17th november

Now, occasionally in life, something comes along and slaps you right in the face!! On this occasion, it was the kid on the horse. He lives here, obviously not too far from me. He looked immaculate on his horse yesterday and here was me who couldn’t keep clean or dry for ten minutes. He has put up with this environment his whole life and was quite content and doing fine whereas I’d come here and immediately allowed myself to become intimidated. I think it takes a lot to intimidate me. I’ve been lying here and thinking about things and him especially. I feel a spinach-moment of inner strength developing somewhere within me, ready to burst forth and banish my concerns forthwith. ‘Right!’ I think to myself. ‘I’m from Great Britain, Grande Bretagne, the biggest Empire the world has known. If you can live here, so can I! We gave the world electricity, the theory of evolution, the Laws Of Motion, the jet engine, the Aswan dam, The Bridge on the river Kwai, Churchill, television, football, King Arthur, Nelson, James Bond, the Beatles, Australia, the mini, the mini skirt, David Livingstone, William Shakespeare, Queen Victoria, Laurence Olivier, Robin Hood, Drake, Yorkshire puddings, high tea, scones, cricket, HP sauce, the dictionary, the haggis, self-consciousness, the stiff upper lip, Hugh Grant and the teletubbies!! Kid, if you can do this, so can I!!!
So here I am, lying wide awake in my sleeping bag in my little bubble of mosquito-free air once again acknowledging the onset of the day with the pittering and pattering of dawn’s wet bullets against the window. For some reason, the kid on the horse is the first thing on my mind when I woke up. God, I love how my brain works sometimes. Don’t you get that? It’s that left side, sorting out your problems and priorities while the rest of your conscious processes are AWOL, far away and dwelling there in the land of nod, somewhere east of Eden.
I can see now that I spent yesterday in a daze, sitting there smoking and pottering around, not leaving the safety of the cobwebbed kitchen. Well, not really even pottering around, I’d say. What am I going to do?
I lay in bed for at least an hour - unable to stretch my legs cos it’s a mummy bag - contemplating life, the universe, everything and my pillow. My pillow is crap because the clothes all make a run for it during the night so that by the early morning, there’s nothing left. It’s about seven by the time I get up, head downstairs and put the kettle on. I check my washing on the way across the kitchen to the kettle but find that it is still very wet. Still naked, I put on swimming trunks because I have no underwear that is clean or dry. I wear the same socks as yesterday - who will care? I get some of my wet socks and put them on the kettle to dry. For breakfast - a cigarette! I go back upstairs and get my tin mug from my bedside - it has a big, drowned beetle in it. I am not alone...
Talking of not being alone, something flew around my room last night. It may have been a small bird looking for somewhere to roost or a bat. I couldn't sleep but I don't really know why. Maybe I overdosed on the coffee, or the eggs, or perhaps it was a lack of beer?

One of my socks on the kettle has part way melted, welding itself to the kettle …
Over is feeding Negra and he calls to me, unlocks the tool shed and shows me where the nails and hammer are for the bridge. I guess Dave must have mentioned it to him. He offers to show me the trails tomorrow. He cannot speak English but his English is better than my Spanish.
I daintily pick up a pair of rubber boots from the motley collection of vulcanised relics under the staircase, check for size and squeeze into them, plodding outside to inspect the state of the footbridge. I walk along it length, treading on each nailed down plank individually to ascertain its rigidity, density and general state of wear. Some are worse than others. I identify the worse ones, which, generally speaking, are those that had rotted the most. Having identified the planks to remove, I stroll across to the pile of fresh planks heaped just outside the kitchen door and begin carrying them one at a time, depositing them at respective intervals along the length of the bridge.
Let me tell you now, these babies are heavy! They are not ordinary planks. These planks are about two feet wide, three feet long and about three inches thick and come straight from the tree (where else, I suppose). They have been piled outside for a while and are therefore also wet which didn’t help. There are not too many types of woods that last long in the rain forest because of the climate but gavilán is one of the favoured ones because it is a very heavy wood. And it is that which makes lugging these slabs around very sweaty work.
Because they are wet, they are also dirty and because they have been sitting in their pile for a while, they are also covered in bugs and spiders and heavens knows what else. Scorpions? So, in carrying them, I’m trying to hold these incredibly ungainly, unwieldy, wet, slippery heavy chunks of wood at arms length. It makes muscles ache that I didn’t know I had, in my shoulders and stomach especially.
I drop the first one on site and stop for a moment, wondering how to do this best. I could do them all in one go and be a gibbering globule of grease spot on the floor within the hour. Or I could spread it out and maybe do some this morning and some this afternoon. Hell, maybe do some tomorrow and some the next day. I thought best to let brain work it out while I left-side. I sit down on the bridge and had a cigarette, dangling my welly-clad feet over the edge. For the first time in earnest, I survey the surroundings with a clear, unfuddled, unhurried, unencumbered head.
The house I am staying in is on a kind of island by the roadside. The road runs down the side of the swamp and in one area especially, looked like it is being eroded from underneath by the swamp itself. The swamp has another obvious island, namely the one that this bridge leads to. From that island begins another footbridge of the same design which goes across more swamp to more dry ground where Over’s house was situated, and behind his house, the creek and forest. The first section of the bridge is maybe forty metres long and around two feet above the surface of the swamp and the second section slightly less in length and slightly lower too. The swamp isn’t necessarily ankle deep in water everywhere. In places, it is merely soggy ground - that is to say that it is so permanently wet that it is insubstantial enough to bear weight. Boggy, I’d say.
I survey the boundaries of the swamp. Within the swamp, one tree grows feebly, and I can see the bones and carcasses of previous trees that have the temerity to try to grow within its waters. They had rotted and fallen over. That isn’t to say that trees won’t grow there because some trees like to grow in shallow water. But these don’t seem to grow very tall, or healthily, or for very long and it appears that sooner or later, they will decay and topple. The swamp isn’t offensive to my eye. The water is clear and transparent and not green or stagnant stuff that I automatically associate with swamp. It is obviously oxygenated since it is home to a host of bugs and water creatures and fish – tiny stickleback-like fish that gather together in very small groups and skitter around. It spreads over a wide area and doesn’t appear to be deep anywhere and hence, tufts of tough turquoise grass sprout above the surface and obviously flourish. Elsewhere, reeds grow to a height of a few feet out of the water and one or two rainforest bushes and shrubs struggle to flourish. Upon closer inspection, the more successful of these seem to be growing out the decay of the fallen trees or slightly raised ground so that the water’s effect is not so great.
I look down at my swinging boots wrapped around my swinging feet that are hanging just above the water’s surface, watching the tiny fish trying to negotiate the rapids of the meagre current. I admit I am fascinated by the microcosm of the swamp and I sit there and think about it for ages. In fact, I would probably still be there now if a particularly virulent rain cloud hadn’t crept up on me and tried to douse me thoroughly with the unfortunately random distribution of its contents.
I go inside and wait it out. It won’t take long. By the time I have had cup of coffee, the sun has come out. I take the opportunity to put my laundry in the sun to dry, and then I wash the whites and put them out too. Everything comes more or less clean. Don't wear whites in the rain forest!
This whole thing is becoming gradually less daunting. See what I mean about doing the simple things. Just make sure you function and the rest will just happen.
I have another go at the bridge, take out more planks to the middle island, and then have another cigarette. I start using a sledgehammer to bash the old, rotten planks up and free from their restraining nails. The first two come up easily enough, thoroughly rotten as they are but the third one requires me to step into the swamp to get a good angle for the swing. That’s when I find out that my left boot leaks. I go to change my boots. The only other pair that vaguely fit looks like ladies wellies and the right one has a split in it. I turn the left one upside down and bang it against the wall and a lizard drop out. However, it more or less fits even though it’s a little small and I now have two leak-proof boots, one black and one green. They are odd but I guess I should have expected that!
It’s 10.10 and I go back out. The boy on the horse goes past on the way to school. I resist the temptation to tell him about King Arthur, HP sauce and cricket. I will leave that to his parents too, along with the truth about Tarzan. I do some more on the bridge and then have another cigarette ... some more on the bridge … cigarette … some more on the bridge … and then a last cigarette. Should I dam the swamp?
Hey, yesterday's laundry was now dry…
… I cook lunch - a hot dog and fried tomatoes. The hot dogs explode in the frying pan. Was I supposed to pierce them? They taste OK except the skin has turned to the consistency of crispy cellophane so I peel it off and throw it away.
I did a bit more on the bridge then give up for the day. I haven't really pushed myself at all but the bridge is seventy-five percent finished now anyway. That is, the old, rotten planks are out and the new, fuckn heavy ones in place. I haven’t nailed them all in place yet but they are not going to move.
All my whites are dry and I now have a full wardrobe…
I decide to give the hammock on the balcony a try but it doesn’t look very safe so I decide to make mushroom soup instead. This is the natural progression and speed of the decision making process. I use the small stew pot and a fly jumps in. I do not consider it to be nutritious, so I take it out…
I have a shave in the big stew pot. (Not that I was actually in the pot at the time, you understand because it’s not big enough…)
I have been looking at the shower with trepidation but I’m going to try it. Obviously, the water is cold because there is no heating and the floor is strewn with the tendrils of roots of grass or plants that have found their way in through the cracks in the concrete. I have also been scrutinising the do-it-yourself shower bag that was dangling from one of the pillars in the kitchen. According to instructions, you fill it with water then leave it in the sun to heat up, and then hang up the bag above your head and … voilà - a shower in French. Seems a bit noncy to me and it doesn’t look like it holds much water anyway so I decide to stick with the cold shower, the man’s shower! That’s all I had ten thousand years ago when I was a caveman. I think I will also light the stove tonight. In fact, I will light the stove first, then have a shower, and then have a cigarette and then what’s left of the beer! Planning in overdrive now…
The decision making machine that is me did all of the above but I also had more mushroom soup...
It’s now 5:15pm and the canvas of darkness was being hung upon the pegs of the stars for the night, dangling as it does all the way down to the floor on the horizon. Who hangs it there I wonder? Who cleans it? Why has it got holes in it?
I’m in the kitchen sitting at the table and its time to light a candle…
I’m clean, clean-shaven, dressed in clean clothes, feeling good with my mushroom soup. The stove is going well - where were the women?
Dave Snr. said the water is drinkable - apparently, it comes straight from a mountain spring or something. I have my doubts so I’m boiling some for when my bottled stuff runs out. I find that I am using the same knife, fork, tin mug and Smurf plate for every meal. It's funny how when everything is strange, we order our world by making things into familiars. We draw comfort from it.
A couple of flying things are attracted to my candle. If they like light so much, why don’t they just come out in daylight and head for the Sun! It reminds me of the Great Lunar Moth story from the Doctor Doolittle film. It flies from the earth to the Moon and when it reaches one, it is then attracted by the beauty of the other, flies back, and has been doing so for hundreds of years.
7pm - I can’t see the floor but it must be crawling by now. Well, I am bigger than they are. I wonder if they even know I exist. The big stew pot is full of water on the stove, and is now boiling, and I have put my empty bottles in there to sterilise them. The boiling water might also help to get rid of the imaginary taste of my underpants and socks from the pot, although I have to say that that subjecting the imaginary taste of my underpants to intense heat could have disastrous consequences.
It didn't rain much today and I didn’t see many clouds. If it stays clear until tonight, it would be nice to see what the place looks like under a full Moon. And I’m not too keen on his radio station. Its 107.5 on FM and its English-speaking but the music they play is largely for the Americans I think, and it seems that every tenth song is Lionel Ritchie. Think its called Tico radio or something. No chance of getting Chris Moyles then.
I’m having problems with tiny flies in my non-Ice Ice Box. I don’t know how they are getting in. I empty it for the fourth time, this time spraying inside and out with insect repellent - it seems to work.
I finish my last tin of beer - I think I will turn it into a candleholder - I have too many bottles anyway and not enough candleholders. It’s the capitalist approach to fill a need in this way.

End of second day:
Today’s friends Steve stove/Sunshine
today’s enemies tiny flies/wellies

Doesn’t look like I'm going to pull tonight. I sit on the balcony before I went to bed. The sky is clear and there is a quarter Moon. I can see the constellations in the sky - Orion’s Braces, the Wheelbarrow, The Big Dipper, and The Little Nipper and sandwiched between them, The Whopper. I can also see The Great White Hunter and United Airlines 453 coming in to land. The frogs are oblivious and croaking and every now and then they all join in together as though it they were debating something heatedly, then it goes quiet for a moment as they consider the topic of their next vigorous discussion.
As I’m sitting there upstairs on the balcony in the dark, I feel something brush my hair - I assume it is a spider. I have a sudden vision of not having noticed it, going to bed and waking up with thick cobwebs over my eyes! I decide to go to bed anyway. The radio is on in my bedroom but as I walk past on the other side of the partition, the reception goes weird for a second and it sounds like a bee the size of an elephant buzzing in my room. Who needs drugs to be paranoid?
I hear that flapping again before I nod off…