Be The Jam

wellover the past 24 hours pretty much everything that could go wrong has.

It may not be able to find this website via www.bethejam.com for a while, you might have to try www.bethejam.squarespace.com instead. I suspect that this will have all kind of knock on effects, none of them being good.

I say everything that could go wrong has, that's not entirely true, I have another pair of shoes.

Apparently this web site should be making a reasonable profit through advertising revenue, so says someone I was just talking too and seeing as what they do is sell advertising on websites I guess he should know. It may well be that until I sort out the CNAME and DNS thingy (I dunno what on earth they are) that everything will remain all askew.

Mice. Mice. You feed them left over carrot tops and bits of cabbage and what do they do to repay you? Eat through the side of your rucksack to get at the sugar! Owls? You want to know about Owls, lovely fluffy sky cats is what people think, not a bit of it! Imagine someone wheeling a wheel barrow with a squeaky wheel past your bed all night, a very squeaky wheel, it would be distracting wouldn't it? Then imagine that in the wheel barrow there is an old mangle with a squeaky wheel that someone is turning, not only that but they are feeding a wide selection of different sized hamsters that have all been bread to be extra specially squeaky into the mangle. That picture might give you an idea of what it is like to sleep very close to an owls nest full of squeaking chicks. All night long, squeak squeak squeak. Did they eat the sugar stealing mice? NO.

I'm going off this countryside business.

Having traveled up to Derbyshire via National Express I decided that it would be preferable to hitch hike back rather than go through that again. It was probably a few late nights had left me too obtuse to adapt this plan in light of the impending rain and having found my way to a likely looking roundabout I stuck out my thumb and was delighted to be picked up within a minute! The good thing about hitch hiking is that it is so much more sociable a way to travel than public transport, if someone picks you up they tend to be minded to engage in conversation. Compare this if you will to travel by bus or to a lesser extent by train; attempts I have made to break into conversation at such times have often been met with stony silence, admittedly I am more inclined to talk to attractive females than other passengers and I do understand that looking nervous and avoiding eye could in fact be a hobby but the point remains; we Brits are not that friendly when traveling about the place. The exception is when hitch hiking, it's great you get to travel in comfort and talk to all manner of people. The downside, as I discovered 11 miles down the road is that is it not a very reliable means of transportation. After being dropped off at an under-subscribed motorway service station with no more than a packet of custard creams for company I began to get a sinking feeling, I have only ever tried to hitch in the midlands on two occasions before and neither of them could be described as successful. Car after occasional car went by immune to my cheery approachable "I'm not an axe murderer" smile I tried to convey. As it began to rain and the minutes trickled by I started to worry, I could end up in the middle of nowhere in an hour or two and be unable to get a lift once darkness came. Then what would I do? Sleeping outside without bedding, shelter or means to light a fire wasn't a prospect that particularly filled me with delight and so as my smile became more and more forced so the cars seemed to pay less attention to me save for the occasional wit sticking his thumbs up back at me before speeding off contentedly wrapped in a bubble of his own humour and climate control.

Then it happened. A familiar burble rose me from my thoughts and across the concrete waste land like a beacon of hope and light it came, a split screen VW camper van.

"If I can't get a lift from a camper van I might as well give up" I thought to myself. So I stuck my thumb out grinned like an idiot and willed the beautiful machine to stop, which it did, right in front of me. A quick conversation later established that we were heading in the same direction so I hopped in, was stunned by the pristine condition of such an old vehicle and of we went. It turned out that Carl, for that was the name of the driver was taking Lottie, the camper-van, back to Somerset and would be passing Oxford on the way. Perfect! So once again I found myself deep in conversation. It turns out that Carl was going back home from a wedding where he and Lottie had chauffeured the happy couple for their big day. It made me think that it might be worth getting married http://www.volksweddings.com/

 Once I got back to Oxford I went to visit friends who were out and stopped for Fish and Chips before heading home. It was raining, you may recall that I recently rebuilt my shelter, it may not surprise you to learn that I hadn't done a very good job of it, over the course of the night I got quite damp, the drips coming through the roof were to numerous for me to contort myself around them and so my morning I had not slept much and I was quite damp. I did think about having a sense of humour failure about this but opted instead to fix the problem once it was light. This took no more that about ten minutes and feeling quite pleased with myself I went to London on Sunday to work on a bar at a party there. It was mid-day on Monday before I squelched my way home through the mud looking forward to some desperately needed sleep. I had managed to get some sleep on the way home, in fact I had woken up at both ends of the central line before I managed to stay awake long enough to get off the tube at the right stop and catch the bus home. It had been very windy on Sunday night and broken branches and bent bushes littered my path home, I was dreading returning in case home had blown away but was pleasantly surprised to find it still there. I was less pleased to find that the wind had blown so much rain in that my sleeping bag was dripping wet. I rung it out as best as I could donned waterproof over trousers, coat and thick woolly socks and got into the sopping wet bag cursing myself for being so slack and undisciplined as to let this happen. Almost instantly my socks were wet through but they were made of wool so would keep me warm nevertheless. I fell asleep almost instantly my last conscious thought being that my body heat should dry the bag out by morning. It was only three hours later when I woke to find that the wet sleeping bag was still wet and it was my body heat that was giving out as it was the shivering that woke me. Having got up, run around a bit to warm up and investigated my by now wrinkled feet it was apparent that the only option was to light a fire and dry the sleeping bag by the heat of it. This operation took about five hours and on one occasion I managed to dry the sleeping bag so successfully that it started to melt. During this time I took stock of my situation and realised through such discoveries as; I can't find anything; and, why is there suntan lotion all over the contents of the rucksack that I have become lazy and disorganised. This will not do, slipping standards here in the UK result in no more than a bit of discomfort, in the jungle the results could be far more serious.

Today then I have turned over a new leaf and started to restructure my life before leaving for "the office" this morning. As I walked away from home this morning satisfied that things were not yet in order but becoming so I was disturbed by the sound of a large branch landing with a thud not twenty meters away, for a moment I was confused as to how this could have happened as there was no wind but the answer lay in the sky. Once again a Red Kite had tried to perch on a dead tree (the same dead tree by the way) and the branch it landed on had given way. Whether this was by accident or it was designed to brain me I do not know, I have previously almost been hit by a decapitated rat dropped by a Kite so it is possible that they view my presence with exception.

Today's travel story of the day is here.

It is a bit of a shame to be heading back to civilisation, the scenery up here is lovely and I found a very nice patch of woodland next to a river that would be just perfect for living in. Having running water would be absolutely fantastic, staying clean and having enough to drink is often problematic without a source of running water. Better yet the river is sufficiently large to practice fishing on and it would be very useful to get in as much practice as possible before I am relying on fishing in order to eat. However, I'm working on Sunday night and I need to get back to my internet connection in order to be able to work. I am starting to investigate the feasibility of working remotely via a lap top, solar pannel mobile phone later in the summer. I quite like the idea of sitting on a river bank whilst working.

Talking of work, there seems to be loads of it that needs doing on this website, it's never ending. Fortunately a couple of friends have "offered" to help out with some of the techy stuff and the rest of it is enjoyable enough.

Currently I am in The North, the Peak district to be precise. I was expecting it to be wall to wall homing whippets and flat caps as far as the eye can see. However, I was rather suprised to find that electricity is no longer treated with fear, only suspicion. I was most happy to discover that The North has been connected to the interweb, or t'internet as I believe it is known in the local language. The best discovery of all came at the bank where I discovered that there was no need to change my pounds sterling into the local currency and that everything costs a lot less up here.  

It is of course very beautiful. It is very easy to forget just how much amazing scenery there is right on our doorstep here in the UK. This got me thinking, not much as my brain seems to be taking a few days off, that it would be a good idea to concentrate on collecting stories and information on various parts of the UK. So if you fancy sharing the joys of the local church fete, cricket on the beach or the traditional bank holiday traffic jam with the world do please get in touch.

Things seem to be going reasonably well at the moment. I am through to the final interview stage for the online job that I am after, if I get that and I really am able to work from South America then that takes quite a lot of pressure off Be The Jam to start making a decent income. I do have plans to expand the travel guide and I believe I have a working model that should be successful but it could well take around 12 months to get to that point. Having a steady income whilst building the business up is obviously a good thing, there are a suprising number of overheads involved in setting up a jungle based solar powered online travel guide. I think vision, determination, hard work, blatant networking and a bit of luck should see the thing through.

So perhaps it is time to set out in a bit more detail the intentions that I have for the fundraising part of this venture. After all the purpose of going to the jungle is to raise as much money as possible for Rainforest Concern through sponsorship. I have come up with a target to aim for, it is a quite a large target, it was completely arbitrarily chosen, and I will be in equal parts suprised and happy if it is reached. The aim is to raise £100,000 over the 12 months.

The Da Vinci Snail story, starring Notional Sherlock, is coming as promised but not just yet as I am currently in the process of doing a great many things all at once and I haven't got the time to write it up just now. I did reveal the secrets of the Da Vince Snail to someone yesterday, I asked for some feedback; apparently I am "quite quite mad". I think someone couldn't handle the truth.

Watching a man make music out of re-programed childrens toys whilst the blind chap to my left is busting shapes on the dance floor that put the rest of us to shame was a bit of an eye-opener. more happened but gotta go to Derby now

Today I seem to be working as a roady for Scram. It's quite a lot of fun, I am particularly looking forward to seeing a guy who goes by the name of PIXlH8 play, he makes music out of computer games consoles, quite how remains to be seen. It seems he has quite a following and he is a nice chap so it should be entertaining.

Date 18th May

Stage Planning Expedition

Location Oxford

Weather Variable

Health Good

Fitness Poor.

Advertising revenue Yesterday - £0.00

• Total  £7.14

Readership On target to exceed 4000 unique hits this month

Prospect of Mission Improbable happening Reasonable

Today's "genius" idea See bellow

It seems as though I might have found an answer to some of the funding issue. I'm not sure that "found" is the word I'm looking for as this implies that there was some positive searching on my part when in actual fact it would probably be more accurate to say that I stumbled over the solution, ignored it, went home, went to bed and then woke up in the middle of the night with a start and a loud "of course!" that was answered by a curious screech from the owl. What has happened is that I have been busily, yet unenthusiastically, applying for jobs over the past couple of weeks and I now might have a part time job that I can do from the comfort of home, or any remote location with a computer. The beauty of this being that as I'm already on the PC all day working on various projects doing a few extra hours here and there would fit in nicely. What I failed to realise until hours later was that I could also work from the jungle and then regardless of how well the travel guide goes at least I have an income. An income would be good.

Last night for the first time in as long as I can remember I actually felt comfortable and content sleeping in the woods, things have been a bit of a struggle recently but as someone once said "success is 99% failure" so I've been slogging away at this project like a fly banging at a closed window on a summer's day in the hope of finding a way through. I think there might be. When I woke this morning the sun was out, the ground was drying and I saw my first deer of the year whilst walking to the bus. Change is in the air.

Todays travel story of the day is wandering around in Sequoia National Park (don't feed the wildlife).