THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.85 - MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE

Episode Date: November 26, 2018

Adam talks with American journalist and novelist Michael Scott Moore, whose book ‘The Desert And The Sea’ tells the story of his capture in Somalia by pirates who held him hostage for nearly 3 years. Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production supportMusic and jingles by Adam Buxton, except clip from ‘Until The Lion Learns To Speak’ by K’naanListen to jingles and bonus episodes, watch videos and pick up some podcast merchandise on the free ADAM BUXTON APP!http://adam-buxton.co.uk/appRELATED LINKSMICHAEL’S PROOF OF LIFE VIDEOhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4qQ-5wHvvAARTICLE ABOUT MICHAEL’S FRIENDSHIP WITH FELLOW HOSTAGE ROLLY (FROM SEYCHELLES NEWS AGENCY)http://www.seychellesnewsagency.com/articles/9501/A+story+of+friendship+for+American+writer%2C+Seychellois+fishermen+held+by+Somali+piratesMICHAEL IS REUNITED WITH HIS HOSTAGE SHIPMATES UPON THEIR RELEASEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVzWer1ctrkTHE KHAT WAR - SOMALIAhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCwpcVgwuMYK’NAAN (SOMALI/CANADIAN MUSICIAN) - ‘UNTIL THE LION LEARNS TO SPEAK’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19zpqIJR_UYTHE DESERT AND THE SEAhttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33544879-the-desert-and-the-sea Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Hey, how you doing, podcats? Adam Buxton here, reporting to you from the countryside,

in a field about 15 minutes outside the fair city of Norwich, to be precise. It's quite cold. It was nice and sunny earlier on, but it's gone a little stormish now, and I think I just felt a little bit of contemptuous rain spittle from the sky, which is a bit sad. How are you, Rosie? She's looking back at me with a look that says, she's looking back at me with a look that says, you know very well how I am. And that's true. She's on a leash as I speak,

because this time last week, we had a bit of an incident, didn't we, Rose? Don't patronise me. If you're interested in that kind of thing, I'll tell you about it at the end of the podcast. Trigger warning, it's kind of a gory story. But that's not till the end. Right now, let me tell you a bit about podcast episode number 85, which features a conversation with American journalist and novelist Michael Scott Moore,

whose book The Desert and the Sea, published earlier this year, 2018, tells the story of his capture in Somalia by pirates who held him hostage for nearly three years. Now, I read this book over the summer after hearing Michael interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air podcast, actually. And I found the book completely fascinating. And when Michael was visiting London in October, I managed to grab an hour or so with him, and he told me a bit about his experience at the hands of the pirates. A few Michael Scott more facts before we get going. Michael grew up in Southern California, where he started his writing career as the theatre critic for the San Francisco Weekly.

Disillusioned with life in America, Michael, whose mother is German but still lives in the US, later moved to Berlin where he wrote for the online version of the newspaper Der Spiegel. A keen surfer, Michael wrote the book Sweetness and Blood, published in 2010, about, to quote the subtitle, how surfing spread from Hawaii and California to the rest of the world with some unexpected results. In the course of researching a bit of seafaring history for sweetness and blood, Michael became interested in the history of piracy and in 2011 he reported on the trial in Germany of 10 Somali pirates who had attempted to capture a German cargo ship. pirates who had attempted to capture a German cargo ship. That interest in modern day piracy led him in January 2012 to Galkayo in Somalia. Now, if you look at the African continent on a map,

picture it in your mind. To me, it looks like a person in profile with a big bulbous nose. And the back of their head is a bit sticking out like a duck's tail out into the Arabian Sea and that's the Horn of Africa where Somalia is. I'm saying that for the benefit of any young children who've tuned in hoping that this is going to be a bit like Pirates of the Caribbean and are about to be badly disappointed. Anyway, Michael visited Somalia in early 2012 with a filmmaker friend, Ashwan Rahman, to learn more about the Somali pirates. And after several days of interviews,

Michael was saying goodbye to Ashwan, who was taking an earlier flight out of Somalia. And it was on the way back from the airport that Michael was captured by the pirate gang who ended up holding him hostage until late 2014. You'll find a few links related to a few of the things that Michael and I talked about in the description of this podcast, including the first proof-of-life video made by Michael's captors, where you'll see Michael clearly distressed flanked by a couple of Somalis who appear to be holding grenade launchers it's a moment that he talks

about in the desert and the sea I also have a link to a short video about the drug the pirates are so reliant on that we speak about a little bit cut cut, K-H-A-T. It's a plant that contains an addictive stimulant that has had a huge effect on a lot of people in the regions of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula where cut grows and is traded. Michael is extremely articulate, he's a good talkerer and it's an amazing story so I tried not to butt in too much but I'll be back at the end for a small slice of waffle

and a goodbye here we go First on this, then concentrate on that. Come on, let's chew the fat and have a ramble chat. Put on your conversation coat and find your talking hat. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la Did you like pirates when you were little? Sure. Yeah, I had a sort of romance about pirates when I was a kid. But what was interesting to me is that they didn't exist anymore for a very good reason. There was a sort of order placed on the world's oceans starting in the early 1800s by the rise of nation states and

also by the rise of the United States, which specifically formed a navy to go out and quell Barbary pirates because they were a burden on trade. And it occurred to me that if Somalia could sort of develop in the same way, then that would be the practical long-term solution to piracy. So I got interested in pirates off Somalia, first of all, because I was writing about them from the newsroom and speaking online, but also because their sudden appearance again, after a couple hundred years in kind of a major way, was a symptom of gathering chaos in the world. I mean, I really thought that it was a sign of entropy in my lifetime, and I wanted to figure it out. But I didn't just go to the Horn of Africa with that sort of vague idea in my mind.

There was a trial of 10 Somali pirates in Hamburg. You were out in Germany at that time. Yeah, I was living in Berlin and working for Spiegel Online, and I started to follow that trial for Spiegel in 2011. It was a long trial, too. It took all year. 10 pirates there. And what happened to them?

They captured a German cargo ship in about 2010 and got assaulted by the Dutch Navy, who didn't kill anyone, arrested everybody, and brought them back to Hamburg, where the ship was originally based. And so they were put on trial in front of a German court. And it was the first pirate trial on German soil in 400 years. So that alone was interesting. And were they all sent down?

They were all found guilty, but in spite of the fact that they were found guilty, they got only about seven years in jail because um germany's a modern state you know founded in 1949 when there wasn't much piracy to worry about so the penalties are pretty slim so they will have got out this year they've they got out earlier because it's standard not to keep someone the full time if they've if they've behaved well they got got out pretty quickly. And because Samoa is a difficult place to ship people back to for human rights reasons, as convicted pirates, they were allowed to stay in Germany. And I thought that was a complete travesty. A few of them moved back anyway because they had more opportunities in Samoa.

Yeah. What are they going to do in Germany? Yeah. Kids' parties and stuff. Goodoa. Yeah. What are they going to do in Germany? Kids parties and stuff. Good question. Yeah. So when you talk about this being a symptom of a certain entropy afoot in the world, we were also curious, though, about them as sort of working people driven to extremes by inequality and exploitation. And so that sort of thing. And you wanted to go and find out if that was realistic. Yeah. I mean, I knew that it was a directly it was a symptom of entropy in Somalia itself.

Somalia has been a failed state for a long time. And the last strongman was toppled in 91. It was a bit like Muammar Gaddafi going down in Libya. And ever since then, it's been the clans who have been running Somalia. So the regions sort of look out for their own stability. And in those regions, the clans might get involved in something illegal. So it was simply a way to make money for some poor regions. And there's a story, of course, that they're protecting their fish stocks. And that story is only partially true. The roots of piracy are in illegal fishing. But once they started to capture cargo ships, those fishermen were no longer defending their coastline.

And especially once they started capturing people like me on land. So then it had nothing to do with defending the coastline. So that's a tension in the book, too. The desert and the sea also refers to where the pirates come from. And in my case, most of them were clan soldiers from inland, not from coastal clans that made their living from fishing. Right. So early on in the book, we're introduced to Muhammad Gerlach. Gerlach, yeah. He's from Galkayo.

Yeah, but he's got a German last name because he married in Germany. So he had lived in Berlin for quite a while. And that's where I met him. Ah, right. And so he was going to be your fixer in Somalia. Yeah, he was our fixer. So I went with another journalist and Gerlach had brought another journalist through the same region a few months before. So he had a track record as a fixer. And what measures were taken to protect you while you were out there? He hired a bunch of guards. And we took an enormous guard contingent when we went from Galkayo out to Hobio, which is on the coast. Galcao is inland.

And Hobio is where all the pirates were holed up. That's kind of a well-known pirate town, yeah. So they launch a lot of their missions from there. And it's a town that's still sort of under the command of pirates. As an organized criminal force, they have sway over there. As an organized criminal force, they have sway over there. Now I'm just imagining the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in Disneyland with a little dog running around as well. So your fixer guy says to you at one point, I've heard that Mohammed Garfangi, this sort of pirate lord, is offering a $15 million reward for you.

Yeah, that was the rumor right was that all of a sudden uh the pirates knew i was there and this guy was going to offer a bunch of money for me so shit gets real yeah that was scary but um we sat down and talked about it and a lot of rumors go around that part of the world too so um right so you didn't immediately think actually fuck this i'm going to go home right yeah and then can you describe the circumstances of your eventual capture? Yeah, I was in Somalia a total of 10 days before I got captured. And by then we had finished reporting. I mean, we were more or less done. I still had a couple of things I wanted to do. And then I was going to be off to Nairobi. And my partner, Ashwin, flew off to Mogadishu, and the flights were on separate days because that airport isn't very busy.

So I went with him to the airport and we had agreed to do everything together. And so we saw him off very safely. And then he was on his way to Mogadishu when we set off back towards the hotel. And on the road between the airport and the town, there was a technical, which is a battle wagon or a truck with a great big gun waiting for us on the side of the road. And, you know, a technical can be good or bad. It could have been friendly. It could have been looking out for our safety, but it turned out to be full of pirates. And these guys saw our car, aimed their cannon right through our windshield. And 12 guys in the bed of the truck came over to my side of the car and pulled me out. And where were your protectors at that point?

Right, there was a guard in the car, but he felt completely overwhelmed by the sight of the cannon, and he didn't even fire a shot. And so the 12 gunmen, they fired into the air, and that's when I knew it was pretty serious. And they opened the door of my car, which I tried to hold closed, and they beat on my wrist. So I would let go. And then they yanked me out and beat me up and then bundled me into another car.

Stamped on your glasses. As a glasses wearer, that's one of the more distressing moments. It was horrifying. Yeah, no, I mean, I knew that was bad news when it happened. But the glasses were the first thing to go, you know. And presumably you were not able to pop into spec savers for the next three years no i kept asking them for my glasses actually but um they said oh yeah and then nothing happened you ever get like another pair from another hostage or anything or no but my mother actually tried to send glasses it was just difficult to find the right groups that would hand a package like that off yeah so it never quite worked that's strange. It's a bit like I've been reading some World War I letters from an army officer to his wife, and the whole system of

care packages was incredibly efficient. They were getting, you know, he could say, we're running out of cake. We really, really want some strawberry jam. And also, could you send my boots, the really comfy ones, they're by the door. That would be great. And they did it. And they did it. Yeah. Well, so when my mother, I mean, this is how the desert and the sea starts out. And there's a scene where my mother says on the phone, can we send you a care package? And I thought, especially because at that point, I was being held on the water on a ship, that the idea of getting a package to me was completely impossible and completely sort of idealistic. I mean, it almost made me cry to think about that. But actually, she had asked a few

people and it didn't seem too impossible. So she thought that they could get something close to me. At that point, I don't think she knew I was on a ship. Because at the end of the day, it's just bribes you're talking about. It's bribes and it's knowing which middlemen to give it to. Who to pay off, right. So she could have started with an NGO and they could have gotten close to somebody in the Klan and who could have gotten close to the pirates. It would not have been impossible. Yeah, yeah.

But it turned out to be very difficult. Yes. So where are you taken to initially? Where did they hold you after your capture? So when we drove off in that SUV, we wound up in a camp in the bush. So they just drove me off into the bush, which wound up in a camp in the bush. So they just drove me off into the bush, which in Somalia is almost like the desert. It's arid savannah, desert savannah. And when you say a camp, are we talking tents and stuff?

No, not even that. It was really just a dry riverbed and a couple of mattresses. I couldn't see very well, but I knew there were other hostages there because there was a group of guards and it looked like they'd been there for a while. In fact, they'd been camping there for a few weeks. No tents. I think there was one tarp that was sort of leaning against this sort of the side of the riverbed. And yeah, that night I slept under the stars. There was a mattress just sort of waiting for me, which means that somebody had planned it carefully. And I sat down on the mattress and I was a hostage. We need to get a nice mattress for Michael. Put it there. What else do you think Michael would like? Yeah, they had canned tuna and some bread.

That is nice. And at that point, how is your mental state? I was panicking. I was in shock. And I was really, really angry. I mean, I was really pissed off. I was also angry at myself for getting myself into that position, because I knew right away that it was going to be a burden on my family. Yes. And so who were the people that you were thinking of most who were going to be worried about you? Well, easily my mother. i have family in cologne and all my friends in berlin you know and of course it was hardest on my mom but she was the the person we called first yeah it took a week or so of waiting before the pirates wanted to do a

phone call which was extremely stressful for me because i knew that was going to be the first step what's the point of leaving it so long i had have no idea. It's a really good question. So they gave me a phone after a week. But after four days, there was actually a rescue of a couple of other hostages. So Obama ordered a rescue. That took place elsewhere in Somalia? It took place elsewhere, but it's still in central Somalia. And so it was a successful rescue, which means that the nine Somali guards were killed. a successful rescue, which means that the nine Somali guards were killed. And because it was the same region, there were some clan relationships between those guys and the guys in charge of my

kidnapping. So they were upset, and they held it against us. They made a demand of $20 million, which is obviously ridiculous, but they held on to that for a long time, for most of 2012. 20 million? 20 million. Where they got that figure from then? That's a good question. Out of the air. I mean, just wishful thinking.

Did you get any sense that there was any sort of expertise at play? Had they picked up tips and psychological insight over their years of pirating? Well, yes and no. I think they had some ideas about negotiating that were related to the maritime industry and that didn't quite apply to individuals. So I think pirates were used to grabbing something on the ocean and holding it until it was no longer economically viable for the owners to keep it idle in the water. In other words, if you've got a tanker with a lot of oil or some other expensive goods,

words, if you've got a tanker with a lot of oil or some other expensive goods, at some point it makes economic sense to splash out with the insurance policy. And pirates were used to just being stubborn until that happened. But with individuals, it doesn't work that way. You have to have two starting points and work towards the middle. So the pirates could be stubborn, but they weren't going to get any more money from us than they were going to get. They were excited that you were an American because they felt that maybe they could ask more for you. They figured all Americans are millionaires. Right, exactly.

All living the high life. But they knew presumably that they weren't going to get it from the government because American policy is not to supply the... You would think they would know that. They did not. So that was the surprise to me because I believed as a journalist going into the field and just as an American that everybody knows about our policy. And it turns out some of the crucial people in the world don't. Okay.

Which means we hear it on TV all the time from officials in suits. America does not pay ransoms. Yeah, we don't deal with terrorists. We don't deal with— Exactly. Somalis don't watch the same TV shows. So a year and a half into my captivity, one of my guards actually stormed into the room. And he was

legitimately angry, because I think one of the Somali negotiators had just told him that there was going to be no money from Washington. And so he was trying to sort of calm down the guard's expectations. And the guard was really upset to hear that he wasn't going to get as much as he thought. And I'm like, this is a year and a half in, how come you don't know, you know, what everyone on the planet is supposed to know? And he just didn't, he just assumed, America's a rich country, they must pay ransoms, they must want to splash out for their people. And it doesn't work that way. And I tried to explain the rationale to him. I said, well, if we did it, then everybody would keep doing it. And so this is sort of a disincentive for kidnappings.

But of course, in my case, it was not a disincentive because they didn't know about the policy. So that's a big myth, I think, that Americans have, that this hardline policy actually protects us. That in itself does not. Man. So you're on land, you're held on land for how long before you moved to the ship? For about three months we were on land and we were being pursued by surveillance planes.

Oh, really? Okay. So the pirates, I think, got very nervous because they saw planes and drones overhead once I was captured. And how did you know they were surveillance planes? Because they're circling around and... Yeah, because we weren't on commercial flight paths otherwise. And so a week or 10 days into my captivity, a little bit after the phone call, while we were still staying in the same sort of wooded area in the bush, we all heard a very loud, deep airplane roar. And like I said, we'd been out there for more than a week already so we knew that was abnormal even i knew that and i was new to somalia so there was no question that that was

not a jetliner that was not a commercial plane and your heart leaps yeah i was excited um because it circled and i thought well that has to be some sort of american surveillance plane so you think okay they're going to come and rescue me. Yeah, I thought, well, they've got a pretty good idea where I am now. And the pirates were terrified. They all went silent. How long did it take for that burst of optimism to wear off? Oh, I don't know.

I mean, we stayed in that camp for just another few days and then it started to rain. So then we moved. We moved to Hobio. We heard planes again in Hobio, but it was hard for me to tell how well they had pinpointed me and how much they were just sort of looking yeah probably on purpose i don't i don't know what they were thinking but um and so transferring you to this hijacked taiwanese tuna ship yeah the naham three yeah was an effort on

their part to throw off any rescue attempts? Well, yeah, I think so, because they were getting sick of just running from place to place away from surveillance. But I think it was probably also a way to save money, because then there would only need to be one guard team for all the hostages, because they had some Somalis on the ship, and then they had our guard team guarding us on land. I was thrown together with another fisherman called Roli Tambara. Roli was a guy from the Seychelles, and he had already been captive for three months when we met on land. He was there at that first camp, actually. And then at the end of those first few months, they put me and Roli

together on the ship, on the Nahumam three so the two of us met this whole crew of fishermen from east asia mostly from china and the philippines and indonesia how long had they been held at that point oh just a few weeks so they were captured after i was uh they were hijacked somewhere out near the seychelles too and um they had been anchored off hobyo just from the end of March, and we were placed on board in the middle of April 2012. So Roley, he is sort of 15 years older than you or something? Oh, something like that.

He was 69 or 70 when I met him. Yeah. You're quite a tall fellow. Yeah, he's really short. Yeah. And he's a little guy, and you immediately formed a companionship yeah no the role is terrific and it was really good to have somebody to get to know like that in those first few weeks because um first of all i had somebody to talk to yeah he spoke english

did he he spoke english yeah his native language is basically a french creole from the seychelles um so he spoke english in this sort of slightly French accent. Really, really a wonderful guy, and a good sense of humor. How was he dealing with the experience? Like a trooper. I mean, he, in some sense, he taught me how to be a hostage, because he'd been at it for a few months. And so he knew how to get around the Somalis in some way and knew how to deal with them. I was a little more, since I was so angry, I was a little more forthright and pointed with the Somalis, and sometimes that pissed them off. So he would say,

Michael, don't make them angry. Don't make them angry. There's another phrase that keeps popping up in the book in a way that suggests it echoed around your head after you heard it soon after your capture. What was that phrase? Oh, well, so that was from my second day when we got driven into Hobyo. There was a Somali who could speak English, a translator who said, as if I had done something wrong, he said, you have made a mistake,

but it's okay, mistakes are human. And I thought, you know, screw off. What kind of a mistake did I make from your point of view? I'm captured now. You know, you're going to profit from it. I haven't made a mistake. But he was trying to make it out like I had committed a crime or that I was a spy or something and I deserved to be captured. He was trying to lay some sort of guilt trip on me. I'm like, dude, the only mistake I made was coming here.

And so that started to echo in my mind. The longer I was there of course the more of a horrible mistake it seemed whenever the phrase pops up in the book it's like you're being tormented by that it seems such a strange thing to say and also nightmarish in the first hours after your capture to hear that yeah exactly so apart from not pissing off the guards too much what else was it that roly taught you well he taught me the Somali word for piss, for example. And that's how you requested a run to the bathroom and things like that. Yeah, okay. Practical stuff.

Practical stuff. And how did people communicate on the boat with that mix of nationalities? Yeah, so they couldn't even talk to each other. That's the interesting thing. But they had to develop their own pigeon. And they spoke a mix of Chinese and English, which was something we had to learn too. You know, we had a word for food, a word for pirate, a word for crazy, a word for a lot and very little, and so on. And we had to learn that if

we wanted to talk to the rest of the crew. Only five of the 28 men on board spoke English. They were the Filipinos. Everybody else was from Southeast Asia or China, and they spoke something else. And the Cambodians couldn't speak to the Chinese, and the Vietnamese couldn't speak to anyone else either. So they all had to communicate using this pigeon. And it worked pretty well, but the nationalities didn't always get along. There were fistfights on board sometimes. Oh, really? Yeah.

Between the hostages? Yeah, among the hostages because everybody was pissed off. Everybody was angry and nobody could express it towards the Somalis. Yeah, yeah. So it sort of moved back and forth among the hostages. The pirates, meanwhile, are munching away on cut. Yeah. It was their drug of choice.

So that's chewing on leaves. Yeah, actually the stem, but it's a leafy thing, a bit like coca leaf. Okay. And if you chew the stem, you get high. What, like a speedy high or a mellow?

It's technically a narcotic, but you get a speedy high for a little while and then you crash and you sleep and you wake up depressed. Okay. Yeah. Were you tempted to have a little bit of cut? Thank you very much.

Yeah. Take the edge off. They offered it to me all the time. I didn't take it all the time because I didn't want to get addicted. But every now and then I had a couple of stems and it made me feel better for an hour. I mean, it really did dissipate your depression. And that's what the Somalis said. They said, Michael, take some cut.

All your troubles will go away. I said, have you guys looked outside? You know, just look around at your own country. Cot does not make your troubles go away. It just makes you feel better, you know. These guys needed a whole pile of it every afternoon to get as high as they wanted to get just to keep up their addiction. Once you really get addicted, your productivity goes out the window because you have to sit there and munch like a cow for hours. Who's paying for that then? That's coming out of their wages, isn't it? Yeah, that came out of their wages. So they kept careful track of that

in notebooks. You know, the pirate bosses knew exactly how many days they were working and exactly that many days they were getting loads of cut. So that was all going to be deducted at the end, supposedly. So it's always good to have armed men on drugs. Isn't that great? Yeah. Around you every day. Yeah.

And, I mean, were there times when they did just get jangly and trigger happy and things happened? Yeah, definitely. Sometimes at the peak of getting high, they would get belligerent with each other. And they would fight or yell. Not all the time, you know, most of the time, they just got loud. And they chattered a lot. And that was annoying enough to me, because I prefer just to sit in the corner quietly with my own thoughts. But every afternoon after the cut delivery, I knew that sort of peace was over. Yeah, sometimes they brandished their guns at each other and flipped off the safeties and, oh God, don't start shooting in this concrete room, you know.

So where were you? Where did you spend most of your time when you were on that boat? We spent most of the time on the work deck. So there was a square deck kind of forward on the ship ahead of the bridge. And that's where most of the men slept. And it was the sort of sunbeaten deck. And we had to find of sun-beaten deck. And we had to find a place to sit there and just while away the yacht. So it's like being a backpacker on a ferry from Petrasta. Yeah, a lot like that, except you don't go anywhere. Yeah, yeah. And we could fish over the side.

We had hand lines, so we could catch fish. We were probably anchored over a coral reef. So the fish were very interesting. And the fish tasted really good. But that was the only sort of diversion. It wasn't the only diversion. We could also make cards out of cigarette cartons and play card games, and there was a DVD player, so we could watch cartoons and movies

and things like that. But eventually there was a fight over the DVD player, and somebody threw it into the ocean. Oh, come on, mate. What, one of the other hostages? Yeah, one of the hostages did it. I think by that point the DVD player had broken, but there were fights over what to watch.

Right, oh, my God. Oh, yeah. Yeah, because it's hard enough choosing a movie to watch with your friends. Yeah. That can go on for a long time sometimes. Exactly. The Chinese guys liked to listen to sort of Chinese karaoke, and everyone else hated that,

but there was always like an hour after breakfast where they played karaoke, and they sort of sang along. Nobody else knew the songs. Uh-huh. You're a music fan, right? Yeah, of course. Yeah. And so how important was music for you during that whole experience? Did you sing to yourself or anything like that? That's really interesting. Of course, I had songs going through my head a lot. They just do anyway.

But one song that kept recurring was All Along the Watchtower. You know, the first line is, there must be some kind of way out of here. So it's about freedom. But it's also, once I read the Bible, I realized it's also based on a verse of Isaiah. So the imagery comes straight from the Old Testament. Who wrote that song originally? Dylan wrote it. Oh, that is Dylan. Yeah, it's also based on a verse of Isaiah. So the imagery comes straight from the Old Testament. Who wrote that song originally? Dylan wrote it. Oh, that is Dylan.

Yeah, it's a Dylan song. And it's a very mellow sort of folk song, the way he wrote it first. And then Hendrix recorded it the way he did. And then Dylan did it electric almost all the time afterwards on stage. He really admired Hendrix's version. Yeah. And in its electric version, it has this really apocalyptic sound, which I think was irresistible to Dylan. Anyway,

that song stayed with me. And once I realized the actual source for it, which was, it's about a prophecy of the decline of Babylon. It's about the end of an unjust worldly power. And there's lots of imagery in the rest of Isaiah about the destruction of Babylon and how the city would belong to lizards and owls or dragons and owls. And I thought, well, that's a pretty good description of Somalia right now.

I mean, Dylan and Hendrix would have liked to imagine, I think, the Western world and the U. to imagine, I think, you know, the Western world and the US government as a sort of Babylon or the music industry, these establishments. But I was in a very different sort of power structure. And to me, it was interesting to think about the pirate gang itself as a sort of Babylonian power. Not that they were ever so well established. But being in Somalia like that was topsy-turvy. Everything was sort of turned on its head. Would you hear Western stuff on the radio every now and again?

No, they listened to the radio and they heard their own folk songs. So I heard a lot of Somali pop music. Is it good? Sorry, a lot of Somali folk music. The folk music is actually really interesting. In fact, there's one song by Kainan, who's Somali, called When the Lion Learns to Speak. And I think Kainan is also a Saad, so I think he comes from the same clan

as these pirates. And one of the songs that came around on their radios was the original of that song. So the folk song that Kainan took it from, which has the sort of same call and response and the same tunes. Ranta! Adiga la wahalaha Hey, hey, until the lion learns to speak The tales of hunting will be weak My poetry hails within the streets My poetry fails to be discreet It travels across the earth and seas From Somalia to the West Indies

It knows no boundaries, no cheese It studied in parts of Greece Ranta! Adiga la wahalaha How quickly did you start thinking about escape? Within the first 10 days, I think. Yeah. And what sort of scenarios were you imagining? Well, once we had moved to one particular camp, I noticed that there was a trail out in the direction of where we went to pee. So I imagined doing that at some hour of the morning. But then I tried to imagine where I would go. And it was

difficult to see how things would go from there. I think my best chance would have been either to happen across a nomad hut or somehow discover a cross-country truck. But I didn't know where any of those things were. And in the meantime, Somalis are not bad trackers. So my chances didn't seem too good. But seeing something as possible helped my mood a bit, and it gave my mind something to work on. That was my state of mind throughout.

I was always looking for a puzzle like that to work on but your first serious escape attempt was was off the ship i mean once once they placed me on the ship i'm a surfer so i don't think any of the somalis knew that but once they placed me on the ship i was thinking about swimming i was thinking about jumping off could you see the land from where you were yeah even without my glasses i mean we could see the sort of jumble of buildings that marked out sort of Hobyo on the shore. So we were a mile or so off, which is swimmable. And the weather was pretty good most of the time. When the monsoon started in the summer in 2012, it got very choppy, so it was less swimmable.

But some days were really calm. But late in the summer, after I'd been thinking about this over and over, the ship, which had started to deteriorate, lost its anchor chain. So the anchor chain actually broke one afternoon. And we all heard it. The ship started moving. It started sort of spinning in this really strong current that moved north along the shore. And the rest of the crew hustled to try and get the ship under control. They had to get the engine going, but the engine didn't sound very good. And by then,

the U.S. military certainly knew where I was. There had been drones, and there had been a particular twin-engine plane that came with regularity. And about 20 minutes after that anchor chain broke, that twin-engine plane was circling around us to come and look. So that meant that it could respond from not very far away, which meant to me that maybe there was an aircraft carrier nearby. In any case, it meant that the military knew where I was. And that night when the ship was sort of trundling along the shore in the dark. We were being observed. I mean, there was no way that they were not going to watch where the American hostage was going.

And I thought, well, this is my chance, first of all, to get off before the pirates take us on shore. And also I thought, they're watching. This is not a bad chance to sort of precipitate a rescue. So I found an excuse to go downstairs and pretend to get some toilet paper. And when I saw my moment, I kicked off my sandals and I jumped into the water. From one of the lower decks?

Well, from the deck that we were on. Oh, okay. Still 20 feet above the water or so. But that was a spectacular swim. It was not just a good little bit of exercise, but it was an emotional release. I'd been dreaming about and fantasizing about all summer, you know. Yeah. And the water was warm.

You know, it was dark, but it was salty. I felt very buoyant. You could float in the Indian Ocean pretty well. Yeah, but when I jumped, I was afraid of getting shot, obviously. And so I... Even though you would have been thinking, they don't want to kill me because they still want the money right but they might be startled into shooting me they might have orders to shoot me if i try to get away so i didn't know what was going to happen and i i counted on getting shot at anyway and so i looked at which way the current was going which way the

swell was moving and i made sure to swim away from the ship in that direction so I would get away quickly. And it worked astonishingly well. I mean, I got away from the ship really quickly because it was also moving forward. And I didn't think it was going to keep moving forward. I didn't think it was going to turn around. I thought it was going to keep moving forward because the engine didn't sound too good. So I didn't think the ship was in very good condition. I didn't expect the pilot to do something in between, which is he stalled the engine and let the ship come back on that same swell that I had swum away on. So while I was floating there in the dark, the ship actually started coming back towards me,

I mean, actually tilting. And it was coming at me a little bit faster than I would be able to swim. So suddenly you're imagining getting keelhauled. Keelhauled by a ship that was covered in barnacles. So it could have been lethal. Sliced up. Yeah. I mean, the other hostages, they also panicked.

And so they were ready with a life preserver tied to a rope. And they threw that out to me. And were you preparing your excuse at that point? I was, yeah. So I didn't have anything prepared. I thought that I was either going to get rescued or die. I didn't want to go back on land again. And I only had an excuse for my behavior when I was getting dragged up the side of the ship.

Yeah, and what did you say? I slipped. No, I said, okay. So a couple of months earlier, the pirates had taken me and Rolly on shore and threatened us with all kinds of florid threats. And one of the things they threatened to do with me was sell me to Al-Shabaab. And so it was an easy assumption that we were going to go back on land after the anchor chain broke. So I said, I didn't want to go get sold to Al-Shabaab. I didn't want to go on land and see those motherfuckers again.

So I panicked. And that was a very believable story to the pirates. And in fact, they switched. My guard team switched. So I was then brought on land, which was horrifying to me. But I was then in the hands of a different wing of the pirate gang, basically. And they tried to be nice to me. They tried not to freak me out.

Oh, right. Okay. Yeah. So bad in that your time on the boat was at an end. Exactly. And all of a sudden I was in solitary confinement, but I was with guys who tried not to be threatening. Had you been separated from Roley by that point? Yeah. Roley remained on the boat. So once they took me off, we were separated. Right. So that was bad as well. That was bad. So by the time you get back to land, you're no longer on the boat. What's that, about a year of captivity?

About nine months. I think I was on the ship for five, and I had been on land for three. So more like eight months. And then, yeah, I got moved to land in the fall of 2012. Did you see Raleigh again? Never. You've seen him since? Seen him since in Freedom, but not in Somalia.

Right, okay. What was your mental state when you were back on land after having been on the Naham 3? Well, then I was panicking. I was upset. But I was also oddly hopeful, partly because I listened to what the pirates said. But they tried to make it out like I was going to go free sometime soon.

They said, 10 days, you're going to go free. And they were going to take me to the Galkayo airport or something like that. And one of them told me that in secret. And then the story changed. But we wound up actually driving to Galkayo. So I knew once we had settled that we were in Galkayo when they were actually trying to tell me that i was in haradere um which is a totally different town um but i knew we were

in gaokaio because i could hear the planes landing at the same airport where i had seen my partner ash went off but it turned out to be a very long time before i went free were you there until your release yeah oh my. So that's two and a half years? No, a little under two years, I think. Okay. Long enough. Long enough. What was the routine like day on day there? Very slow. They put me to bed around sundown and let me wake up around sun up. So basically between those two calls to prayer, I was supposed to be under my mosquito tent. Where did you get hold of the Bible?

Oh, that was only on the ship. So the Filipinos who were Christian, they gave us a couple of Bibles on the ship. And so that was reading material. I read the Bible twice. That's when the Dylan song was going through my head. Sure, yeah. Had you read it hitherto? Yeah. I mean, I had been a devout Catholic boy, so I knew the Bible, but it was a good reintroduction to some of the stories. And at that point, I was so desperate, and I was interested in somehow learning to die.

And I was really looking for something solid to hang on to in the Bible, and it was remarkable how vague the Bible could be about death when you're really looking for information. So at first, I found it frustrating. Learning to die because you feared you would be killed or because you were considering killing yourself? A little of both. But I think on the ship, it was more, I thought I was going to have to face death. So I wanted to do it in some way that could benefit somebody else. And, yeah, no, we all know the principles of that. I was looking for a little something more in the Bible.

And it's there, but it's there in poetry. I mean, it's there. If you read it like fundamentalists do, it's really hard to glean something real. Yeah, you can't be too literal. No. It's like Bob Dylan. Yeah, you can't be too literal. No. It's like Bob Dylan. Yeah, it's a lot like Bob Dylan. There was also a cat that was there for a little while.

Yes, I got a cat sometime, I think, in the fall of 2013, simply because I heard it cry. It was a kitten somewhere in the corner, and the mother had gone off somewhere, and it sounded like the kitten was hungry, so I asked one of the pirates to bring it to me. And they thought it was bizarre that I was feeling at all affectionate towards a cat, because to them cats were just vermin, you know, they were like rats.

Okay, is that not, keeping pets is not part of the culture? No, they're not sentimental like that at all. They might, you know, a larger dog or something like that, but a cat was sort of useless to a Somali. But for me it was company. Of course. And the cat liked me because I gave it tuna. I had canned tuna and some powdered milk. And so I fed the cat.

And the cat was dirty and flea-ridden, but I gave it a shower. It went from sort of dull orange to very bright peach. And because he was orange and I found him around Halloween, I named him Jack. But then after a week or so, I realized he wasn't even a boy, so I renamed him Julianne. Like Julianne Moore. Like Julianne Moore under the redhead. Sure. Yeah, that must have been hugely comforting.

Had you by that time had your epiphany about hope and how to treat hope? Yeah, I had probably started that discipline on myself by late 2013. I started thinking those terms after the first year was over. And actually what the kitten did was open up my emotions a little bit, which was also dangerous. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you talk about hope, you liken it to heroin for a hostage. out in 10 days. And when I was stupid enough to believe them, I sort of lived on this sort of cloud of hope for a few days. And then something went wrong, and I didn't go free. And I was

devastated and in worse emotional shape than I had been before, which means that hope and despair formed this cycle. In the book, I describe it as a breaking wheel. And it was a breaking wheel that you had to detach yourself from. So I learned to sort of detach myself from it entirely, which meant, in practice, living without hope. I don't know if that's too bleak a way to put it, though, because obviously I had also at some point, maybe some point later, but at some point I made a conscious decision to live rather than struggling with that question, whether to kill myself every

day. And so making that conscious decision to live, even if you're just living in the moment and not thinking too hard about the future, that's also a hopeful thing. But the point is, you're not living for hope. Hope is not the main motor that's keeping you going. And so practically speaking, that is curtailing thoughts of the future and going home and your loved ones. Right. So if you're living in the future, especially in a situation like that, you're living in a very happy place. But you're not really living in a happy place because you're living in a dirty prison house. So you have to sort of moderate that stuff. So what takes the place of that,

of hope? And how do you stop it becoming despair and depression? Well, precisely that way. I mean, so like I said, the flip side of hope is despair. And both of them are just emotional ways of living for the future. So they're both forms of uncertainty. So despair is uncertainty too. You might think it's more realistic. It is not. It's just as unrealistic as hope because you're living in the future and not in the present. So getting yourself away from that cycle, getting yourself away from those particular emotions about the future was the way to live in the present

without a terrible swing of emotion one way or the other. you also at a certain point were able to exercise your guards allowed you to practice yoga yeah that started in that house that i called the pirate villa um i had a great big bedroom but with a filthy floor uh so there's plenty of room but but I couldn't do anything. But I probably wouldn't have been able to jog around it either. So I asked for a mat so I could do yoga. And they brought me a mat. But I wanted to do the yoga when nobody was watching. But probably because I jumped off the ship, they were not going to let me get through the day without somebody watching. So I just said, screw it, I'll just do yoga. And then all of a sudden, all these Somali faces came around to look at me through the doorway and they thought it was hilarious they'd never seen anything like that they don't do anything like that no okay no well

they did then they came in and sort of imitated me for at first they were making fun of me and then they started to do their own sort of uh calisthenics that some of them must have learned in the military on the somali military which looked like very dangerous things to do. But a few of them were serious about trying to keep in shape, because here the hostage was doing his exercises, and here they were going to waste in the prison compound, right? Chewing on their cot. Chewing on their cot. They couldn't come and go. There was somebody else with the keys who came and went. So we were all locked inside in that sense. And so a few of them kept doing yoga. They kept coming in and imitating my postures.

And after a while, I gave them pointers. So I became maybe the first Westerner to teach yoga to Somali pirates. Okay. Potential for exercise DVD there. Yeah. You can circulate ransomware. There you go. Was there any opportunity for humor at all in your during the experience?

Yeah. I mean, black humor. Yeah. Were you able to form any kind of relationship with any of the guards? Were you able to share a joke with them at all? Yeah, some of the guards actually had a good sense of humor. Some of them were very clever. One guy in particular named Boschko. I got along with him pretty well, but only on a certain level, only when we talked about other things. If I misbehaved, then he was quick to grab for his gun.

He shook a pistol in my face once. So we still had these sort of roles to play. But he was actually fun to talk to once we got off the topic of what was going on. Was it him that you had the discussion with about? About Islam. Islam, right? Exactly. Because he was one of the more devout guards. Yeah.

And I said, look, Bashko, you're a Muslim, but you're also a thief. And he knew exactly what I was talking about. And did it irritate him to be confronted with that hypocrisy? Well, at first he laughed, as if I didn't understand or wasn't going to understand. And then he gave me a few excuses here and there. But finally he came around to this justification, which was that I was an infidel. You know, he said in the Koran, it says to struggle with the infidel. And because we're not al-Shabaab, we're not going to just shoot you for being an infidel.

But we do think that stealing from an infidel isn't theft. And Jihadi 101, how do you characterize an infidel? Someone who's a not Muslim. Yeah. Yeah. That simple as that? As simple as that. Okay.

Yeah. So that gave me a lot to think about. And that's one important thread in the desert in the sea i mean that's why it has the the title has that religious dimension too so that must have fed your sense of being infuriated with these people as well just the way they justify it to themselves exactly and the first time i noticed them praying around me i was just incensed you know just the idea that they could act so pious. And then when I realized what their actual justification was, it was also bad. And then it got even worse when, let's say Ramadan came around, and they didn't want to cook for me. I'm like, no, no, hold on.

I'm not a Muslim. And you've already held that against me. But I'm not going to not eat, just because you're Muslim. So I got I put up a stink. And the boss eventually found someone to cook for me. Yeah. During Ramadan. Meanwhile, how often are the hostage negotiation phone calls ransom negotiations taking place? They probably happened every month or so, but without me. So I did get on the phone with my mom a few times in the first year. But at some point, they decided to not put me on the phone with my mother, probably to punish her, probably to pressure my family. So that really slowed down negotiations. Not that they

sped up any time I was on the phone. I think they always hoped that I would get on the phone and yell and hope that somebody would actually splash out with a lot of money. Were you able to keep it together on the calls with your mother? Yeah, no. I mean, I never yelled and said, oh, my God, get me out of here. Right. I said, if the negotiations aren't working, send in the SEALs. That was more along the lines of what I said. I actually did say that once in German.

Uh-huh. And your mom had a nerve of steel. She did, yeah. She didn't disagree with me when I said that. I mean, the idea of a rescue didn't occur to me until it actually did happen to the other hostages. But once it had happened, and I knew the story, I was hopeful. And why wouldn't you be just going sending the seals right now? Because it might be a messy operation that would end with you. Yeah, there's always a

chance you can die. Yeah, okay, for sure. But the longer it dragged on, the more I thought, well, this is going to have to end in violence, because it's not going to end any other way. So. You talk about your mum in the book, obviously, from a practical point of view, because she's dealing with your captors. Your dad's no longer alive at that point. That's right. He died when you were... When I was 12. Right. And as far as you were aware, he had had a heart attack. Right. For a long time, that was the story. And then I did some actual research and realized that he committed suicide. And you found that out only a year or so before you went out to Somalia? Yeah, about a year and a half. Yeah. Yeah. So were you turning that over in your head, the implications of that while you were out there?

Absolutely. Yeah. But in a sense, it made a decision to sort of check out that much more difficult. So in other words, I had bad days where the only thing that would take me out of that idea was the realization that it had already happened to my mother. So in other words, she didn't need two people leaving her life by suicide. So in some cases, it was just that cold logic that kept me away from it. So it was a good thing I knew about it. On the other hand, I was, you know, I thought about him quite a bit. Yeah, yeah.

That would be hard in civilian life, turning that over. Yeah, in some sense, I'm glad I wasn't raised with that awareness. I think that's a stigma that you sort of impose on yourself once you know about it, you know. So you're thinking about all of that. A pivotal moment as far as your ability to cope mentally with the situation seems to be your decision to forgive your captors. That's true, yeah. It was the spring of 2014. And by that time I had a radio.

I was listening to the radio every day. And on that particular morning I listened to the Vatican radio. And I heard the Pope give a homily about mercy. radio, and I heard the Pope give a homily about mercy. You know, I was also feeling guilty about being kidnapped and being in this situation and putting my family through this horrible thing. And he said something just very eloquent about being aware of all your shortcomings and all your sins at night. And he said, at night we see all our sins like all the stars, you know, and then in the morning the sun rises and banishes the stars with its glory. And he said, the mercy of God is like that. And well, that was very simple. And that was very eloquent to someone in my situation. And, you know, the idea was to pass on that

forgiveness and apply it to people in your own life. And once I made a conscious decision to do that, all those feelings of wanting to kill my guards um and all those questions of whether to kill myself in the morning you know should i do it today or should i wait whether to pick up a kalashnikov off the floor those sort of went away which you occasionally got the opportunity to do and the guards would leave them lying around easily yeah i could have done it yeah and so you would run through scenarios in your mind where you're going okay it was a moral decision should i do it and even though it's suicidal um and i'm glad i didn't but but it took that conscious decision to forgive them for those sort of impulses to to ameliorate and then a weight had been lifted yeah yeah easily it was a form of inner freedom that's amazing and then suddenly the release when it came came very quickly out of the blue

out of nowhere as far as i was concerned i mean it was a it was sort of an arduous process for my mom and the negotiator at home but because there hasn't been much movement on the negotiations they hadn't come down to like some reasonable number really no they came down precipitously and it kind of took my mother by surprise so in in other words, the Somalis blinked and they came down to a level that my mom and the negotiators were offering. And did you get a sense of why they suddenly changed their demand? It's still not clear,

but I know that from my point of view, one of the guards, Bosco, the guards were obviously sick of watching me and they wanted to get on with their lives. And they were, I think, the bosses had quit paying them pocket money. So they were ready to go on strike. So it's possible that there was pressure on the bosses from below. Right. Cut your losses, just take what you can get. Do it. Yeah. But on the very last day, even when they said I was going free, I thought, oh, no, you know, they've sold me to another gang. And I didn't believe I was going free until I was practically back at the airport.

Once they took me to the airport where I had seen Ashwin off, you know, two and a half years before, there was a Cessna waiting. the book is great for for so many reasons but also because you talk about the process of coming home you know the temptation i would imagine is to think, okay, I'm out, so there you go, there's your happy ending. Right. But of course, the process of reintegrating and coming back home and dealing with everything that's happened to you is going to be probably as hard as the experience itself.

No, not as hard, but it still took a long time. I mean, you don't know what you're in for. And when I first realized I was going free, I wasn't prepared. I was so used to being a hostage, I didn't know how to live like an individual in the West. So I had to relearn some of that. that. But the, you know, perhaps fortunately, my body was in such bad shape that I couldn't move around a lot and do all that stuff that you might want to do, even if I'd wanted to. So my body sort of forced me to take it easy. Yeah. One of the things that you talk about in the book that happened to you after your release was the opportunity that you got to go to the Seychelles,

was it? Yeah, exactly. And hook up with Roly again, your fellow hostage. Right, because while we were sitting there together on the Naham 3 on the ship, Roly told me about this mango tree near his house where he liked to have beer when he was on shore and not out fishing. And, you know, there was a liquor store down the road or something where they got their beers. And I said, Roly, if we ever get out of here, I want to have a beer with you under the mango tree. And I was in touch with his family after I got out, who had accounts on social media and that kind of thing. And we arranged a visit without telling Rolly. So I, after a year, year and a half or so, I went down to the Seychelles from Berlin and went to find Rolly with the help of his daughter, and he wasn't expecting me.

And so they led me up to his place, and he was just sitting there on the porch, you know, saying something cranky. And he saw me, and he goes, hey, Michael! And almost immediately that same day, we had a beer under the mango tree. That's wonderful, man. Wait, this is an advert for Squarespace.

Every time I visit your website, I see success. Yes, success. The way that you look at the world makes the world want to say yes. It looks very professional. I love browsing your videos and pics and I don't want to stop. And I'd like to access your members area and spend in your shop. These are the kinds of comments people will say about your website if you build it with Squarespace. Just visit squarespace.com slash buxton for a free trial.

And when you're ready to launch, because you will want to launch, use the offer code BUXTON to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So put the smile of success on your face with Squarespace! Yes. Continue. Hey, how you doing listeners? Michael Scott Moore there. Really good to meet Michael.

And afterwards he said to me, oh, I haven't really talked to anyone about that music stuff the Bob Dylan and how important that was to me so I appreciate that he's quite a big music fan we had a little chat about music that we liked Bowie etc so that's why I brought it up during the conversation I'd imagine that there were lots of aspects to the story that you might be curious about that we didn't cover. I do recommend the book. There's also a good audiobook version of it, The Desert and the Sea. I'll put a link in the description of the podcast for you. You're welcome, that's fine. So look, Rosie News. Can you hear this? I don't know if you can hear, but that's the retractable lead that Rosie is currently tethered to, and she's straining at it. She would love to be bouncing off into the undergrowth in search of critters to terrorize, but that is exactly the kind of behavior that last week, is exactly the kind of behaviour that last week, more or less at this time, got her in terrible trouble.

We were walking through an unfamiliar field and I think I even said, should we change things up, Rosie? Let's walk through this unfamiliar field. She's looking at me now like, oh, don't even remind me. And we walked through the unfamiliar field, Rosie zipped up to the top of it and as I was crossing the middle just in front of me a rabbit or a big hare was big popped up from the long grass looked round at me and then scarpered up the hill towards Rosie who couldn't believe her luck because she loves to chase other animals, even if they're much bigger and much faster than her, which is usually the case. And she's almost always outrun. So off they go. The rabbit zips off over the brow of the hill, out of sight. And Rosie also

disappears in hot pursuit, yipping away. And I called after Rosie come on Rosie leave the rabbit alone let's get home but as usual I was totally ignored by Rose I didn't panic though because Rosie's good at coming home and when I got back to the house she was there tapping at the window and I let her in and we sat down for lunch, me and the rest of the family. Oh, Rosie, look, Helen Partridge. But while we were eating, Rosie was acting a little bit weird. She kept on getting up and rushing around and chasing her tail, it looked like. And eventually she jumped up on the lap of my wife.

My wife. And so she was saying, oh, Rosie, what's up with you? And she was thinking maybe she got some seeds in her paw, like between her toes. That's what she did once. We went out in the summertime and Rosie came back with loads of bits of chaff, I suppose, from a field that irritated her paws and it was driving her nuts. And it took us ages to extract them all from between her toes. So we thought maybe that's what she'd done. And we sat down on the sofa to inspect her paws. But upon lying her on her back and raising her front legs,

we saw that there was a terrible cut across poor Rosie's belly. And she had evidently chased this rabbit through some barbed wire or something like that and slashed open her poor doggy stomach. Luckily, it wasn't too deep a wound, but she had peeled back a big section of her skin so that a sort of postcard-sized area of muscle and flesh was exposed underneath. It was really gnarly. That's why I gave you the trigger warning at the top of the podcast there. Anyway, we took her off to the vet and she had to go under anaesthetic to be sewn up by the lovely vet. And Rosie returned with a course of antibiotics to prevent infection and a big old plastic cone that she was supposed to wear around her neck

to stop her worrying away at the stitches. Unfortunately, Rosie doesn't like the cone. I don't think... Who would like the cone? No living creature would ever really want a cone around their neck, preventing them from living life to its fullest. You know, whether that's worrying away some stitches on your belly, or licking your genitals, or one of the other things that makes life fun. It must be absolutely bad to have a big plastic cone around your neck.

And Rosie made that very clear immediately. It seemed to me that she was almost deliberately bumping into things and then looking at us as if to say, you see, what the fuck am I supposed to do with this shit around my fucking neck? I mean, what are you doing? And we'd say, well, Rose, this is why you shouldn't go running off. And then she'd just go and stand in the corner and stare at the wall. It was bad though, because it's no fun to see someone you love in distress like that,

especially if they are unable to articulate what they're going through, you know. Anyway, I'm glad to say that she is recovering very well. And within a few days, she was bouncing around again and smiling and excited to go outside. But now, for the time being at least, we've got to keep her on the leash. When this wound is 100% healed, I don't know maybe she can go running around again it feels a bit mean to stop her from going where she wants out here in the middle of nowhere but at the same time she's clearly not very sensible anyway there's more rosy news than you need before I go I'd just like to give a short plug related to Matt Lamont, who

edits this podcast from time to time. He's been doing some directing recently on a TV show called The Ministry of Justice, made by the fellows from the award-winning hidden camera and political satire show The Revolution Will Be Televised. Their new programme, The Ministry of Justice, sees them both tackling Britain's drug problem in their own special way and establishing the UK's first designated mugging zone as well as many other similar sort of pranks and stunts. I'm sure they don't like the word pranks or stunts,

but there you go. If you're going to hide cameras and be weird with people, the words prank and stunt will be deployed. The Ministry of Justice begins this week, Channel 4, Friday the 30th of November at 11pm. That's it for this week. Rosie, let's head back. Come on, Scarchest. Thanks very much indeed

once again to Michael Scott Moore and to his publishers for helping us arrange the meeting. Thank you very much indeed to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for production support. Thanks, Seamus. Much appreciated. Till next time, take extremely good care, especially if you're interviewing pirates. I love you. Bye! Please like and subscribe. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat with me thumbs up. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat with me thumbs up. Like and subscribe.

Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Please like and subscribe. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat with me thumbs up. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat, wear me a thumbs up. Give me a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat, wear me a thumbs up. Like and subscribe.

Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Give me a smile and a thumbs up. Give me a smile and a thumbs up. Give me a smile and a thumbs up. Give me a smile and a thumbs up. ស្រូវានប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប� Thank you.