The Further Adventures of An Idiot Abroad. Karl Pilkington
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pig. That’s a big gift to give someone, isn’t it? I think some top-up time for his mobile should have been enough. I went to see the chief.
CHIEF: We have to give your nambas to you.
KARL: I’m not too worried about that, don’t trouble yourself. I’m quite happy. You’ve made me welcome, I’ve stayed the night, you gave me kava, I had a really good night. You don’t have to give me any more. So, yeah, we can just . . . I just came to meet my friend who is going to help me to survive on the island.
LUKE: It’s traditional, Karl. If one becomes an honorary tribe member, it is an honour for the tribe if you don the nambas.
CHIEF: It is a tradition thing when we go fishing.
KARL: I think it’s more important to have a rod and bait when fishing. Fishing tackle is important. Not my tackle! I’m not going to pull off that look. What sort of rule is that? If I don’t wear a nambas they won’t teach me to fish!?
CHIEF’S SON: It is a kind of respect.
KARL: It’s just . . . (sighs) . . . wearing the nambas, a friend’s winding me up back at home. He is making me wear these nambas. I didn’t know that was going to happen, you see. It’s a bit of a surprise for me. I thought I was just coming here to have a look, observe with eyes and then go. Now everybody’s keen to get me in a nambas, and the longer this goes on, the more embarrassing it is.
CHIEF’S SON: You have to be in the nambas.
LUKE: It’s just for a short while. I think it would be the right thing to do.
CHIEF’S SON: After you put on nambas, then we have to do a dance here.
KARL: See! They’re adding a bit more now. Pop these on, then we’re going to have a dance. That’s when things pop out – when having a dance.
CHIEF’S SON: It is a short one.
KARL: What do you mean, it’s a short one?
CHIEF’S SON: Short dance.
KARL: Oh, short dance. It’s just, you see, this is normal for you, but for me, this will go on the TV, and me mum, me dad will be saying, ‘Oh, what’s Karl been up to?’ I’m dancing around with stuff on show. It’s different at home. People don’t dress like this, so it’s a bit of a bigger deal for me. To be, you know, having it all out there, moving around, then something falls out.
LUKE: It’s a taboo you’re messing with, something symbolic here, you know.
KARL: Yeah, well, they’re messing with my symbollocks. How can we move this on because this is getting more and more awkward as time goes on?
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