Creature comforts

It's warm by the river the weir keeps us clean
The wood smoke and cigarettes are all that we need.

The Levellers



The first sensation upon waking is usually one of discomfort and if I don’t have to rush away for work it is very easy to lie wallowing in some small amount of self-pity. However, once up the feeling dissipates and the world is a fine place to be. Should there be clean clothes to wear then I find myself feeling on top of the world. The other morning I was up and about before Mike, he was sleeping in his hammock but didn’t look very comfortable. One end was much higher than the other and consequently he was balled up in one end of it, it looked most uncomfortable.

“You’ve tied the hammock up and different heights” I called our cheerily.
“I know, I had to get up in the night and re-tie it” Mike didn’t sound very cheery so I told him that things get better once up but he didn’t even respond to that one. Not even using his gas burner to make tea got him up, I thought it would as the last time I had borrowed it there had been an explosion and this time I made sure I lit it especially close to his hammock.
“Is your hammock flammable?” there was muttering from deep within the cocoon but I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying “you want me to what off?”

Eventually Mike was enticed into getting up, I’m sure my incessant chatter of a general cheery nature is what did it. Since moving to the woods I have gone from being virtually nocturnal to being very much a morning person. Mornings are good and I feel it is my duty to inflict such a view of the world on to Mike. Over a cup of tea he agreed that it was better to get up than stay lying in discomfort, it’s just a bit difficult to persuade yourself to get up sometimes.

After breakfast of Bagels and honey Mike got on with writing the business plan for the travel guide and I went and met a reported from the Daily Mail who was coming out to interview me. It’s necessary to go and meet visitors and show them the way to my home, otherwise people would never find it.

Being interviewed is a curious affair, rather like going on a blind date; meet a stranger, talk about yourself, try to impress, worry in case you come across as an idiot, realise what you should have said after they have gone and then worry about what they are going to say about you. The other thing about interviews is that after the usually questions that every one asks (why, was it cold, why no tent etc) come novel questions and these are often things that I have not thought about but they require an answer. If an Oxford education teaches you nothing else it teaches you how to answer questions on subjects you know nothing about. . The difference with being interviewed though is that the response to an answer I give isn’t met with “have you read any of the reading list?” but is accepted as being accurate. It is quite fun being asked these new questions, it makes me view new angles of this whole experience. I am beginning to have doubts though about one thing that I have been accepting as a truth. I’m beginning to come round to the way of thinking that living in the woods is not necessarily better than living in doors.

Later that day Mike and I had a meeting to discuss the business plan, I’m not sure how usual it is to hold business meetings in the woods whilst frying mushrooms on a gas burner. Before the meeting was declared quorate by didn’t of the number of flies in attendance Mike said that he knew what I meant.
“What I meant by what”
“You know living in the woods, just sitting by a fire, not needing anything else”
It’s true, living a simple life is great, we don’t need half the things that we think we need and I have come to the conclusion over the past few months that life is silly. It strikes me as odd that we spend so much time in pursuit of wealth in order to buy things that ultimately don’t bring happiness just a desire to have more things. Living in the woods is the answer, the antidote to mindless consumption. Apart from anything else I have nowhere to store things so I have been forced to live with little and have found myself happier as a result of it. Then I went to visit Toby.

Toby is a surfer, absolutely impossible to see him as anything else, if you cut him I doubt that he would bleed salt water, he would probably punch you or at least ask why you dinged his arm. I don’t think it’s possible to be more of a surfer than Toby. I went round for dinner, discovered he had moved house and then went to his new house where I discovered he was engaged to the beautiful Marieke. We ate, drank, watched a couple of surf movies and it got late. It would have been very late by the time I got home so I crashed out on a futon. I slept so well; I haven’t slept like that for a very long time – over a year probably. The best way of describing it can be to compare it to eating; it felt as though I was giving my body something it desperately needed. I woke feeling refreshed, like a new person; by the time I had had a shower (running water!), breakfast (fridge, stove, dishwasher!) I felt like a king. Perhaps there is some wisdom to having a house rather than a rucksack. Perhaps it would have been sensible to be moving into a flat rather than into the rainforest. Toby, who is knowledgeable about such things, said that there is good surf in Ecuador, in some places the jungle comes right down to the beach.