The Further Adventures of an Idiot Abroad (5 page)

But, as with everywhere else in the world, you’ll always get someone who wants to be different. There was a man who was walking around dressed in a right load of foliage. He was the Lady
Gaga of the area. Maybe this was his way of getting out of doing the dive, by getting camouflaged up. The odd thing about the clothing was how the tradition had carried on and yet the odd villager
had a mobile phone or wore a quality watch. The watch just didn’t look right. It was never designed to go with a knob sheath. If anything I’d probably wear the watch round the nambas as
a belt to stop it falling off. Surely if they accepted mobile phones and watches they might as well wear underpants or a pair of trunks.

A young lad who looked about six years old did a jump from around 25 feet. Kids of his age in England are being told not to play conkers at school due to little injuries, and yet here’s
little Billy diving to his imminent death just for the sake of growing some cabbages. This is what happens when people don’t have enough to do. No jobs, no paperwork or bills to pay, no
washing of clothes, no sales calls to answer, or windows or cars to wash, so they turn to arsing about.

There was no way I was going to do it from the top. I told John it was too risky. I explained that I have a mortgage and other responsibilities that I wouldn’t be able to sort out with a
broken neck. He told me: ‘Not a problem. It safe. Been doing for many years, no accidents. No worry.’ Yet one after another, men continued to hurl themselves off the tower like
lemmings. These people need wings more than the kiwi bird.

Everything seemed to be going well until a man whose vines were too long went and planted his head in the ground. He lay on the ground shaking like a baby sparrow that had fallen out its nest
with his eyes rolling about in the back of his head. The singing and dancing continued as two men went over and slapped his face. Eventually he came back round with a big smile on his face.

I didn’t want to let everyone in the village down, and I knew Ricky and Stephen would moan at me if I didn’t get involved somehow, so I came up with an idea. I agreed to do the
lowest possible land dive. I pointed to the lowest rung on the structure and asked everyone if jumping from there still counted as a land dive. They said it would. Two men prepared the vines for my
dive. They definitely looked too long for the distance I was going to jump. They tied them around my ankles. I got up on the ledge to find it was a lot higher than I thought. Just as on the bungee
platform in New Zealand where loud rock music blasted out of speakers, here the singing and whistling puts you in a kind of trance. I held onto the wooden frame with one arm and leaned as far
forward as possible. Now I just had to let go. I remember having the same feeling when I was learning to swim as a kid, when you know you have to let go of the side of the pool and push away. This
was like letting go of the edge of a pool, except there was no water. No one was shouting at me like the jump in New Zealand, no one was counting me down – I just had to wait until my inner
voice said, ‘Release’. The thing Sam kept saying to me on the bungee in New Zealand was in my head: ‘Coach, pass me the ball, and I’ll make the play.’ With everyone
wearing a nambas, now wasn’t the time to be asking for any ball to play with. I let go.

The vines they had attached to my legs were far too long. I face-planted the earth. Given the distance I’d jumped I’d have been better using shoelaces instead of vines, but the
villagers loved it. The chanting and whistling got louder, and they lifted me in the air in celebration. I felt good, not from the dive, but because I felt they had appreciated my effort.

I called Ricky.

We boarded another plane and made our way to the nice hotel that Ricky had promised. It was decent – a posh place that made the towels in the room into animals. I had two rabbits on my bed
made with hand towels and a couple of swans by the bathroom sink made with flannels. I suppose it gives some purpose to a flannel – something I’ve never got into using. I also found a
funny egg cup in the room. It had two little legs and had EGGS ON LEGS written on the front. I packed it in my bag as it cheered me up and I thought I might be needing something like that on my
island, the way Tom Hanks had that football to talk to in
Castaway.

After a good night’s sleep I got up and had a full English breakfast on the pier. As I ate my egg, sausage, beans and toast I watched loads of flying fish in the clear blue sea. It’s
odd how evolution gave fish wings. I wonder if people continue to chuck themselves off ledges and big wooden frames if we eventually grow a pair.

But I couldn’t enjoy my little treat from Ricky and Stephen as much as I wanted to. I was worried about what they had planned for me next. It felt like being in a private hospital.
It’s nice having your own room and good food, but the fact is you’re in hospital to have your legs off the next day so how can really you enjoy it?

A plane flew over really low and then landed in the sea and chucked out an anchor. It was a seaplane. The pilot introduced himself to me as Seaplane Paul. The plane was tiny, like a motorbike
with wings. He said he was going to take me to see the many small islands that were dotted around to give me an idea of the sort of place where I might be spending my night.

We saw loads of islands. All different sizes. Like clumps of broccoli sprouting from the sea. Paul told me around 83 islands make up Vanuatu. I saw a few nice ones I’d have been happy to
stay on. Nice white sand, clear blue water and bushes and trees for protection from the sun, just like the Bounty advert I mentioned earlier. He then took me to see a volcano. It was terrifying.
I’d seen a lot of volcanoes when holidaying in Lanzarote, but they were all dead and just looked like giant ashtrays. This one was alive. I kept saying that it wasn’t safe as we flew
through the steam clouds that were gushing out of the top. We had to do extra flights on the way here due to ash clouds from Chile and yet here we were flying through the smoke like contestants on
Stars in their Eyes.
I could see the red hot lava bubbling like beans do when you’ve had them on the stove for too long. We were being battered by the heat that was rising from it
and being thrown all over the place. I wasn’t happy. Paul was getting too close for my liking. He seemed to be attracted to it like a bluebottle in a chippy flying too close to one of those
FlyZap electrocutors. I wasn’t feeling great from the turbulence, but what made me feel worse was the smell from the volcano. It stunk. To me, the fact that nature has made this thing stink
is a way of telling us that we shouldn’t be anywhere near it.

The smell of sulphur is similar to rotten eggs. It’s odd to think the middle of the earth smells of bad eggs.

We headed back and I quizzed him about Vanuatu being the happiest place in the world. Paul was from Australia and he told me he’d travelled a lot and he really thinks it is the happiest
place he’s ever known. He told me that the locals use a greeting that is a type of laughing sound.

I like the idea of growing a beard when someone’s died, as you wouldn’t really be in the mood for shaving after hearing the bad news. It’s also a way of showing respect without
it costing anything. Death is a costly business at home. It’s another way of getting money out of us, and they try to make you feel you’re a better person if you spend more on the dead.
My dad says it’s all bollocks and he wants to be stuck in a bin bag and I should let the council get rid of him. The trend at the moment seems to be buying a bench with a message engraved on
it. They’re like the new gravestones. ‘Arthur used to like sitting here. Missed by wife Betty 1936–2012.’ I bet the councils can’t believe their luck how much
they’re saving on not having to cough up for public benches.

It wasn’t long before I was at the airport again to get on another plane to fly and meet a tribe that worship Prince Philip as a god on the island of Tanna. Luke gave me a few photos of
Prince Philip to pass onto them and a limited edition £5 coin that had been released to celebrate his recent ninetieth birthday. £5! That’s a lot of money for a coin you’re
not going to spend. Why couldn’t it be a special 10p coin? It’s things like this that annoy me about Britain. It’s a right rip off. We don’t even have £5 coins in
circulation. It’s things like this that would stop us ever making it into the Top 10 list of happiest places in the world.

Anyway, the Prince Philip tribe . . . The story goes that the son of a mountain spirit travelled across seas to find a powerful woman to marry, and somehow the son turned out to be Prince
Philip. He visited close to the island in the 1970s, which helped to back up their beliefs. I met two locals as I got off the plane who were holding a piece of wood with my name on it. One was
called JJ who spoke some English. He introduced me to Albi who was described to me as the happiest man in the village, as well as being the greatest dancer. They were both stood there wearing next
to nothing. Just a bit of plant on their heads and wicker on their knobs. I got in the back of a van with Albi as JJ had claimed the passenger seat on the inside.