The art of survival

ONE perk to compensate for being a not particularly well paid newspaper journalist in the 1980s was the opportunity to write book reviews.

In fact, I discovered one of my all-time favourite authors, Irishman Brian Moore, after reviewing The Lonely Passion Of Judith Hearne, later made into a drama starring Maggie Smith and Bob Hoskins.

At the end of a busy day there was nothing quite like settling down with a good book in front of the fire with a cup of coffee or a glass of something stronger – literally.

Until I was pushed well outside of my bookish comfort zone.

New releases for review were laid out on a desk alongside the features editor and I was browsing one that had just come in – The Survival Skills Handbook, not the kind of literary oeuvre I would normally be drawn to.

It turned out that the author had ties with Guernsey and, rather than settling for a run-of-the-mill review, he had proposed promoting his work by taking a journalist on a mini survival expedition.

The idea was that the writer would accompany me overnight and talk me through his research, experiences and the raison d’etre for it. A practical book review if you will?

So it was that a few weeks later I found myself spending a freezing February night under the stars in Herm Island.

The wordsmith, not inappropriately named Martyn Forrester, was a former London advertising agency copywriter who has since been described as ‘the most widely-sold unheard-of author in Britain’.

I have done some copywriting myself, while working for an advertising and marketing group, and created a fair number of slogans and taglines, none of which were good enough for me to remember them now.

And I was also once a hand model.

My design department colleagues scoured the agency seeking out the perfect hand to feature in a photo shoot of a business-like handshake when such things were allowed. Having been chosen, I was whisked off to a beauty salon, where my fingernails were manicured, then sent off to buy a brand-new white shirt, of which just one centimetre of the cuff would be shown in the final image.

That was advertising in the 1980s. Survival then meant nothing more than getting through some exceptionally long and boozy client lunches.

Herm was closed in cold, dark February but the Forrester had gained permission for two survivors to hang out there overnight. There would be no hot bath at the White House Hotel or sneaking off to the Mermaid Tavern for a pint.

I had been given a few instructions before boarding the late afternoon ferry from the White Rock, most importantly to kit myself out with some thermal underwear, which I was pleased to have but never wore again.

With a few hours of daylight left, my guide explained that our first priorities would be to create a shelter and find food.

We chose a spot near Fisherman’s Cottage and then hunted around in the small, wooded area nearby for any material that might suit. There wasn’t much by way of fallen branches or foliage that we could use to construct a canopy, but we found enough dry pine leaves and other soft material to make a sort of natural groundsheet that we could sleep on, then used larger twigs, branches and bracken to build an all-important fire to supplement the thermals.

Our next task in the fading light was to find food. The expert had brought a small, limited supply of fresh water and that was it. I had been instructed not to eat anything after lunch that day and was beginning to feel a little peckish.

MF was too. He showed me how to set up a make-shift snare using twigs and a short length of twine, in the hope of catching a plump rabbit. Our fears that the chances of this succeeding were slim were entirely founded and the plat du jour ended up being foraged pine kernels and limpets scavenged off the rocks and boiled in a recycled can over a fire lit using flint and cotton wool.

The patellogastropoda were disgusting and I decided that a night without food would be more palatable. Of course, in a real survival situation there would have been no choice – Martyn’s book referenced the Andes air disaster where 16 survivors were rescued after 72 days, having resorted to cannibalism.

I had never met my overnight companion before but, with no other entertainment, the conversation flowed and eventually we retired for the night, lying close to one another to maximise our body warmth.

My mock, and largely sleepless, brush with survival was over soon enough, the only other eventful episode being an early-hours emergency when our ‘bed’ caught fire.

It was the most superficial of survival experiences, and I was grateful it was a one-off, but it did make me appreciate just how much we take our home comforts for granted.