Goodbye Jungleyes.

We are sad to say goodbye to one of our longest customers, Jungleyes, formerly of Kew and the Isle of Wight. A great character, he has been ill for a long time, sadly. He will be sorely missed. Below is his obituary from the Daily Telegraph, 11th February 2013.

Rock On Jungleyes - Respect.



11 Feb 2013 – Daily Telegraph Obituary:

Jungleyes Love, who has died aged 56, was an Old Harrovian hippie who traded in runic jewellery, dinosaur eggs and fossilised animal excrement, which he sold from his shop on the tourist trail to Kew Gardens in south-west London.

He learned the tradition of rune-lore in the 1980s. Since the Dark Ages this had been passed down orally by successive female practitioners, a rune being a Norse hieroglyph which, when scribed (or struck) on to an object or metal and its name chanted phonetically, reputedly invests the wearer with power.

His runic jewellery was much sought after by customers at his tiny shop, called World Tree Mend Us, at which he also sold rocks, gemstones and coprolites (fossilised excrement).

Descended from privateers, Charles Gibaut Bissell-Thomas was born in Jersey on March 13 1956. He shed his given name while a teenager, changing it several times, first to Charlight Utang, then Soma Love, then (by deed poll) to Jungleyes Cism Love. More recently he called himself Jarl Love.

During assembly at primary school, he questioned his orthodox Christian headmistress about why the school was not also worshipping the Devil. Later, at Harrow, he contacted the Chinese Embassy and persuaded staff there to send 725 complimentary copies of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, which were promptly returned by the school authorities.

Several terms later his mother received a call from his housemaster stating that he was being sent home in the middle of term, not because he had been expelled but because he contacted the headmaster of Latymer School, Hammersmith, and had secured himself a place.

After entering Latymer he would never cut his hair again, and from his mid-20s no longer brushed or combed it. While perhaps hoping to achieve a neat Rasta-dread style, he ended up with a matted construction which was later long enough to use as a cushion while waiting at bus stops.

After graduating in Neurobiology at the University of Sussex he travelled extensively in Asia, spending several years with a witch doctor (or dukun) in Indonesia called Waktu Lemak (Fat Time).



Jungle — as everyone called him — embraced the psychedelic movement and while many progressed no further than marijuana or LSD, he regularly took the hallucinogenic amanita muscaria (or fly agaric) as used in the Siberian shamanic tradition. For the last 30 years of his life he was a fruitarian . He also refused to be photographed, claiming that the camera would steal his soul.

As well as his shop at Kew, Jungleyes Love also had a second retail outlet in the Victorian Appley Tower, at Ryde on the Isle of Wight – a space that he restored himself.

A notable commission in the early 1990s was from a customer who wanted him to design a pendulum that would enable the buyer to win on the horses (in order to buy a flat with the proceeds). When first employed, the pendulum won the owner £800 but on its second attempt it failed to swing with pertinence and was returned with instructions to replace silver with gold. This Love did, also adding part of a prehistoric pony’s kneecap.

The pendulum was ready for the following year’s Cheltenham Gold Cup, when the owner formed two circles of runners’ names from the racecard. The first circle produced no movement in the pendulum, but when the second did — and the owner placed his initial £800 winnings on the horse indicated — he won £33,000.

Despite spending prolifically on exotic fruits, Jungleyes Love became one of the few European sufferers from beriberi, his fruitarian diet being deficient in vitamin B. In 2007 an abscess infected with TB (probably lying dormant since his Asian travels) was removed from his brain. The operation led to complications, which left him needing care during his last years .

Jungleyes Love, who was unmarried, is survived by his mother, brother and two sisters.

Jungleyes Love, born March 13 1956, died February 2 2013