I’m hardly going to turn down the offer to review a book, am I? So: straight off the bat, The Swiss Army Knife Book: 63 Outdoor Projects by Felix Immler was sent to me for free in exchange for an honest review.

Content note: there is a gif near the end of this post.

Initially, I was meant to get the book before our summer holidays, but it disappeared into the Royal Mail ether. Aimee from The Quarto Group very kindly sent me another copy, which, because we moved house in the meantime, ended up languishing at the post office for a while before we were notified. But finally, finally, I had it in my hot little hands.
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My first thought was that this is the kind of book I might give as a gift - perhaps to friends with kids who enjoy spending time outside and might want to get their teeth into a few projects when camping or on a day out in the woods. It’s a hardback, with a tactile, cardboardy cover and a nice bit of utilitarian graphic design on the front.

My second thought was, "Uh, I don’t think my Swiss Army Knife is the right one."

Fortunately, Dan had one of those super duper practical Swiss Army knives kicking around. You know the ones - they’re too heavy and bulky to carry with you, so they end up in a drawer with some bits of stationery, a few badges and old buttons, a tape measure from a Christmas cracker and the jar of elastic bands you keep saving but never use. (Not this one, unfortunately - read the reviews!)

I leafed through the book, hoping my eye would alight on something I really wanted to try. As well as the 63 projects, there was info about using a knife and about the kinds of natural construction materials available in the woods. The book is packed with lots of colour photos to illustrate each project in its various stages, which should be helpful for anyone planning a bit of bushcraft.

​I noticed, though, that it was Felix Immler himself doing most of the work - and the work looked quite complicated to my inexperienced eye. After a couple of casual rounds of page flipping without success, I wondered if I’d made a mistake offering to review this book. I didn’t feel like I could review it properly without trying at least one project, but a lot of of the projects looked a bit too big or time consuming or complicated - and the ones that didn’t seemed a bit . . . stick-y?

“It’s just a stick!” I exclaimed over the first project - a wooden mallet. Then I turned to the second project - a digging stick. “This is . . . just a stick!” I repeated. Shovel, pickaxe, wood splitter - sticks. Clothes hook? Stick. Table fork and barbecue fork? Sticks. Rolling pin? Definitely a stick.

On the other hand, some projects seemed enormous, like a huge sloping-roof open shelter (first, construct a ladder and a leaf rake…) and a stone oven (“To carry the heavy rocks from the streambed to the camp, I made a hauling mechanism out of two small logs and a sturdy crossbeam”). I wondered, is a pocket knife - even one like Dan’s - really the ideal tool for this kind of thing? If I wanted to make the kind of bench that would require sawing through multiple small saplings or large branches, maybe I'd get a hand saw instead of using a knife.

I treated Dan to a rant. (Lucky Dan!) "Consider the leaf rake," I offered. "Do you really need a leaf rake in the woods?" I’ve never owned a leaf rake, let alone thought about procuring one when camping or picnicking. This is what the author actually says about needing a leaf rake:

Leaves are crucial for all sorts of bushcraft and survival projects, especially for making insulation, padding or sealing in the roofs of shelters. In all of these cases, large quantities of leaves are required. It is therefore worth having a tool that allows you to rake up large quantities of leaves effectively.

OK. "But I can buy a leaf rake for £10," I said, "or borrow one from a neighbour for free, so why spend hours of frustration trying to make one out of twigs and branches and twine?" That odd survivalist undertone of bushcraft doesn’t make much sense with regards to leaf rakes, either. We’ve evolved our tools and tastes for thousands of years until we’ve ended up with what we have now, i.e. a specific rake for leaves. Fine. But if the apocalypse happened tomorrow, I don’t think the majority of people would be specifically concerned about the leaf rake factory ceasing production. If we wanted some leaves off our patch of post-apocalyptic forest floor, or if we wanted to collect them to insulate our dystopic dens, we’d probably go back to simpler solutions, like, I don’t know, using a branch? Or we’d pop into town to loot the abandoned hardware store.

​(Just watch me, now I’ve said this in public, I’ll probably become obsessed with leaf rakes. Look out for my next long distance walk, where I’ll be trying to find a good, lightweight leaf rake to strap to my pack.)

But the main problem I had with the larger projects was this: I don’t have anywhere to try them out. I mean, nicking a couple of sticks from the woods to make a fork is one thing, but building a large stone fireplace (with a wattle-and-daub-style light and heat reflector behind it) is really upping the ante.

To undertake some of these projects you need to find a place with the right materials nearby, a place where you’re allowed to use those materials and where you can spend a decent amount of time. Most of the timber used in these projects is soft, European, forest wood - this is not a book that’s particularly relatable to, say, an Australian environment. Some of the projects use a lot of wood and other natural resources, and I think most people in the UK would be hard-pressed to find a campsite or woodland that would allow them to gather and process that much material. A one night camp is probably not enough time to build a stone oven or a stationary bench - and it’s certainly not enough time to truly appreciate your achievement.

Perhaps I wasn't giving this book a fair chance. I went back one last time to find a project for myself.

Despite everything I’ve just said, I can definitely see the appeal of crafting something from scratch - just for fun, or with a practical purpose in mind. I can also see how doing a bit of bushcraft could really change your view of the world around you. Suddenly, all kinds of things can be purposed and repurposed into tools, the woods become a hardware store, the river becomes your electricity supply.

There are some projects in the book that look like they’d make a fun and productive day of work for my hypothetical outdoorsy-family-with-a-couple-of-kids. Imagine making a three legged stool, sitting on it as you construct a bark ladle or whittle a spoon, building a pot holder to cook your soup over your wood fire, then serving the soup using your ladle or eating it with your spoon. Pretty cool! There are a few projects that would be great to do with kids as a way of learning about early humans, too. (I mean, yes, making a stone or wood knife using . . . a knife you already have . . . seems a bit redundant, but it’d still be quite the learning experience.) Plus, some of these projects look like a lot of fun to attempt, even if the likelihood of success is relatively slim - one that springs to mind is creating a water powered rotary spit for your campfire!

So, what did I end up choosing? I liked the idea of basket weaving (in the end, this fell into the "too time consuming" and "too hard to get the materials" categories), a resin candle (too finicky) and wood gas stove from tin cans (I’m totally planning to try this as an alternative to the drinks can stove, but I wanted to keep in the spirit of the woods rather than using mainly bought materials). In the end I went for the bark spoon or ladle.

Dan and I went for a walk one crisp, frosty morning (I tweeted about it and my tweet ended up in an article on The Guardian’s website!) with the aim of collecting materials. We found a decent ladle-handle stick without too much trouble. We also spotted some bamboo growing beside a pond in a wood, and I took a bit of that on the off chance that it would make a good string substitute. The bark for the scoop, however, was impossible to source. In the book it looks like Immler uses something like silver birch bark from a fallen or previously cut down tree. The only likely tree we saw was standing happily in someone’s front garden - not a prime target for bark harvesting! In the end, I decided I’d try making the ladle with some greaseproof paper. For form, if not for function.

A week later, I set up in the living room, prepared to make a mess inside to avoid the freezing temperatures outdoors. I split one end of the stick (using saw and knife attachments), peeled strips of bamboo from the stalk (fingers), cut and folded my greaseproof paper (scissors attachment) and assembled a ladle. It took me around a quarter of an hour, and I was pretty pleased - especially with the bamboo ‘string’, which worked quite well. I felt quite a sense of satisfaction!

The book says this spoon is good for getting water out of mountain streams (if your cup, hand and water bottle are all out of order, I suppose). The photos show people happily ladling stew from a pot. I didn’t have a mountain stream or stew to hand, so I attempted to ladle some dish water.

As you can see, my implement failed absolutely as a ladle - I should have used something other than paper! - but that’s not the fault of the book. Nor is it really the point of the book. The point is to try something new, to create something with your own hands, a pocket knife and a few bits and pieces. And, of course, to spend a bit more time outside. Now, that? I can relate to.

All in all, I stand by my initial impressions. The Swiss Army Knife Book is a good looking, nice feeling book that would make a fine gift for an outdoorsy person or family that might like to try out a few new things. I'm gifting my copy to Dan's school library in the hopes that some intrepid teenager will make something wonderful from it!

I hope you found this review useful. As noted elsewhere on this site, when given products to review, I review honestly and retain authorial control; I am not interested in publishing promoted content.

Find a river. Follow it. What could be more simple? Olivia Laing’s To the River: A Journey Beneath the Surface is a gentle exploration of the River Ouse in East Sussex, a walk taken one hot summer week. It’s a musing on the meaning of rivers as well as a bit of a history of this area and those who have lived in and loved it, with a particular focus on Virginia Woolf (who lived in the area and drowned in the Ouse). Laing stops along the way to lie in fields of long grass and take dips in the cool water. The UK’s rights of way network means she can follow footpaths for most of the route, including the Ouse Valley Way, a signposted long-distance walk. It’s more a rambling holiday than an exciting adventure. It sounds delightful.

Africa has the Nile, the Congo and the Niger; South America has the Amazon and the Paraná; Asia has the Mekong. But you have to travel a significant way down the list of the world's longest rivers before getting to one that flows through continental Europe: the Danube. In December 1933, Patrick Leigh Fermor set off to walk across Europe to Istanbul. His journey is documented in three books, published in 1977 (A Time of Gifts), 1986 (Between the Woods and the Water) and - unfinished, posthumously - 2013 (The Broken Road). In December 2012, Nick Hunt set off with apparently very little preparation beyond reading Fermor's first two books and setting up a Couchsurfing account to retrace Fermor's steps and find out what had changed in the intervening eighty years. Hunt's book Walking the Woods and the Water, published in 2012, is an account of that journey, often along the Rhine and the Danube, through Holland, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. It’s not only an interesting account of a very long walk, but a great little introduction to contemporary European politics and cultures.

One reason I find microadventures so appealing is that they encourage us to do everyday things in unusual places. I like the idea of taking habitual activities (walking, eating, sleeping) and framing them in new ways (walking the length of a river, eating foraged food, sleeping on top of a hill). By changing the context, these ordinary activities become rather more extraordinary.

After a busy week of travelling, hosting visitors, going to barbecues and organising more travel and social excitement for the rest of the school holidays, Sunday was going to be a day of down time. It helped that the forecast was for heavy rain: perfect weather for curling up with a good book and a bottomless supply of tea.

But technology had other ideas. There were emails to write, blog posts to draft, Twitter feeds to read, photos to edit, cute cat videos to watch . . . I still hadn’t opened my book by lunch time. Something had to be done. It was time for a microadventure!

We made a thermos of tea, packed our new tarp, got wrapped up in our raincoats and headed off to Battle Great Wood. It was tipping down and the carpark was almost empty. Good. The last thing I wanted was a wet dog coming to shake itself off under our tarp! We found a clearing a few metres off one of the paths that wends its way through the wood and hitched the tarp to a pine tree. We weren’t worried about being seen - there are no rules against picnicking in the woods! In no time we had a flying-V set up, a walking pole propping up the middle to give us lots of headroom and the picnic rug spread out underneath to keep us clean and dry. I kicked off my boots and opened my book. Straight away, an inquisitive greyhound sniffed us out, but a whistle from its owners sent it pelting off through the trees. They were the only people we saw in the woods all afternoon.

The rain pecked loudly at the tarp and the wind whooshing in the trees made the weather seem a lot more ferocious than it really was. We, on the other hand, were warm and sheltered. It was exactly the kind of contrast that makes snuggling up by the fire on a squally winter evening so appealing. In fact, it was so distractingly wonderful to be both outside in the rain and perfectly dry that I found it hard to concentrate on my book!

Walking the Woods and the Water: In Patrick Leigh Fermor’s footsteps from the Hook of Holland to the Golden Horn is Nick Hunt’s account of a walking journey through Western Europe. Fermor began his walk from the Netherlands to Istanbul in December 1933; Hunt began his in 2011. I wasn’t far into the book - Hunt was in Germany and it was Christmas. As I read, I reached the point where Hunt sleeps out for the first time, in a small tunnel in a castle wall, hidden beneath a four-star hotel. “The effect was alchemical,” he says. “When I stuck out my head in the light of dawn, having not only survived the night but slept soundly in my hole . . . somehow I belonged in a way that I hadn’t before. Sleeping out produced a sense of enhanced connection with the land, a feeling almost akin to ownership.”

I can relate to that. Walking does this to some extent - and walking the paths of East Sussex over the last few years has both threaded the countryside together in my mind and helped me stitch myself into the landscape. But sleeping in fields and woods, on hills and beaches, seems to open a conduit between self and place so they blur and breathe into each other. Perhaps it is the liminal nature of the experience that creates the possibility of an exchange: slipping between sleep and wakefulness, unsure where dreams begin and end; seeing dusk extend into night, then watching night and dawn creep together across the sky; being cocooned but also startlingly, immediately open to the elements; staying still in a way that’s not quite camping but not quite just resting (so it’s not quite illegal, but it’s also not quite legal).

Under the tarp with our books and cups of tea, boots off, listening to the tapping of rain around us, watching the trees soak into deeper, richer shades of wetness, I felt a stirring of that connectedness. Akin to ownership, yes, but not ownership in the exclusive, proprietorial sense. Rather, it’s a sense of belonging-to-ness that feels like it works in both directions.

The rain did not let up. It was still pouring an hour later, when we got wetter and grottier packing everything away than we did setting it all up. But that’s OK. Actually, it was more than OK, it was fantastic. The whole experience transformed a rainy afternoon of books and tea into something unexpected - something rather more extraordinary.

We spent lots of time with trees in July, as per the challenge, but this outing felt the most adventurous!

When I signed up, I envisaged myself after the eight week course somehow transformed into a writing machine, churning out the stories. If I’m honest, I also imagined myself transported to a writers’ retreat, sitting a room with huge bay windows looking out over a landscaped garden to the hills beyond. Spoiler alert: neither of these things happened.

But my main aim was to develop a creative writing habit, or at least get some words down on paper, and in that respect the course was helpful. It focused on creating characters, which is something I struggle with: I’d happily write atmosphere and scenery all day, which is probably why I’m always writing about walking. We were prompted to use a journal to take notes on a daily basis and there were short exercises drawn from these observations each week. I found it invigorating to be forced to create new characters and scenarios to a tight deadline and I’m leaving the course with half a dozen ideas I’d like to develop.

The highlight, for me, was getting feedback and workshopping ideas with fellow students. I loved doing this in my undergrad years and I have really missed it. There were three points in the course for structured feedback, when each of us submitted a scene, character sketch or story we’d created and then gave feedback on other pieces. The feedback was based on specific questions and there were helpful feedback guidelines for first timers. It’s always interesting to see your writing through new eyes and to find out where your reviewers agree and disagree. I also enjoyed giving feedback, but there you go - I am an editor!

I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the course so much if my partner hadn’t been doing it, too. We were able to discuss things verbally instead of typing up all our responses, we nudged each other into using our journals more, we encouraged each other when we hit stumbling blocks and of course we got to give each other extra feedback. If you’re planning on doing a MOOC, I would really recommend doing it alongside someone else if you can.

While none of the pieces I wrote are ready to go out into the world, I thought I’d share fifteen first lines pulled from eight weeks of exercises and arranged in no particular order.

1. I notice her voice: she sounds mushy, the way old men sound mushy, as though she’s moving her mouth around a spoonful of memory porridge.
   
2. Mrs Baxter, the village shopkeeper and postmistress, was a busybody.
   
3. The rope of their conversation is fraying.
   
4. Fans beat furiously at the dampness, a metallic hum you can block from your ears but not from the base of your skull.
   
5. She holds her knife like a pencil, scribbling furiously into her eggs and toast.
   
6. Ze remembers staring at a hole in the wrangled tin, where a nail or screw had once been, where the rusty weeds hung down.
   
7. Emma said that the best way to a man’s stomach was through his navel, though even she had to admit that sometimes opening up the whole front was easier and more effective.
   
8. I spent the morning inside, sewing, as the weather was atrocious.
   
9. She walks beside me, sometimes, and reminds me how to see that of God in everyone.
   
10. Dorothy had set herself three tasks that day.
    
11. They talk like a weekend newspaper, like a dinner dance, stepping with friendly formality from one subject to the next.
    
12. The ridge road tipped downhill and became a suburban street, lined with pebbledash houses.
    
13. I needn’t have run for the bus.
    
14. Adam remembered outside with skin that thrilled at the smack of rain, a mouth that savoured salt in the heavy heat of summer and lungs that sang when the gates were finally pushed back.
    
15. There are memories that cut Gally’s life into now and before.
    

Many of my favourite books float somewhere in the intersecting areas of a huge Venn diagram comprising YA fantasy, dystopias, post-apocalyptic worlds, old-school feminist sci fi, mythology and contemporary spec fic. I've read a lot of it, but I want to read more!

If you’re an author, please feel free to take these three tips and write me an amazing story. If you're a reader, feel free to leave me a recommendation in the comments.

I like magic, but I read enough sword and sorcery as a teenager to have got it out of my system. I don’t (usually) want to read about magic that is “gifted” to the (un)fortunate few. I want to read about the magic of everyday, magic that is practiced, refined, explored, tinkered with, evolved, corrupted.

I’m not saying a book can’t have a university of magic (tell me about interdepartmental politics and the pressures that acamages face trying to juggle research, publication and teaching) or individuals who teach/learn their magic within a complicated master/apprentice power dynamic (tell me about the psychology of codependency and how the rest of the world reads their relationship).

But what I really want to read about is the magic of the masses: the magic that is hummed to the wind, grown on a balcony, kneaded and baked, danced in a round, played as a sport, walked through city streets, painted on skin or chalked on pavements, spun, woven, sewn or sculpted. I like magic that is, literally, an art or craft.