Read The Further Adventures of an Idiot Abroad Online
Authors: Karl Pilkington
Tags: #General, #humor
The Further Adventures of an Idiot Abroad (9 page)
We were getting nowhere, so we came to a compromise. I would wear the type of nambas that the children wear, which was more of a grass skirt than a knob wrap. I don’t understand why they
don’t all go for this option. It must be easier to go for a quick pee wearing the skirt than it is when wearing a nambas, where you have to learn the art of origami to wrap it back up
again.
Two fellas measured me up like tailors on Savile Row. They made a type of band that tied round my waist and then attached big leaves to it. Once I was dressed, the chanting started. We danced
around a tree. Then, I was told that John, who was the chief’s son, would be taking me over to the island where I would be staying.
John said we had to get some leaves. This time, it wasn’t for clothing but for shelter. He got out his machete and hacked down some big leaves the size of surf boards and we carried them
to two little boats we would be using to get over to the island. The weather was chronic. The rain was heavy, and there was a cold wind. Luke pointed out the island. It didn’t look as big as
any of the ones I had flown over in the seaplane with Paul. It looked like a tiny muffin, but I thought it might be big, maybe it’s just far away. Luke said it was called Ten Sticks island.
During WWII the American military used the island for target practice.
It took about twenty minutes to get across the choppy sea as the current was dragging the boat out into the ocean. One or two of the big leaves blew away but I wasn’t going to start trying
to retrieve them. I was proper pissed off now. Everything I had been through and this was the pay-off! This was nowhere near what I’d pictured when I picked this trip off the Bucket List. It
was nothing like the Bounty advert.
I got to the island to find it was just as small as it had looked. I suppose the fact that the US military used it for target practice should have been a clue. I’d seen roundabouts bigger
than this. It didn’t even have sand. Sharp rocks and broken shells covered the ground. There was no point in me showing my disappointment in moaning. John was struggling to understand me, and
by the look on his face he wasn’t very happy either.
I found quite a good spot to make the shelter. It was a little bit protected from the howling cold wind that was whipping in off the sea. John had started to build a frame for our shelter, and I
used my anger energy to shift some big boulders that would help to keep it in place.
Building my own home has never been an ambition of mine. Me and Suzanne fall out when we have to work together on picking a shade of carpet, so there’s no way we’d
still be together if we took this on. I watch the TV show
Grand Designs
quite a lot. It’s a programme where you see a couple go through the whole house-building process from the
design on paper right through to moving in. It begins with a happy couple who are excited and full of positive thoughts and eager to get the project going, and then you witness them age over a year
as they end up having to live in a caravan as the project runs well behind schedule. The wife, who at the outset is full of smiles, wearing lots of make-up and hair freshly done for TV, ages
overnight as you see her sat with her kids eating Pot Noodles wearing a hard hat as the builders bring more bad news that the ship carrying the special environmentally-friendly tiles they wanted
from Sweden, rather than the normal ones from the local Topps Tiles, has sunk and has now delayed the project a further three months. Music from Coldplay is used as we see the wife crying because
she hasn’t been able to have a bath for four months and Kevin the presenter telling us the build has now gone 35% over budget. The budget
always
goes over. I don’t think they
ever take into account the money spent on tea bags whenever builders are around. They can get through a box in three days.
John was cutting up leaves to use as a type of natural rope to tie the frame together, but it was taking too long for my liking. I got out my bits and pieces that I’d brought from home. My
big ball of string and roll of gaffa tape really speeded the job up. At this point, Luke the director and the cameraman disappeared off in their boat. I thought they’d just gone to film from
a distance or something, but they’d gone right out of sight. I got the Stanley knife out of my bag and found the egg cup that had made me smile in the posh hotel. It didn’t make me
smile today. A part of me wanted knock it on the head, but my inner voice – the one that wasn’t keen on me doing the bungee at the start of the trip – was telling me I’d got
this far, so I may as well follow it through. I listened to my inner voice a lot, as John wasn’t saying much and it was the only company I had.
I visited the most haunted house in Britain a few years ago but I didn’t see anything. The bloke who owned the gaff said that there was a ghost that gets in his bed
at night and rubs his legs. That never happened on Scooby Doo, did it? The thing that is weird with ghost sightings is that people always describe seeing them float down a corridor wearing
Victorian clothing. Why do they never see a ghost wearing a tracksuit and trainers? And no one ever reports seeing a black or Asian ghost, do they?
While he was doing the last few touches to the roof, I walked round the whole island to find wood to burn on a fire. It only took about a fifteen-minute slow walk to get round it, but in this
time I came to realise the island shouldn’t be called Ten Sticks, as I could only find half that amount to burn on the fire. I tried to get them burning with the lighter I had brought from
home, but it didn’t work due to the amount of rain that had got into my bag. John ended up using his skills and rubbed his special sticks together to get the fire going inside the shelter. I
sat and ate my buscuits with John. There was something about the fire that put me more at ease. John seemed happier now, too. I think all men have some attraction to fire. Let’s face it, you
don’t get many women arsonists, do you? Maybe it’s something inside that goes way back to cavemen times.
I think this is like Guy Fawkes Night. I remember using this night when I was a kid as a way of getting rid of a pair of shoes that I didn’t like. They were really hard
leather with edges round the ankle so sharp that they could slice cheese. Me and my mates managed to get a lady mannequin from the back of a woman’s clothes shop called Jasmine’s that
had closed down. The plan was to dress it using our own clothes, go door to door for a penny for the guy and then remove the clothes before setting fire to her, except I saw this as a chance to
get rid of the shoes once and for all. We put the nude mannequin that was wearing nothing but an old man’s cap and my shoes on the bonfire. The next morning on the way to school I stopped
off at the fire to see if it was still burning and there was the mannequin, slightly charred, still wearing my shoes. They looked totally undamaged. I was about as successful as Guy Fawkes
blowing up Parliament.
John didn’t rest for long. He was up with his bow and arrow aiming at fish for food. He made a few attempts but had no joy. He came running over and gestured that I go with him. He
pointed to my boat. I thought he’d also had enough and wanted to go back to the mainland. I got in my boat and followed him. It turned out that he’d spotted two coconuts floating by
and needed help dragging them in. He reacted quickly to avoid missing the chance of food. It reminded me of the way I used to rush putting my trainers on when I was a kid and I heard the tune
from the ice-cream van.
John was right to react quickly and get the coconuts, as there was nothing else on this island that I could eat. I suppose this is how he lives. There’s no shop or home deliveries round
here, which is no doubt why they stay in groups. They help each other to survive. At home having friends isn’t the same as here. People are obsessed with how many friends they have on
Facebook or followers on Twitter, but none of them are there to actually help.
I was sat by the fire trying to dry my trainers when Luke and his team came back. They had all eaten and seemed fairly upbeat, which can be quite annoying when you’re fed up. John produced
something from his bag for me to eat, which he said would get me through the night. It was taro, a potato-like thing. I found it hard to be grateful at the same time as being so disappointed. I
think even Ainsley Harriott on
Ready, Steady, Cook
would struggle to make something decent out of a taro and a coconut. John then told me he was going home.
