Well, I really missed him. I mean, months later, when I did get back, I rang him up to go and see him. I was so pleased at the thought of going to see old Simon. And I rang him. You see, all day, on these rivers, there's a thing called 'the screaming piha'. Now it's a bit bigger than a thrush, and it can drive you mad. It's something to with music unfinished. This or that or the other, it goes [whistling] all the time, never changes. And Simon would go: 'Bloody bird!' And then at night, just bad luck. Again, nobody told you about this, there's this thing bigger than a turkey called the nocturnal curassow, and it gets very, very sexy. And the male, in the season, which this was, all night long, without a break unless the girl arrives, he goes [grunting]. And Simon said he can't sleep with that bloody bird. So when I... he picked the phone up, Simon here, and I said [grunting] and the phone went down. But it's alright, I'd see him now. But he couldn't... he still can't watch nature programmes on the telly. He said if he sees a tree, he wants that turned right off.

He couldn't go back to work for a bit. He put his hammock up, weirdly enough. Wouldn't move from his hammock, but he finished his reading of Dostoyevsky and he read all of Tolstoy, and he couldn't drive a car, he couldn't join in urban life again for a month. And he got tunnel vision and serious treatment. But the treatment came to an end when, I don't know, the psychiatrist said something he thought was offensive, and he told him if he says that one more time, he's going to jump over his desk and bosh him one. But he's alright now.

[Q] So that's the Amazon.

Yes, that's the Amazon.

[Q] You wouldn't have missed it, then?

God no. No, the idea, when I was a boy, was to go to all the big jungles in the world, but I never thought you actually could. It was Fenton, to Borneo. But then, you see, after the Congo, the last one was going to be New Guinea, but I'm far too old now.