SOUTH AMERICAN MONSTER HUNT

SOUTH AMERICAN MONSTER HUNT


For Immediate Release: 2007-10-24


On the 14th November 2007, five members of the Centre for Fortean Zoology – the world’s largest organisation dedicated to the search for mystery animals – leave the UK for South America, on their most ambitious expedition yet. They will be searching the remote swamps and jungles of Guyana. They are looking for three elusive, potentially lethal, and hitherto undiscovered animals.

· The giant anaconda
· The didi
· The water tiger

As far as we are aware, this is the first cryptozoological expedition in search of evidence for the existence of these three animals that has ever been mounted. After months of complex negotiations, we can also announce that the expedition is sponsored by Capcom – one of the world’s leading video game publishers, who are concurrently launching Monster Hunter Freedom 2, their exciting new game for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable (PSP).

The expedition will take the five members, and their guides, deep into unexplored swamps in the west of Guyana. The area is so remote and poorly known that it doesn’t even have a name.

· The anaconda (Eunectes murinus) is the largest known snake in South America. The largest specimen shot was 28ft (9m) long. However, in the past, reports have come in from Guyana of anacondas of mind-boggling proportions, 40-60ft (12-18m) long. In some areas these giants are referred to as manatorro (the bull killer). As recently as last year, a specimen estimated at being 40ft (12m) long was observed by a party of native hunters. The giant snake frightened them so much that they fled. The target area for these monster serpents is a series of remote lakes in the grasslands.

· The didi is a more nebulous beast. It is said to walk upright like a man and be armed with scythe-like claws. It is alleged to tear out the tongues of living cattle, and leave swathes of terror in its wake. Although this last attribute may well be apocryphal, the claws in particular recall the supposedly extinct giant ground sloths or mylodonts. These bear-sized herbivores supposedly died out ten thousand years ago, but reports from across the Amazon, and surrounding areas, suggest they may well still survive.




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· The water tiger is an aggressive aquatic animal said to have pointed teeth and webbed, humanlike hands. In the past, it was reported to have attacked both people and livestock. The water tiger may be based on reports of the rare giant otter (Pteronura brasiliensis) which can grow to a length of 6ft (1.8m).

The group intend to interview native witnesses to gather information on the animals and search the grasslands and lakes for evidence. They are being guided by Damon Corrie - a chief of the Eagle Clan Arawak tribe – who is also one of the few people to have visited the area in question.

The group consists of:

· Dr Chris Clark, engineer
· Lisa Dowley, photographer
· Richard Freeman, cryptozoologist
· Jon Hare, science writer
· Paul Rose, journalist

Photographs, a press pack, and further information are available, and expedition members are available for interview. Please contact Jon or Corinna at the CFZ Press Office on +44 (0)1237 431413.


NOTES FOR EDITORS:

+ The Centre for Fortean Zoology is a non profit-making organisation, which was founded in 1992. Over the last 11 years we have mounted expeditions to Central America, Thailand, Mexico, Mongolia, Sumatra, West Africa, various parts of the United States, as well as numerous investigations in the UK.
+ Further information on the CFZ can be found on their website, www.cfz.org.uk
+ CFZ Press are now the world’s most prolific publishers of books on mystery animals.
+ The honorary life President of the Centre for Fortean Zoology is renowned explorer, author and soldier Colonel John Blashford-Snell OBE, best known for his pioneering Operation Drake and Operation Raleigh expeditions during the 1970s.
+ The CFZ is looking for corporate and private sponsors.
+ The CFZ make their own documentary films which can be seen at http://www.cfztv.org
+ `Lair of the Red Worm`, the 60 minute film of their 2005 expedition to Mongolia has now been seen by 27,000 people.

A New Venture

This is something I have been thinking about doing for a while. If it works it will be a monthly show on CFZtv, and I am considering licensing it to other web tv stations. What do you think?

Just had a phone call...

...from the lady at NuttyWest to whom my letter (below) was addressed.

Yes I can have a £2000 overdraft guarantee, yes I can have a debit card, yes to everything else I asked for, and the matter of compensation has been forwarded to their customer care division.

But THIS beggard belief. One of the reasons my accounts were colsed turns out to be that there was a "conflict" in my home address....

They had two addrsses for me:

J.Downes
Myrtle Cottage
Woolsery
Bideford
EX39 5QR

and

J. Downes
Myrtle Cottage
9 Back Street
Woolfardisworthy
Bideford
EX39 5QR


The fact that there are two different spellings for my village ain't my fault, and they should have checked out that the postcode was - in fact - the same.

Idiots..

What Jonathan and Corinna did next....

Ms. C. Rarity,
NatWest,
Application Verification Unit,
Younger Building,
3 Redheughs Avenue,
Edinburgh EH12 9RB


27th September 2007

Dear Ms. Rarity,

Thank you for your letter dated 26th September 2007. Whilst we accept your apologies, there are a number of issues that need to be sorted out before we can forget the matter.

1. Reinstatement of lost facilities


Until the unfortunate events of last week, I had the following facilities on my account:

· Debit card and cheque book
· Internet banking
· £2,000 guaranteed overdraft

I would like written confirmation from you that these facilities will be automatically transferred to my new account.

2. Apologies

Whilst, as I stated above, we accept your apologies for having closed our bank accounts, the following issue has not been addressed. Whilst my wife received a letter last Wednesday, telling her that our joint account had been closed, I still have not received any such letter from the Accounts Closure Team. NatWest took it upon themselves, not only to close my account, but to write to various people who were paid by standing order and by direct debit, telling them that these payments had been cancelled, without having the courtesy of informing me of the fact. This, by anybody’s standards, is an appalling breach of professionalism.

The letter to my wife was sent to her old address. If she had not had a re-direction service she would not have received it, although the acceptance letters had been sent to the correct address.

We would like an explanation for this, and a full apology from the Accounts Closure Team.

3. Compensation

These events have caused us an enormous amount of social and financial embarrassment, extra work, and almost unbearable levels of stress. The original letter we were sent (copy attached) was couched in such offensive terms that we were both very upset and traumatised.

We feel that we should receive some measure of financial compensation for this. As you have stated in your telephone call, the whole affair was caused by a wrong decision by the Accounts Closure Team. Under these circumstances, I am sure that you will agree that a mere apology is not enough.

We realise that none of this is your fault, or the fault of anyone else of the Application Verification Team. However, as you have been the only person within the NatWest management who has treated us with courtesy and kindness, we hope that you will forgive us writing to you on this matter.

Best wishes,

Yours sincerely,



Jonathan Downes Corinna N. James

NEWSFLASH!!!!!!!!!!

The bastards have just capitulated! I have a full apology, my bank accounts and my credit reference back.

But what do I do next?

1. Nothing
2. Try for compensation
3. Put my crusader's hat on and fight on behalf of every other poor sod in my position

What would you do????????????

Is it just me, or.....

Did the world used to make some sort of sense? These days, it is just getting more and more surreal.

This morning I got a letter from TwatWest. It said that I was a long-standing and valued customer, and it invited me to apply for a loan of up to 25 grand! I still have not received a letter telling me that they were closing my account. And I thought the CFZ office was inefficient...

Then the Police Compound to where the jag was takebn after the accident is trying to charge us loads of money for the privelige, and the University grants people have lost the paperwork for my stepdaughter's claims. On top of that HM Inland Revenue have paid Corinna a substantial sum of money that she is not due, and which she does not want. The whole world has gone bloody mad!

It was a surprisingly heartwarming weekend. When I wrote on the blog on friday lunchtime, I really thought I was facing ruin. Remember guys, that I am bipolar - I see things in black and white, which is a good thing when I am being positive, but a terrible one when I am being negative.

Many of the world's great achievers have been bipolar, and whilst I am not putting myself on a par with Beethoven, Churchill, or Coleridge, or even Stephen Fry or Kurt Cobain, the fact that I am bipolar means that I can charge at something like a bull at a gate until I achieve it. Its a mixed blessing, but I honestly think that whatever little success I have achieved in the world, is mostly down to the positive effects of my mental illness.

But the negative effects are devastating, and until tea time on friday, all I wanted to do was die!

However, once the money was in my stiucky little fingers, and we were on the way to London, I did not begin to feel better.

We collected David (my 15 year old ur-nephew, for those wuo don't know) from school, and drove hell for leather down the M5. We got to the travelodge at Feltham at about 10.00, checked in and had a few beers. david is a country boy, and had great difficulty settling down to sleep against the suburban sonic background of car alarms and the Heathrow flightpath, but the next morning, all four of us (Dave, Graham, Corinna and me) were up and relatively conscious in time to get to Kempton Park racecource for 8.30.

We set out our stall, exchanging cheerful badinage with Graham and Janice Smith with whom we were sharing a stall for the day. We had a relatively good day, spent too much money (I bought five more Peruvian fern insects (a species that I have been trying to establish permanently at the CFZ for over 12 years), and some West African armoured millipedes for the CFZ menagerie, and we sold quite a few copies of the new magazine, as well as a significant amount of advertising.

Two things were uplifting in particular.

For over a year I have been a member of a forum called BugNation in which I burble on about insects to like minded folk. I joined over a year ago, and in the intervening months I have found myself getting quite fond of some of the people there. On saturday I met them in the flesh (as it were)for the first time, and they were lovely!

What was even more heartwarming than finding you were friends with a whole new posse o'people was the fact that so many of the punters at the AES exhibition were kids! Now, I over the years I have fallen into the generation gap thing, and berated "the kids of today" for being more interested in video games than books or natural history. "T'weren't like that in my day" I would grouse. "..and what about the bloody music they listen to. In mah day they had proper words and tunes that everyone could enjoy, like `Throbbing Gristle`, or `Shaved Women Collaborators` by CRASS"..

What a joy it weas to have a string of young ladies and gentlemen, many as young as six or seven, coming up to the stall and asking highly competent, and quite technical questions that I was completely unable to answer. What a joy to have a young girl of nine or ten rattle off a load of latin names at me, as she told me about her successes in breeding mantids.

It was a bloody delight, and it did my old anarchist's heart a world of good to experience it.

Then we went home to another bit of sad news. Corinna's other pet rat, Sid, outlived his brother by only about 48 hours. He was getting rather old, but he was a good rat.

We are back

Its amazing how much better I felt when the bloke at NatWest gave me nine grand in cash (which is now invested in an account at the bank that likes to say "do you really think that is a good idea dear") I wouldn't admit it to anyone, but I had managed to convince myself that I would never get my money back. As it was, the tale of how I did is mildly amusing, and probably deserves to be told.

I went into the bank with Corinna. I was probably looking less than salubrious, because now only - as you might have gathered from my last few posts - was I feeling very frail, and as mad as a bagfull of cheese - but my hair was blown all over the place, I was dressed head to foot in black, and sporting a leather jacket, big hat, and a T Shirt with the CRASS logo and the motto "Anarchy, Peace and Freedom". The usual then.

I stomped difidently (can you stomp diffidently? I'm not too sure, but I am convinced that I did), up to the enquiries counter, and was met by a bloke called Mr Slocombe.

Now, banks have changed a lot over the years. When my father first took me to NatWest to open an account back in the day, it was a serious social event. The Bank Manager had sidewhiskers, and wore a near pin-striped suit. He offered both me and my father cigars, and the whole occasion had a strange dignity about it, as if opening my first cheque-book account was one of those important rites of passage in the making of a young gentleman.

When we went in to the bank a few weeks ago to open our joint account (the thing which I am sure was the reason behind the current crisis), the staff, who seemed to be a mixture of kids hardly old enough to shave, and late middle-aged women with grey hair, who looked acutely embarrasssed), were all dressed in bright yellow T.Shirts emblazoned with some facile slogan or other, and an air of quiet dignity was nowhere to be seen. Even when the official who was to open our account took us into a side room to do the dirty deed, he called us (uninvited) by our first names, and had about as much quiet dignity as a farting competition.

However, Mr Slocombe was lovely. He was the only person since this whole horrid affair started who treated us, not only with respect, but in the manner in which one would expect a bank official to behave. He was kind, dignified, and sensitive, and I cannot thank hum enough.

I told him that I had been ordered by the powers that be to close my account. His eyelids did not even flicker at this,, and he said that he was sorry to hear it. I gave him my details and asked for him to give me the balance of my account in cash. He said that of course he would, and it was only as my balance flashed up on the screen before him, that any emotion could be seen on his face. "Why on earth do you have to close this account?" he asked.

I grinned and told him the whole sorry tale. He confirmed to me that most people who are forced into the position of closing their accounts have no money, a substantial overdraft, and a history of bouncing cheques. Not a balance of nine grand (because the irony is, that for the first time in my life it transpired that I had MORE money in my account than I thought).

Still professionally suave to the core (although one could see his poor little brain working overtime as he wondered what the $%^&^ was going on), he arranged the withdrawal, shook our hands and we walked out into the street with £9,123.70 in my pocket. For the first time in my life I have no Bank Account.