I've only seen two bits of Bear Grylls' TV program. Is it just coincidence that both of them have brought me to the conclusion that he's a fucking idiot? The first time I just walked in to see him crawling breathlessly a few meters through a mangrove swamp in Panama. He finds some sort of mussel type thing, stabs it with his knife, tastes it, spits it out with a horrified "UGH" and throws the poor wasted thing away. He then climbs a tree for no apparent reason, takes his shirt off, for no apparent reason, other than perhaps to give the lucky viewers a chance to see his torso and does a frivolous back flip off the tree back into the swamp. He then struggles another couple of meters onto a sandbank, spies a crab which he stabs with his knife. He lets us know that the crab is well and truly dead, despite the fact that it is still desperately trying to flee and you can almost hear it screaming with pain and frustration. He then rips off one of it's claws, sucks out some of the flesh, again finds that the taste is not to his liking and throws the wretched creature away.
The second clip that I saw was picked for me by the annoying guy with stupid hair from the Saturday Night Project. In it Bear Grylls is
demonstrating that you can drink the freshly squeezed juice of elephant dung. Nobody needs to know that, let alone have it demonstrated. He's just showing off.
Now it may seem that all survival shows are this pointless and frivolous. But somehow people such as Ray Mears just don't seem that bad. Ray Mears is so much calmer and more thoughtful, and although I can't really see myself getting stranded in the Rockies and needing his camping skills, he does demonstrate things that you could see yourself doing. I cannot see myself trying still warm crab, nor elephant shit juice. Apparently I am not the only one to make
this comparison.
If you're interested the first clip I mentioned is
here and
here, but you really don't need to find a specific bit of his program it's all ridiculous, just before these clips he
covers himself in mud.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention that my parents seem to think that Bear Grylls is some sort of modern day missionary, though I am not sure where they got that idea from.
I started using a new wallet recently. And my oyster card stopped working. My being a cyclist combined with the rush usually associated with public transport I didn't have a lot of opportunity to investigate. It was a bit confusing though as it is just a standard leather wallet. It recently occurred to me however that it could be down, not to my wallet, but my new Barclay's debit card, which has these wavy lines on. I called Barclay's only to be told, rather condescendingly that the two cards will not interfere. So I off I trotted to Blackfriar's station, had a little chat with the guard and did some testing. Sure enough, the Oyster card was fine when my Barclay debit card was not in my wallet. The card reader even stated "Too many oyster cards" when my debit card was present. So I called Barclay's again to request a new card sans "wave and pay" technology. No deal. But I was told that I needed to call Oyster and give them my card details which would sort the problem. Needless to say I was not convinced. I called Oyster, but unfortunately I don't seem to have the right sort of card, you have to have a OnePay card to be able to pay for Oyster directly from your Barclay card. I am now bored of talking to people in call centres, do I really have to move banks to fix my Oyster card?
