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Post by edwin on Sept 15, 2013 10:43:39 GMT
It's thirty years since it all went wrong and there was the Great Death. Boom time at first living on tinned foods and copious drinks, some fights over the resources that went quicker than they should have done, so much was wasted!
After that we had problems until sustainable sources of food were established at the expense of blooming hard work. After a bit drudging on the land wasn't for me so trading became my way of life. Funny that the news one had to tell of other settlements was seen as valuable as the goods one carried. Even better when started carrying letters for which we charged.
Got my own place with access to the coast and tasty furry animals in the woods along with nuts and berries and forageable plants. Liked it so much I gave up trading and travelling, preferring to go fishing off my own beach. Dropped out of the circuit and probably began to be regarded as a recluse which wasn't true as I love people dropping in for a bite and a drink, when I had any after trading for beer, cheese and bread. I do miss bread, cheese and beer.
Now this blasted rheumatism is getting to me making winning scoff from nature a bugger. Could go back to a settlement I suppose but can't stand the idea of becoming the daft old smelly one sitting in a draughty corner as near the fire as possible with every morsel of food begrudged.
Could become a highwayman again I suppose but running away with the loot at two miles an hour would be just a farce. Nothing in piracy when you can't even climb up the side of a ship as well as the problem that there are hardly any ships.
Take up with a good woman, again? Now that could be an idea even though Pantaloon is pathetic, you do a lot of reading on your own.
Still, what have we for supper? Stew again, a stew of a stockpot that has been going for ages. Tastes funny sometimes but boil it up and throw in something fresh and its edible again. My shore fixed net might have something caught in it even though it is so painful to haul it up the beach. A crab would be good too, I'd like a crab again, not too hard to chew either.
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Post by edwin on Sept 15, 2013 15:39:01 GMT
Well, today the sun shines, the joints hurt less and me old dog has come back with a rabbit for us. Fresh casserole tonight, the stew died last night after I threw up from the second mouthful. Spoke to a chap on a boat who tossed over some onions, bread and CHEESE! He has started a business trading up the creeks around here and is doing quite well as a carrier so maybe if I get some goods together there is a future here.
Deerskins and rabbit fur I have to trade plus some bird call whistles and snoring bones. A snoring bone is a kid's toy that is a bone such as from a pig's trotter threaded onto a loop of string that you wind up and pull apart to make a humming "snoring" sound. A toy over ten thousand years old and one of the few things that is going to survive the effects of The Great Death.
He will be stopping by for a meal on his way back and I am looking forward to the company, perhaps he has an older sister.
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Post by edwin on Sept 17, 2013 13:18:31 GMT
Raining today but I don't care because I am going out to lunch. Jim did stop by for a snack yesterday on his way down river and invited me to meet the family. Now I've shaved and even washed, relatively clean clothes and I mended the fly om my trousers. Don't suppose there is anybody else left in the world who would remember the old CND jokes about being afraid of fallout or those two telly comedians, (Borecam and Mise?) and the running joke about two old men in deckchairs. Gosh I feel ebullient, a word not heard a lot nowadays.
Will get a boat out as it is a rough walk. Best would be the sit on kayak, still as good as when I bought it thirty-five or so years ago and good for how many more? A present to take, um nothing silly and large but what would they like? How about a never used, wrapped pistol crossbow? I have several looted from a local discount shop and one hundred foot of longline made by me and a book of prehistoric recipes that are very relevant today. Whoa! this isn't trading its visiting, the book will do for now.
Note, junior members or those of a delicate constitution do not read the following:
Two old men in deckchairs. One says to the other, "Looks nice out today." "Yes" says the other "but put it away now, there is a Park Keeper coming."
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Post by edwin on Sept 17, 2013 15:56:25 GMT
Made glorious Summer.
Back from lunch, tea, supper, breakfast, I know when I am to a good thing.
That kayak paddle limbered me up and I feel great and have had THE IDEA. No more recluse, I am going out to meet people and see what UK Ltd has become.
Now, ways and means of carrying the gear. Bit of luck that Jim knows someone who will swap a large donkey so I can be another Robert Louis Stevenson with his Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes rather than sailing aboard the Hispaniola. So ho! for adventure at two miles an hour, "Prosper the Bonaventure!" as addicts of Moonfleet would cry. Strange that the books of my childhood keep coming to mind but not so surprising that my once favourite post-apocalyptic books are hardly ever sought for or read by me, Day of the Triffids, Death of Grass and all the rest are both a bit too near reality for fun and also deficient in providing a blueprint for life in this Brave New World of ours.
Provisions, trade for hard cheese and bake hard tack biscuits to act as a basis. Small sack of hazel nut flour and couple of pounds of jerky. Will make some of Kephart's pinole or desiccated groun popped grain as he describes in Camping and Woodcraft. Some early settlers after the disaster were very pleased that I had been a librarian and could find this sort of stuff for them, knowledge was tradeable and I suppose it still is. Will take my foraging books as I just cannot remember what plant is really what even after all this time eating them.
Got my camping out kit, bivvy and sleeping bag, cook stuff, no stove but no need to ask for permission to light a fire now to cook on. Perhaps it is safe enough to sleep by a fire, in the turbulent times you would light a small fire before dark, cook and eat and move on to find a hidden, cold camp. Machete, tomahawk and my old sheath knife I have had since I was twelve along with the much older jack-knife from the World War Grandad fought in. To think there were once enough people to have had a real war.
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Post by edwin on Mar 9, 2014 17:31:54 GMT
Reached what used to be Somerset and they seem to have drowned the place. Floods everywhere and very very few people. Some seem to be going back to the time of the Glastonbury Lake Villages in the Iron Age except they seem dirtier and less organised than then is likely to have been back then. Not too friendly, we'll get back up onto the motorway which provides a useful causeway out of here. The donkey do not like mud.
Piles of rusty metal all over the road but we walk round them easily enough and wonder where to go.
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Post by edwin on Mar 20, 2014 10:43:25 GMT
Decided I don't care if they eat their young and paint themselves blue in Gloucestershire, shan't be going there. Reached a settlement on the Somerset coast near what used to be Watchet and have swapped the donkey for a boat. Now the Bristol Channel and the Western Approaches are treacherous with giant tides and an inhospitable coast but I don't care. I read the book Yankee Jack Sails Again years ago and if he could track his way to Cornwall so can I. Me boat is a Flattie double-ender about eighteen foot long and with enough rocker to make her sea-kindly. Simple rig so of we go tomorrow when the tides are right and hopefully so will the weather be. www.amazon.co.uk/Yankee-Jack-Sails-Again-Sentimental/dp/0955024323www.wbm.org.uk/
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Post by edwin on Mar 22, 2014 20:04:16 GMT
Wo! was this decision a bit silly. Safely onshore somewhere I must find out tomorrow where I am. Set sail from Watchet and had a fair wind for a beat down channel. But the wind shifted so I was on a lee shore and the sea got up knocking the speed off the boat. Kept going making as much sea-room as possible when I guessed i could see the entrance to the River Brue to port. Turned across the waves and sailed right in as the tide was ebbing. So am now on a muddy shore for the next twelve hours. Time to write this account and to get some kip. What to do tomorrow? I might go upriver to see if anyone is still alive around Highbridge.
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