Be The Jam

Date 30th April

Stage Planning Expedition

Location Oxford

Weather Lovely sunny day (beginning to like this global warming thing)

Health Good (missing one finger nail, knee still weak from skiing injury)

Fitness Poor (resting heart rate around 60 BPM)

Advertising revenue roughly £2.88 - beginning to think this might not be the best way of generating revenue.

Readership 3659 unique visitors  in April, up from 3063 in March

Prospect of Mission Improbable happening Fair

Todays "genius" idea re-opened the Be The Jam shop 

Having just read David Hempleman - Adams book, Walking On Thin Ice, I thought I might copy his technique of starting each entry with a situation report. Sadly at the moment there isn't anything exciting to report. unlike Hempleman - Adams I'm not battling against the elements at -55 degrees, falling into the sea, or running the risk of starvation / becoming lunch for a polar bear. The only struggle in my life right now is fundraising. To that end there is nothing to report at the moment save to say that the carrot of significant financial backing is once again being dangled tantalisingly close.

I am becoming increasingly tempted by the idea of working my passage across to the Caribbean on a yacht and then flying across to South America from there. That way I might even earn some money on the journey over rather than just spending it so I am doing a bit of online research about the feasibility of this at the moment. It seems that the best time to do this is the autumn when yachts are being moved from the Med to the Caribbean for the winter and my best chance at getting a paid position would be to work as a chef. With this in mind I'm now going to call about a job in a very nice reastaurant not so far from Oxford.

In a blatant attempt to get at your hard earned I have gone a bit commercial and re-opened the be the jam shop. It is not much to look at at the moment but you can get your world exclusive Be The Jam mugs, woo hoo hold the front page and all that. To visit the shop simply click on the picture of the T shirt over on the navigation bar to the left. Why am I using a skiing t shirt you might well ask. Well, I pressed lots of buttons, furrowed my brow, asked it to use the picture of the mug and in the end the great got of the interweb would only allow me to use the picture of the T shirt. I have no idea why not. Next time I find myself with a priest of the new religion, probably my mate Jamie who is a crash bang wallop wizard with computers, I'll try to fix this. In the mean time why don't you go and have a nice cup of tea, I expect it would taste nicer from a loverly new mug.

Ha! Now you can click on the mug and get to the shop. I think I have figured out how to beat the system. Mwa ha ha, soon the internet will be at my feet and then I shall be unstopable. Smithers, release the flying monkeys.  

Well goodness gracious me am I glad I came back to Oxford to check my emails rather than stay at home and sit around in the sun drinking tea? Why yes I am for it seems that all money worries are over for it seems that I have won a large sum of money on the Euro Lottery. Now leaving aside the minor detail that I have never entered the euro lottery for one moment I think it is time for a celebration. Not since Mr Nguymbe (Barrister at Law, Nigeria) wrote to me with the offer of £5,000,000 in return for helping him get assets out of the country have I had such a stroke of luck. I will be writing an email to info_martinjohnsl@yahoo.es  inviting him to "show me the money" right this minute.

Currently I am spending most of my time trying to figure out how to get to the jungle, live in it, earn a living and not render myself unemployable while I'm at it. There are no easy answers.

I think a couple of days in the country running up and down hills, sitting by the fire and contemplating the miriad of options and consequences thereof is how I shall spend this weekend.

-

I learnt something last night, this is the kind of thing that happens if one listens to radio 4. Apparently if a current of 50 vaults or more is passed through a cat its tale points north. As you may be aware navigation in the jungle can be a tricky business, the sky is obscured by a thick canopy of leaves, the amount of trees and obstacles makes walking in a straight line an impossibility, rivers and mountains further hinder those off for a bit of a stroll and there are very few accurate maps. However, the jungle is home to a number of species of large cat so in the event of becoming separated from my compass I shall know that all I have to do is locate a jaguar / ocelot or some such, pass a current of 50 vaults through it, locate north and be on my way with a dib dib dib and a hey nonny nonny.

Have just remembered that I don't like heat, or rain.

Rainforest here I come.

well in the last coule of days I managed to loose a weeks wages, quit my job, turn up for a trial shift at a very nice organic cafe in Oxford, chop a hefty chunk off my index finger in first ten minutes so sending myself to hospital and not convincing anyone of my having any talent. I'm now  typing with one hand as i have to keep my left hand in a sling. I've also managed to split up with my girlfriend, something that she has taken exception to, and the last two leads for major corporate sponsorship both seem to have faded away to nothing.

Time for a cup of tea I think. 

See?

Today I have been starting a new section of the site called urban myths http://bethejam.squarespace.com/urban-myths-and-the-like/

Not much there so far and one of the stories was already up there, the one about the Oxford Student might offend some people I guess, oops.

Now I have to rush off and get a new job so I don't have time to write anything more other than to mention that it is still a really stupid idea to sleep next to a big river like the Thames in the spring as the early morning mist will soak through your sleeping bag and render the inhabitant both cold and wet. Enjoy your beds.

Fishing part 2 was promised, as I recall, to come tomorrow. It is now the day after tomorrow which somewhat undermines the old adage that tomorrow never comes.

It's a good thing that there is still part 2 of fishing to talk about as absolutely nothing interesting has happened to me over the past couple of days. All I have done is waste my time on Facebook and go to work. There is though one piece of exciting news, so far this month the sale of advertising on this site has raised the dizzying amount of $1.45! It's first class travel for me from now on that's for sure.

One thing that I have forgotten to work on recently is the Travel Guide part of this site - if anyone is tempted to write anything please do, to get you in the mood have a look at this  http://bethejam.squarespace.com/zimbabwe-journal/ I'll have to ask Tom if he will write some more stuff.

Right, fishing

Part 2.

The plan was to learn how to fish with minimal equipment and so we set off after a relaxed breakfast sat in the dappled shade of the woods to find a river. Finding a river I was soon to discover is kind of key to fishing, lakes and the sea are also useful and even on occasion fishing can occur through a suitable hole in a sheet of ice. The Amazon is not well known for being furnished with either seas or ice and there were no lakes in the vicinity so we went and found a river, presented the appropriate licence (not strictly necessary in the jungle) and set about our business. The first thing to note is that there was no sign of fish, at all. Apparently this is unusual, normally they are swimming about like crazy, eating and being eaten and rising with great regularity. Rising for all you land lubbers out there is coming to the surface, probably to eat things floating on it, us fishermen have terms for everything you see; bottom (no smirking at the back) means the bottom of the river and, um, well there are lots of terms. Anyway, we got to a suitable spot on the bank, commented on the lack of fish and Patrick set about instructing me on the business with the line and the hooks and the floats and things. It's all quite complicated, I'd had images of a lazy Tom Sawyer type day lying on the bank with a bit of string tied to my big toe and a hat pulled over my face shading me from the sun. Not a bit of it. First there was the tying everything to the string in the right order and then there was the issue of getting the line (that's another term, it's called fishing line not string) into the river. Apparently it is easier with a rod. without a rod the line tends to get wrapped around things, trees, legs thumbs, sticks rather more often than would appear to be necessary. Patrick displayed a lot of patience, a lot more than I would have and after an hour so we decided that the fish had fled the scene and decided to try elsewhere.

Elsewhere turned out to be a bridge, this allowed us to dangle the line straight down unimpeded by anything and it also went to show that fish do indeed like the shade as Patrick caught two Chub. We were intending to catch Perch so that we could do the whole survival thing and have them for supper and test the "fresh water fish taste like mud theory" out for ourselves. Chub though are so full of bones as to make them so unpleasant as to be not worth eating unless one really is in a survival situation so we through them back. In the end Patrick went home and I ate toast and marmite next to the fire and digested what I had learnt. I'm now confident that should the need arise I know enough to go fishing and maybe even catch something. From what I read the most likely thing to catch in South American rivers is Piranha, they are very bony and allegedly taste like mud. I suspect that after a year I will be very good at catching them and sick of eating them.

Thanks to Patrick who on reading that I needed to learn how to fish came out over to show me how I actually got to spend a bit of time outside this weekend rather than just sending emails. What a perfect time to do so, the weather was fantastic, spring is springing and all is calm and peaceful once away from the city. Sunday afternoon was spent ambling along rivers being insructed as to the best places to look for fish and their habits - be with the fish but not of the fish Luke. Once back to the woods I was glad to discover that I could still light a fire, for of late I have only been sleeping in the woods, and the kettle was put on for the statutary cup of tea. When I walked off to get some more wood I saw a Red Kite flying overhead coming in to roost on an old dead beach tree that stands an echoing reminder of it's previous life amongst the younger smaller trees that race to take the light it no longer uses. Red Kites are a truly graceful species but I have long ago stopped watching them intently as they are such a common site that the occasional view of them is sufficient to reasure me that everything is right with the world. It is a shame that I did not watch this one more closely but sometimes what is not seen has a greater impact than what is. I heard the noise of a large branch breaking coming from the direction of the beach tree and looked up in time to see both a branch falling to the ground and a Red Kite flying rapidly away from the tree in a manner that was far short of it's customary gracefulness.

Drat.

Got to go to work

Fishing part 2 tomorrow.

I have set the deadline to leave for the jungle as June the 20th of this year, there is no particular significance to this date other than the fact that I have to draw a line somewhere. By June of this year I will have been working pretty solidly for a year to get Mission Improbable off the ground and if I have not left by then I'm going to have to think long and hard about if the amount of effort I'm putting in is going to exceed the benefit (money raised for Rainforest Concern). Hopefully I'll find a corporate backer who will provide the remaining £4,000 (ish) needed to  get to the jungle before June and it will be all systems go. If not I'm going to have to consider focusing my efforts in a different direction. For the moment though I'm going to put the posibility of failure out of my mind and focus on the task at hand; a nice cup of tea.

Will it come together in time? It's all a bit of a gamble.... 

Might I recommend following the link bellow, it's what the money raised through sponsorship will be used for. 

http://www.rainforestconcern.org/files/colombia.pdf