The Further Adventures of an Idiot Abroad (26 page)

As the boat made its way towards the glaciers the director pointed out big chunks of ice that had broken away and were floating about like little pontoons. He was telling me that some of these
glaciers are millions of years old, but I can’t get excited about old ice. Ice is ice. You never see someone on
Antiques Roadshow
turning up with a block of ice for a reason. When
things get into millions of years old I struggle to get my head round it. Ricky and his girlfriend bought me and Suzanne a fossil of some fish that is dated at 35 million years old. It’s a
bit older now, as that was two Christmases ago, but there it is just sat next to the Nintendo Wii.

As the journey went on, the amount of ice in the water increased. Big chunks the size of a Mini Cooper rolled and broke up as the waves hit them. The director wittered on about how if all the
glaciers melted, coastlines could get flooded. I think this is why we are now advised to drink more water every day. They recommend at least two litres a day now, maybe this is to try and get rid
of some of the water. Thinking about it, bottled water must solve some of this problem. When I was a kid there wasn’t such a thing as bottled water, whereas now there’s gallons of the
stuff in warehouses ready to be sold, so that must help a bit. Like I said, I think I do my bit towards saving the planet, but I think we’ll always have to change and some stuff will die out.
I’ve said it before about the dodo. They went extinct, and we carried on. Ricky moans at me, saying that everything has its job and its place, but I don’t think it does. I recently read
there is a koala bear that sleeps 22 hours a day! Now, unless it’s running round doing stuff like a blue-arsed fly when it’s awake for them two hours, I struggle to see what that is
contributing to the world. It must be groggy for at least 40 minutes when it first wakes up, which leaves an hour twenty, which it probably uses to make a fresh new bed for its lazy arse.

Like I said, I save energy ’cos I don’t think it’s good to waste anything. The standby light on the TV could go, as it’s using energy. Instead of having adverts telling
us to make sure it’s off, why don’t they just get rid of it? The light in the fridge could go (we don’t have them in freezers), use by dates make people throw stuff away when
it’s perfectly fine, and we’re encouraged to buy new instead of getting things repaired. I would also put a stop to Christmas crackers and Kinder eggs, as the amount of crap they bring
onto the world is unbelievable. That’s all the stuff that ends up in landfill. It’s funny to think how in Egypt they dig and find jewellery and vases made of gold from years gone by.
When people in the future dig they’ll find a plastic kitchen roll holder.

The two safety men asked me for a code word that I was to shout if I felt water getting into the suit, as it’s so cold it could kill me. I went for a word that I used on my last lot of
trips for the first series of
Idiot Abroad
, which was ‘Congress Tart’. I picked that word, as there was no chance of me accidentally saying it, unless someone asked me what my
favourite cake was. But that didn’t seem the sort of chat the men in black would bring up. The two men said, ‘Con what?!’ ‘Congress Tart,’ I said. ‘It’s my
favourite cake. Almond crust with jam inside.’ They continued to struggle with the name, so the director said I should choose another word. ‘Well, how about the word “help”.
That suggests I need help. That’s what it was invented for.’ In the end we used the word ‘apple’. I know it sounds daft, but no matter what the word is, it will always sound
ridiculous being yelled in an emergency. Seems pathetic that if I’d ended up drowning to death and Suzanne asked them if I had any message for her as I took my last breath, they would have to
have said, ‘No. He just said “apple”.’

Once the safety word had been established, they took me out in their little boat and pushed me overboard. I tried to hold on to the side of the boat, but I couldn’t as my suit only had
three fingers, so it was hard to hold on to anything. I don’t like not being able to grab things. I never wore mittens as a kid ’cos of this. They made your fingers redundant. I wonder
if we would have evolved to do more with our toes if we hadn’t started to cover them with shoes and socks. Oven gloves are also daft. When dealing with a heavy chicken in a roasting tin with
hot juices floating about you need a proper grip. Why take your fingers out of action at such a critical time? I told Suzanne she should get welders’ gloves, but she said they don’t
look nice hanging off the utensils rack in the kitchen.

The two men pushed me away from the boat. I floated around like a turd in a honey bucket for about ten minutes, as people on the boat watched. No one spoke. It wasn’t enjoyable, and it
wasn’t a great spectator event either. All I could hear was the rain coming down on my wet suit. After a long ten minutes, one of the men in black said, ‘Time’s up.’ Their
work was done. I doubt this is the sort of work they had put in all the training hours for. They lifted me out. I would live another day. I just hope it will be more interesting than that one.

We headed over to a place called Kodiak where I got a call from Ricky. He told me that this is where I would be getting to see a whale. He said I wasn’t going to be on a
busy touristy boat with lots of other spectators, I would be on board a proper fishing boat. I met the small crew of four and off we went. Brian was the captain. He said he sees whales all the
time, so everything seemed promising at this point. I think the fact that they are an endangered species made the trip more worthwhile. That might seem mean, but these things could be extinct in
years to come. It’s like making an effort to see your gran when she’s ill. You don’t know how much longer she’s gonna be around, so you make the effort to see her. I also
find the sea the most interesting place on the planet. The world is 70% water so, really, I think the planet is here more for sea life than it is for us. I always like to watch TV programmes about
the oceans, especially if they’re looking at the stuff that lives deep deep down in the dark. There are some odd things down there. The lantern fish is one of my favourites. It’s a fish
that has evolved with a type of light bulb hanging off the front of its head to help it find food in the darkness. I heard that a man had one of these in a fish tank and he read his newspaper by it
at night. You can’t get a more energy-efficient pet than that, can you? Suzanne is always saying she wants a fish, and I’ve always said they don’t do much, but if we could get a
few of them for in the lounge I’d be up for it. I’m always having to walk about switching off lamps that Suzanne leaves on. Starfish are also amazing. There is a type that if it loses
an arm a new one will grow back, and, even weirder, a new starfish can grow from the detached arm. You can’t get more alien. I don’t know if you can eat them, but if you can, they could
be an everlasting snack.

Narwhals would also be good to see. These are whales that have a big horn sticking out the top of their head. It always puzzles me that the narwhal actually exists, but then people talk of the
unicorn as this made-up mystical creature. All it is is a horse with a horn. If you’re gonna make up a mystical animal why not go for it a bit more than that. A bald-headed llama with wings
and human feet would be weirder, and I just made that up there and then off the top of my head.

As well as them being endangered, the other reason I wanted to see a whale is that it’s not something you can get to see in an aquarium. I went to see a washed-up one in Kent last year,
but by the time I got there the council had shifted it. Typical. When I try and get them to move an old kitchen for me they said I’d have to book a date, yet a whale gets washed up and they
move it straight away. They said in the news you shouldn’t go near Bruce – they named it Bruce for some reason – ’cos you can catch TB from it, but I had a jab for that when
I was at school, so I thought it was worth the risk. There was another whale in London in the Thames. Apparently, it had got lost. Happens to me all the time, that. Whether you’re using sat
nav or sonar, London is still a tricky place to get around.

I stood looking out for whale tails, as the crew were getting on with their jobs on the fishing boat, until Brian suggested I put some overalls on so I could help out. I didn’t want to
seem rude. If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t be seeing a whale at all. Eric then told me that they would be out fishing all night. This worried me, as seas tend to get more lively
at night. I hadn’t prepared myself for a night out at sea. I thought it would just be a few hours. I put on the overalls. They stunk of fish. Not just fish, but rotten fish. In fact, I just
gagged again now, at the thought of how bad the smell was. Eric asked me to go into the bait room to help cut bait. I was given an octopus to cut up. I wouldn’t have known it was an octopus
if he hadn’t told me. Because octopuses have no bones they had obviously shoved it into some type of cool box and flattened it into a pose that Houdini would have been impressed with. They
then threw the ‘flat-packed’ octopus on the deck a few times to defrost and soften it a little. If Roz had been there she would have thought they were serving a starter.