IT’S the August Bank Holiday weekend in England. This is a traditional ritual in which everyone and anyone who drives a vehicle takes it onto the road and heads for the coast. They take their children and they queue nose to tail on the motorway in cars, utes, trucks, buses and ride-on mowers until the engines overheat and the kids cry and divorce papers are flying across the country faster than confetti. This is the way the English relax. I wish I was home. It’s hard to imagine. You need to experience it. Sixty million people crammed into a space the size of Cape York all Having Fun at the…

THE definition of ‘lost’ is when other people can’t find you. It has nothing to do with not knowing where you are yourself. I know exactly where I am. I am in a Polish forest. The bus is on its side. Well, nearly on its side. I have two hours on my laptop before the battery runs out. Times have changed. When Burke and Wills died in the Australian bush they knew where they were, too. It didn’t help them. Their food ran and water ran out. With me it’s my laptop. I have two hours left in the batteries. Food is not a problem. There’s always mushrooms in a…

I AM bilingual. I have discovered, quite by accident, that I speak good Polish. While I’m bragging I should add that I also speak good Japanese, Urdu, Icelandic and Thai. Naturally, there’s a catch. I can only speak to people between the ages of about four and 10 years. And although my accent in all these languages is flawless, I can only say one phrase. It’s “Na na na-naan nyaaaah!” Maybe you think I’m kidding, but I’m not. As you know by now, I am in Poland. I was planning on two weeks, then it became three, now it’s four, and I have discovered that the battle cry of the…

I AM eating pierogi. Or I would be if I could fit any more in. I have two women standing over me. Their names are Krisha and Maryshka. Their weapons are ladles and kindness and they have been shovelling pierogi into me as if I were the boiler of a battleship. By now you may be wondering what the hell I’m talking about. I can explain – I’m in Poland. Poland is the home of pierogi… a kind of miniature pasty filled with every and any kind of food the human race has yet invented, and maybe even some that won’t be invented until the next millennium. When I say…

IT’S all over, I think, bar the occasional slanging match and the argument about who gets the appalling plastic fruit bowl given to us on our wedding day by Aunt Ethel. Aunt Ethel is dead now, as are my parents, which is a good thing, because they weren’t here to see the end of my marriage. Thirty years, it’s been. And 32 years since we met. I say the end of our marriage, but we haven’t reached the divorce stage yet. This is the separation stage. I blame my parents. They made it to their 50th anniversary after a courtship of some six months. And they made it look easy.…