On Monday 12th July, just under two months ago, I saw the advert on the internet. It was posted on a music jobs website, which until then, despite its best efforts and my professional skill as a cellist, had failed to woo me with its offers.
A production company was looking for contributors for a new television series, titled Art of Survival. Stripped of cash, credit cards and help from friends, family and contacts, would it be possible to travel from Athens to Edinburgh with a previously unknown team-mate in five weeks using only your artistic skill to survive?
DAY 1 SUNDAY 1ST AUGUST
The producer came to collect me from my makeshift rehearsal space/hotel room at 2pm and the gravity of what I was about to attempt hit me immediately as I struggled down the uneven Athens roads with the cello and all my travelling gear in the thirty-eight degree heat. Broken, aching and sweating, I realised I'd only actually been walking for five minutes.
However, nervous excitement surpassed any real feelings of discomfort and provided enough adrenalin to power me towards a little café in the centre of town, where I was given a Diet Coke along with instructions to wait for the tv crew to come and meet me.
I spent a pleasant ten minutes communicating with the café's local patrons by means of wildly gesticulating and grinning, returned on their part with equal enthusiasm. Before I had time to wonder whether or not I had just mimed myself into a new job behind the bar, the crew arrived. I was led to a charming old square where I would finally, on camera, meet the person who would become my travelling companion and fellow survivee for the next five weeks. I couldn't recall any other time in my life when I had truly felt such an overwhelming mix of emotions. How can you prepare yourself for an experience you have no previous knowledge of?
Well, the answer is, of course, that you cannot, so you drink your fizzy drink too quickly, the carbon dioxide escaping at precisely the moment you wish it had stayed where it was, 'Nice to meet you,' I half say, but mainly burp out, on camera to my new team-mate. He smiles, we shake hands - team JJ, as we will become known, has officially formed.
Destination the Acropolis hill reached and we see that we have competition. It's as if we have stepped into an international outdoor busking convention. Artistic entrepreneurs of all shapes, sizes and disciplines, stand metres apart, lining the route up the hill. I have never seen such a display of woolen scarves, berets and spectacles (and this is just from the man on my left).
All of them have perfect little set- ups, the musicians with neat wheelie trolleys housing perfectly functioning amps; the artists with utility belts housing paints and brushes and portable easels. We suddenly realise we are ever so slightly out of our league here...