20th november

I get up at 6am wide-awake! On a Saturday? How sad is that? There is a mist hanging over the swamp. I am of the firm opinion that every swamp should have a mist hanging over it – that’s how it should be. I thought about going out to see if I could find the hound of the Baskervilles. The sun burns it away in an hour leaving a dome of brilliant blue, surrounded by walls of flourishing leafy green. And while the sun is low, it twinkles playfully on the still waters’ surface.
I have lots of bites all over me now – more irritating than a problem.
I wonder if the earthquake was bad anywhere else. I later found that it measured 6.4 on the Richter scale but I don’t know where it was centred, the west coast of the country I think. The West coast of the Americas is on a destructive plate margin and is prone to these things – nothing new there. All part of the ‘ring of fire.’ It’s the motion of the ocean. Plate tectonics, the seabed of the pacific, shoving itself in under the continent that forces all the heat and activity and that’s what creates the mountains all down the west coast from Alaska and almost continuously all the way down to the tip of south America.
About eight people died in the quake so it wasn’t so serious.
I don’t know if the chaps are coming to pick me up on Wednesday or Friday. I have enough food until Wednesday but Friday might be a problem. I’ll have to cut down on Frosties or my milk will run out. I have a secret can of sardines in reserve, enough eggs for two per day, two sausages per day and some chopped mixed vegetables in cans, a couple of packs of soup, three apples, four bananas and my tin of peaches. The coffee will last, sugar probably will too. One of the eggs I cracked open had a partly formed embryo inside which really put me off. I would have a coconut if they were ready…
… My blue heron/stork friend has just arrived…
If the fish in the swamp were bigger, I might try catching some of them. The bread will last but the candles might not. I have one broken pen and one running on vapours. I found some more batteries otherwise they wouldn’t last either.
I mean, this is like doing an inventory of all salvaged items after my plane has crashed! Previous refugees here have left lots of things such as sprays, detergents, cleaning stuff, insect repellents, and some tinned food like it’s a refuge shack up a mountain for lost travellers in trouble. Maybe its tradition that you have to leave something useful when you leave – sort of traveller’s code! Reminds me of when a friend and I went to Mexico and we took loads of clothes we didn’t want with the specific and only intention of leaving them there! Doesn’t seem to make much sense now but I’m sure we justified it in our own minds at the time. Actually, thinking about it, I’ve been doing it ever since.
I decide to sunbathe. May as well get a tan while I’m here. It is clear that it’s lethal to have contact with the ground as all sorts of ants and insects crawl up your legs and take chunks out of you. I take out one of the plastic chairs and a stool. I sit on the chair and put my feet up on a stool. I have also taken a bowl out with me into which I place the important things in my life – my keys, my cigarettes, my notebook and my insect repellent. My watch and my mobile phone are not important here. I don’t have an issue with time or communication. I am at nobody’s beck and call. Can you say the same?
After a few minutes, the wildlife except the flies ceases to notice me. I hear a cricket moving behind me as it rubs it legs together. I wait for it to make another jump but it doesn’t – maybe it has reached its final destination. Another one jumps, flies, and lands and I can’t see it even though I watched it land! Now that’s camouflage! Not like that stupid toad. A fly behind me buzzes really loudly and I turn to look at it and find it’s a really ugly green-bottle type thing. I’m really glad that it doesn’t have a stealth mode…
I wonder if fireflies attract moths. It must mess up their mating sequence to have a third party watching everything they do. A couple of midges land on me in spite of me being doused in repellent – are they mutants with no sense of smell? I wonder if that would benefit us. They wouldn’t be able to smell the repellent, but then they wouldn’t be able to smell us either? I don’t know.
There is a rake in the tool shed.
A rake! What for? In a rain forest where the entire ecosystem is based on decay, we have a rake to help us clear up? In a garden, I could understand it. Our gardens are not nature – we break all the rules and they are abominations to nature. We rake up leaves in the autumn because they offend our sense of order and then in the spring we ‘feed’ the lawn and plants with chemicals because we took the leaves and decaying stuff away which nature provides for just such a purpose. Nature has done pretty well for millions of years and we come along and think we can do better – typical. Gardens advertise our vanity, stupidity and our disrespect for nature.
I decide to go for a walk.
I have a routine now. I stock my plastic orienteering map bag thing with essentials such as my camera, and obviously, I also have a map of the land in there too. I have a notebook and pencil and maybe my binoculars. I strap on my machete holster, testing the machete for sharpness. Yep, I can bring down a tree with that – not by chopping but by hammering! It’s dull, but it will do the job. I’m on my way, grabbing my yellow bandanna as an afterthought. Do I look like Che?
Negra sees me and contemplates following. I set off stopping on the footbridge to check my creek. The tiny fish are still trying to swim upstream. I can’t work out whether they are the same fish or different ones because they seem to be doing exactly the same things. They gather together and skit around for a while until one or two brave souls make a dash for it, going around a corner or through some minor rapids.
Doing it is not a problem once they take the plunge. It’s either plucking up the courage, or they can’t decide who should go first. It’s a case of:
“You go.”
“No, you go”
“You go first! Or should I?”
“Is anyone going? Shall I go?”
“Yes! No! Yes! No! Yes! No! Ooh!”
And then there’s the short memory thing. It might be that one of them has almost plucked up the courage to go when his memory runs out and he has to start from scratch all over again.
“Hi. I’m Bud. Look at that plant.”
“Hi. I’m Nemo. I’m lost.”
“Really? Where are you going?”
“Don’t know. Why are you asking?”
“Can’t remember. Who are you?”
“Don’t know. I’m a water baby. Hey, look at that plant.”
“I’ve seen it before.”
“Have you?”
“Have I what?”
“I don’t know. Hi, I’m Bud. Look at that plant.”
I give them, and nature in general the benefit of the doubt. If they were the same fish as yesterday, having failed to make it through the rapids, then they are unlikely to make it today either. This gives the species only a narrow chance of survival since they are probably trying to get somewhere to spawn. If they are that bad now, then they have been that bad for a long time and would almost certainly already be extinct. Must be different fish.
The creek is noticeably lower than it was a couple of days ago, but it’s hardly rained since this time yesterday. Negra is all over the place, sniffing and darting around in the undergrowth, but she’s a good-natured dog and is surprisingly well behaved. She looks like a black Labrador but is a mongrel, runs like a rabbit and drinks out of every puddle. Doesn’t she ever get ill? Would I get ill if I drank out of every puddle? Do birds ever get ill because they drink out of puddles? Having said that, my water supply is piped from a mountain stream… I may as well be drinking from puddles…
Everywhere I go I upset lizards that then scuttle around all over the place. Negra chases them if she sees them. I see two big spidery ant things fighting over a small twig – they look like Robin Hood and Little John fighting with the staff on their mythical bridge. I watch them for a while and can’t really understand it. ‘There are plenty more sticks in the forest,’ I tell them, but do they listen to me? Do they ‘eck!
I wander the same trails that Over showed me and make it to the old loggers track, as marked on the map. I reached it after about thirty minutes walk and couldn’t remember where over took me next. Ah well, I could go left or right or straight on. I don’t know what is straight on, and there is no trail so I may have problems find sing my way back. I’ll do that another day. I go left. Negra seems unconcerned and matched her direction to mine.
My pens are running low and I don’t want to start writing in blood again. All hell broke loose last time, what with the deals and pacts and the voices in my head. So, I am now going to cannibalise two pens to make one good one. It worked with my torch earlier, but not with the lighters – this is the decider… then it’s down to extra time and penalties if necessary. There has to be heartbreak…
Ok…It’s not convincing and I think it will leak but let’s see how it goes – the ink barrels were different lengths. I found some more teabags while I was looking for a pencil – probably some more herbal shit but who cares?

I tried to cross the swamp by the nursery but went through some long grass, got covered in ants and bitten all over. Why do I do that? The same thing happened the other day when, for no reason whatsoever, I had the urge to go tramping around in the same section of swamp. I got a boot full of water that time for my trouble. On this occasion, I had a bad feeling before I even reached the water’s edge. I went down past the nursery, through the small pineapple plantation, and into the rough, long grass. Even by then, I was being harassed much more than usual by bugs. I had no socks on, just boots and as soon as I started tramping through the longer grass at the water’s edge, the flora unleashed its fury on me, bombarding me with small flies, spiders, and all kinds of insects that buzzed around my face and landed on me everywhere.
I changed my mind straight away. ’Ok. Not going in THERE, then!’ returned to the house. I’d been gone about ninety seconds.

‘Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody… I got some money cos I just got paid….’ Yep, I know how Sam Cooke feels, except the part about being paid. I hear the dull bass thuds of some loud music coming from somewhere but the sound travels across the swamp and I don’t know where it’s coming from, and I’m not about to go and look for it in the dark.
My bites are bothering me. I get up twice in the night to TCP them. My pillow is now the white towel wrapped around some mosquito netting and stuffed into a t-shirt. It’s excellent! Soft and squelchy as a pillow should be, yet it returns to its shape – just like goose down. I slept like a baby (except for the bit about dribbling down my chin and the loose bowel movements, and I didn’t have a nappy on!)

Friends New pillow
enemies None! Am becoming one with everything!