constructed back in March. I'm not sure what time it was when the roar of rain hitting the earth, trees and my roof woke me but I do know that it was many hours before it stopped. it was not without a little smug satisfaction that I drifted back to sleep, safe from the rain under my roof. For once I did stay dry. The same can not be said of my shoes that I had left outside, or the wood. Having entertained myself whilst I lay in bed until 10am waiting for the rain to stop by feeling alternatively hungry and generally sorry for myself I was most eager to get up, light a fire make some tea and cook a few slices of pork. Putting on my wet shoes I congratulated myself on having the foresite to leave them out in the rain and so get myself used to the jungle routine of putting on wet clothes each morning. The fire took two attempts to light as the wood was soaked through and it took a lot of coaxing before it was hot enough to boil water and dry of the logs that I put beside it so that they would burn easily once added. I congratulated myself on setting the challenge of fire lighting with wet wood on both occasions that I tripped over and knocked the pot of water over the fire and looked forward to having to fetch extra water later in the day.

Soon enough though things started to get better, the sun came out and I remembered that I had bought some flour and yeast the day before so although there was no butter or salt i could make bread and have it with Marmite, that should overcome the lack of salt. Fortunately I hadn't forgotten how to make bread over a fire and soon I was feasting on hot fluffy bread and Marmite, there is nothing to lift the spirits like fresh bread. By the afternoon I was ready to dig out, literally, the earth oven and roast the pork. Whilst rummaging around in the hollow tree that acts as my kitchen cupboard I discovered a jar of Nathan's strawberry chilli sauce and came up with the "genius" idea of rubbing it into the pork so as to add an interesting extra flavour. At this point I should point out to those of you who are thinking, accurately, that strawberries don't go with pork that I was very hungry, a bit bored of eating bread and marmite and prepared to give anything a go. Besides when I took the pork out of the oven it was so burnt that you could hardly taste the strawberries and when you could it made an interesting counterpoint to the extreme dryness of the meat. The problem was that I was so worried about the meat not being cooked enough and not being hugely desirous of catching whatever it one catches from pork that I opted to ignore my instincts and give it an extra 40 minutes cooking time. The nettles that I had with it were, er, well the less said about that the better I think.

All in all it was an eventful couple of days, the highlight for me was falling out of a tree that I hadn't even climbed and landed on my shelter half flattening it in the process and administering a number of grazes to myself on the way.

I think I need to work on my Bushcraft.

be the jam story of the day here

New T shirts in the be the jam shop.