Be The Jam

Bit busy

Have set up an ebay account http://search.ebay.co.uk/_W0QQsassZoriginalditchmonkeyQQhtZ-1

hurry hurry everything must go.

All funds towards ecuador trip, more stuff to come

What I have been doing of late is having more things go wrong.

Ended up having to pay £11 for two single journeys on the underground in London, I think it should have cost about £3.

Why?

I have no idea.

Some things have been good though, all that rain that followed hurricane Gordon was most welcome. The fields around chez monkey have been looking worryingly not green for this time of year so a good down-pour was just what was needed. It bucketed down for about 5000 hours solid, this did keep me awake on Thursday night and put a bit of a dampener on the lunch I cooked for myself and Ned yesterday but other than that it was all good.

Rob has gone to France and left me with the keys to his flat and his credit card, a recipie for much mischief one would think, and so it would have been had it not been for The Lord of the Rings. I hadn't seen it you see, and there it was, the complete box set, on the shelf. I have hardly had time to sleep. Suddenly my life appears termed as a great struggle between good and evil. My innner monolouge has been deeply effected, about four hours into the film I decided to take a break for tea and toast and found myself thinking "I shall to Kitchen and there break bread and brew tea for the journey ahead, whilst the feast prepares I shall nip out into the land of stars and night busses and retreive milk from the land of Budgens".  I think I have permenantly damaged my brain.  I had planned to go to the Tate Modern today to take a look at some Albino Penguins and a video of a man dancing with a box on his head, I think this might finish me off.

I miss the woods.

Things make sense in the woods.

Bureaucracy, everywhere I turn I'm faced with the stuff. Bureaucracy. Bureaucracy. Bureaucracy. no you can't have it until you have filled in these forms. "No, sorry, not today". "I can quite understand that you are angry that you are paying us £50 a month for what you say is our error Mr Sawyer but I'm afraid there is nothing I can do about it, could you fill in this form? Yes, again." 

Everything I try and do and everywhere I go there are forms to fill out, systems to fail and people employed to do whatever it is the computer in front of them tells them to do. I want to be able to deal with people not automatons.

I'm going back to the woods.  

Well, I'm going to try. Last time I tried to get on the Oxford Tube they wouldn't let me because there was some thing wrong with my ticket, was it my fault? No. Did I end up having to buy a new one? Yes.

Had a swim in the river before breakfast, it was bracing but refreshing; one of those things that feel good after the event.

After breakfast I walked along the river bank to Oxford admiring all the narrow boats as I went, when I grow up I might get one of those. In amongst the reeds on a log that was half in half out of the water there perched a Heron, I paused a while to watch it fish there was not much to see it stood stock still like an inert alert shaggy ink cap with a beak. A lady with an impatient dog had also stopped to watch it, apparently that particular stretch of river is it's territory and it is regularly to be seen. She told me it is particularly impressive when it flies, I had a brief vertigo of temptation to hurl a rock in it's direction in order that I should see the spectacle of flight for myself.

After a while watching a stationary bird, however majestic, becomes a little dull so I walked on and shortly managed to scare something into movement. Right by a big patch of those reeds that you can peel to make candle wicks, I'm not sure of the name I'm afraid, there was the distinctive 'plop' of something entering water, the glassy surface of the river revealed not the identity of the creature and once the perfect circle of ripples had stilled there was no evidence left at all. There was a similar 'plop' last night near my new home; it was probably one of those otter / mink / rabbit / wood pecker creatures that are so common at this time of year.

Got up around 8, considered going for a swim but decided that breakfast was a much more appealing concept. Boiled egg, homemade bread, blackberries and a cup of tea got the day off for a good start so I went for a bit of a mooch about to pick some blackberries and look for mushrooms in the field behind. I was much surmised when I looked up to see a young Red Deer, it looked to be about half grown, trotting across the field a couple of hundred meters away from me I stared to jogging on an interception course with it and it wasn't until it was about 50 meters from me that it saw me and took flight. I ran after it and soon realised just how unfit I am. After that I found a couple of field mushrooms which I picked and am keeping for breakfast tomorrow.

This weekend was mostly spent by the river. No let me qualify that, this weekend was spent by the river, occasionally I was in the river to cool off, wash and swim. There were many adventures.

I mistook a mink for an otter, this is quite easy to explain. Mistaking a woodpecker for an otter might take more explaining.

I made ready jammed bread, it was purple.

Crayfish don't eat rabbits.

Dog's eat rabbits.

Decapitated rabbits are probably best hidden out of view.

Out of view places by the river on sunny Sunday afternoons tend to attract couples.

Decapitated rabbits appear not to be an aphrodisiac.

Skimming stones in the dark is fun until there is an indignant "QUACK!" from the darkness of the opposite bank.

According to no lesser an explorer than Christopher Columbus the chickens in Brazil are larger the further inland one goes. Columbus postulates, admittedly he had been at sea for some time when he wrote this, that in the centre of Brazil there is a hill shaped like a woman's breast with a giant chicken on it.

I will be taking up bird watching when I am in Brazil.

I know this all needs a bit of explaining but sadly I'm rushed off my feet right now.

Later

I am currently reading The Amazon From its Sources to the Sea, Paul Fountain 1914. Towards the end of the 19th Century he attempted to climb Mount Cotopaxi, an active volcano, in Ecuador. His conclusion upon failure was that a successful attempt would require 150 men and at least a score very long ladders; the first ladder was to be climbed and the next hauled up and attached above it until eventually the first ladder is removed from the bottom and attached to the top.

I like this guy.

Here is a quote regarding his preparations for the ascent

"I am thankful that the natural modesty which is so conspicuous in
travellers and naturalists generally, and in myself in particular,
except when I am "darning up" those dear old ladies in the Natural
Selectionists, induced me to make my preparations very quietly and
secretly.

I was never very fit for the heavy work of mountain climbing, as I
have always suffered from a physical infirmity which hampered me
heavily. But "where there is a will there is a way" is one of my
favourite maxims, which I like none the less for its extreme
homeliness. So I sent George, my servant, to find guides of some sort,
and gain as much general information as he could."

This is the same guy who counselled not only a lack of abstinence but also a lack of moderation when it came to drinking rum on a night at the snow line without any thing by way of tent or blanket.

I like this guy

Climbing a volcano by ladder sounds like fun, it might just be the thing to sway Crispin into action.

And I want a servant, called George. I'll email George and see what he says, in the unlikely event that his response is repeatable I'll put it up here tomorrow.

I have got a reply from George, he would like to climb a volcano by ladder. When it came to the offer of being my servant he didn't decline as such, he added unacceptable terms to proposed contract of employment. It is a great loss to the English language that the puritanical laws of offending public decency prevent me from publishing George's response in full. He truly has a wide and colourful imagination and a vocabulary to match.

"Only if you promise to £*(% me £$%^ £ need !&^%$£^*£." he said, which I thought was perhaps a little pithy.

I have been doing research in the Bodliean Library for a few weeks now in the hope that book learning will help once on the ground in  South America. Yesterday I had to order a book called something like "The Amazon from it's Sources to the Sea" it was only after I had gone to the librarian to ask for instructions on how to get to the book that it struck me. I had managed to get the whole way through my degree without once ordering a book from the library, I didn't have a clue how the system works. Some people spent their entire undergraduate life in the library, I was always a bit suspicious of them, and where are they now? I don't know but I'm pretty sure they weren't sitting by the Thames last night as the sun set drinking tea by a fire. No, I expect they can afford to go to the pub in the evening, or even to buy a kettle and a house to put it in so they don't have to light a fire. I rather imagine this morning they would have had a shower rather than going for a swim in the river.

Crispin is a mate of mine from college, he took a similar view on libraries to me now he works for charities and such like and spent a year in Rwanda a while back. He is talking about going back for another year, I'm trying to persuade him to come to South America for a bit, he climbs I'm trying to win him over with a promise of living in the Andes for a bit. He is wavering. Wavering is good, all it needs is a timely push and he'll be on board.

Currently Crispin is living in Oxford so I emailed him yesterday saying lets build a raft and take it to London one weekend. His reply, which was enthusiastic, mentioned that it takes a week to get to London by narrow boat. Crispin knows stuff, that sort of a thing could be invaluable. I know more stuff than I did yesterday thanks to "The Amazon from its Sources to the Sea", I know that from latitude 73 degrees the river Napo in Ecuador does not go over any waterfalls and there is no white water, from there to the Amazon (or Amazons as it is more rightly known) is reasonably flat. The only thing to worry about would be getting run over by huge vessels; or crushed by logs being floated down river for sale, or getting lost, or scurvy; or pirates; or getting marooned; or trapped in ice and having to eat the cabin boy, or or or, or any of the other things that come to you in the middle of the night.  

Some people seem to think that the idea to punt down the Amazon is a silly one. They think I'm joking. They think it can't be done. They didn't reckon on the amazing potential inherent in any collusion between the intensely stupid and the internet.

I would like to thank Google for showing me that it is possible to make a punt out of bamboo and that bamboo grows in South America, both of these facts are new to me. Better yet with the power of email I even managed to find someone who hasn't said it is impossible, Ian. Best of all I found a map of of South America on the map and right smack bang in the middle of Brazil on the river Amazon is a place called Manaus, according to Ian Manaus is a city of 1,000,000 people. I'm going to meet him there with a bottle of Talisker, he is bringing something far more lethal.

All I have to do then is make a raft and float down stream until I get to a city of 1,000,000 people; even I can't miss a city in the middle of a forest. Manaus is only 14 hours by truck from Guyana from where it is possible to get a flight back to the UK with a stop over in Trinidad - hopefully at no extra cost if I talk to the nice lady from the airline again.

I wrote to Pims the other day and asked them if they would like to sponsor a trip to South America to punt down the Amazon, they never got back to me. I think I even started the letter with a cheery "What ho" to set the tone, there is no pleasing some people.

I'm going to investigate the possibility of punting to London on a home made raft from Oxford, I bet Crispin and Calvin will be keen to come along.

I'm selling off some stuff, predictably enough I'm having a couple of problems setting up an account with ebay. In the mean time if anyone is interested in buying a hardly used Hennessey Hamock, click here for more details, please do email me.