Matthew Cole: How to predict the weather with a cup of coffee: And other techniques for surviving the 9–5 jungle

By

Cover Page

Title Page How to predict the weather with a cup of coffee By

PROLOGUE

INTRODUCTION

1. THE INDOOR BUSHMAN

2. TRAVEL WITH A SMALL‘T’

3. THE HUMAN MULTI-TOOL

4. CITY-CENTRE ADVENTURES

5. WHEN DISASTER STRIKES

6. WORKPLACE STRATEGY

7. PURELY FOR PLEASURE

8. THE FUTURE

INDEX

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

We were under a motorway bridge to get out of the rain and Dad came out with his favourite phrase: ‘We’ll rig something up, son.’ I was about eight, I think. We were on a family trip to London and the windscreen wipers had just given out. ‘We’ll rig something up,’ he said, and that’s what he did. Twenty minutes later we were back on the M1 southbound with the wipers flip-flopping across the windscreen. It’s just that this time they were powered by a length of string fed into both back windows. My brother and I pulled as my sister called time.

As a feat of engineering this wasn’t much to shout about. But that’s not the point. Some string and a few knots had changed our world. Out of a crisis we’d conjured an adventure. We now had windscreen wipers with voice-operated variable speed control, and it felt good.

Dad was like a lot of dads back then; they had DIY in their DNA. They’d take a car engine to bits on the drive and collect miscellaneous odds and ends in jam jars (typically Araldite and string, batteries and radio parts, curtain hooks and electrical solder). Dad even had an extra special premium selection in his bedside drawer, a shrine to his life’s big purpose: fixing things.

There’d be no point trying to emulate these old-fashioned can-do dads today; they’d been schooled since childhood in improvisation and making do. When their bikes got a puncture they didn’t use a tyre lever to ease the tyre off the rim; they used a spoon. Dad’s puncture kit was three spoons wrapped in an oily rag, like a mechanic’s wedding present. By the time they had kids of their own these dads could wrestle a tyre off a bicycle wheel with their bare hands. They were masters of the universe, lord of all physical forces, and they could fix anything, all before teatime too.

When I became a dad I felt I should get a piece of the same kind of action. I dabbled a bit; I had my own collection of Ikea spanners and kept a small screwdriver and a key for bleeding the radiators tucked away in my socks drawer. But this was small time. Really there’s no way in the world I was going to spend a precious Saturday stripping down a carburettor or build a collection of washers that would fill several jam jars. It just wasn’t me. So I found myself thinking back, rerunning my all-time favourite Dad story. And looking again at what happened on that rainy motorway, the answer struck me, like a piece of self-help from the days before airbags.

You see, although the wipers were working again, Dad hadn’t really fixed anything. He’d just side-stepped the problem. Armed with nothing but a ball of string, he showed the world who was boss. The message was clear: make stuff happen, and if it happens to you first then do something back. Oh, and keep a ball of string handy at all times.

Dad’s rigged-up contraption had led me into the territory where simple always wins. In the age of digits and downloads here’s a place where avoirdupois and analogue still hold sway, where a father and son can reconnect to the big stuff that controls our universe. The tricks and dodges in this book are my personal doorway into this Lost World.

Come and join me in the land where string is king.

It was a huge viral video hit. People couldn’t get enough. It showed you how a guy had charged his iPod by sticking the USB recharger in an onion left overnight in some Gatorade (a lurid blue “sports drink”). That’s bloody brilliant, I thought. So did thousands of others. It felt fabulous. It was a huge hit. Most views of the week. Hey everyone! You can charge your iPod with a vegetable! Onions 1, Apple Inc. 0.

But something didn’t add up. It doesn’t work.

Initially this is disappointing news. But what really matters is the groundswell of glee that greeted the very idea. Gatorade contains ‘electrolytes’, so it had a ring of credibility. Sticking a USB connector into an onion, though? Do you really think so? ‘Course not. Yet, logic aside, tens of thousands of people were prepared to believe. It was an article of faith.

What this reveals is a longing for an elemental simplicity to deliver us from all of life’s frustrating fiddly bits. We want muddy truth to triumph over the modern world’s incomprehensible complexity. This book offers some suggestions as to how it can. Only none of them involve an onion; sorry…

Warning!This is a guide to survival in the real world. That’s the world you see when you step out of the lift at Ikea. It’s not a place where penknives, compasses or the rubbing together of sticks are particularly appropriate. And the eating of bugs and leaves would be just…stupid.

Whatever you’ve been told, our ancestors didn’t develop their skills of survival so that they could stay alive in the woods. They had other plans. They wanted to move into a city, buy a car and install sat nav.

How to Predict the Weather with a Cup of Coffee celebrates what happens once they got there and man’s native instincts came to town. It revives some of the tricks from our primitive past and unleashes our flair for survival on a nasty new threat: all of life’s tedious bits. I see this as a shot of red-blooded purpose into our pale urban backsides, turning the 9-5 into a non-stop adventure.

Some of the tricks and dodges in these pages are nicked from the Neolithic hunter; some are purloined from the pocket book of the Victorian explorer and some you already do every day. I call it ‘Urban bushcraft’ and it’s an art and a science that’s been in development ever since we had Neanderthals for neighbours. A lot has happened since then, so here’s a quick recap.

OK, this is how it goes.

First there is this ape. He walks out of the forest, gets into some basic grooming and the result, eventually, is you. You’re the slickest life-form to wear a loincloth and you can turn your hand to anything. With your super-sized brain and those freaky opposable thumbs you know what you want, and you know how to get it.

You clock up seven or eight millennia of breakneck progress, plus a few more when (frankly) you’re just coasting. You rise above every challenge you face with boundless ingenuity. You get better and better at everything, and as a result you have less and less to do. Sod this hunting business, let’s start a farm. Fed up with building shelters? Let’s get into property development. These buttons are a bit fiddly, what about a zip?

And suddenly, you’ve cracked it. Survival is in the bag; shrink-wrapped, bar-coded and scanned. Bleep! Do you need any help packing today, sir?

Now, just hold it there a second. This bit’s important. Don’t worry, you’ve got a moment while you swipe your card.

Think back a few thousand years. You’ve just tracked your first antelope and you’re standing there, spear cocked, all ready to turn it into lunch. Imagine how that felt. Now look at yourself. Instead of a blood-splattered spear and a steaming great antelope you’ve got a PIN number and a carrier bag of groceries. Different isn’t it?