We were on the beach at Waikouaiti, which was in Finland. The sun was out and the weather was a lot warmer already. I was glad, because Dad preferred the warmth. I was now with Mum too, and we walked along the road that followed the beach.

I wanted to cut across the sand dunes to the beach, and ducked through a community sports centre. Outdoors, there was a teeball pitch. One guy hit the ball off the tee and another guy watched it fly over his head. It was very low-budget but there was a referee standing in the field and a hitech scoreboard. Several people waited for their turn.

We accidentally ended up inside the sports centre and interrupted a table tennis match. There was also an indoor cricket court and many other sports. A sign asked people to request ideas for new sports at the centre. We couldn’t get to the beach and had to go back through again. The table tennis guy quickly served and managed to get an ace. He quickly served again before we could get past. Everything was very rickety and old, but everyone seemed to be having fun.

My Dad was taking care of the polar bear. It was more intelligent than a dog and was quite calm. I imagined what would happen if a burglar tried to break in only to find the polar bear. Its name was Priest. “I’m going to have to do something about that bear”, Dad confessed. I had no idea where he got it from.

The bear was at Waikouaiti with Renja and me. It slept on the floor next to me. Dad assured me that it wouldn’t want to sleep on the bed because polar bears were used to sleeping on the floor. I tucked the duvet in along the side of the bed, just in case it put its paws up and just in case it decided to attack me during the night. I fell asleep and everything replayed in my dreams, only the bear had a different name. It was fantastic.

I rode my mountainbike into the tourist offices. When I got to the carpeted information point, the painfully polite lady behind the counter suggested that I could park my bike in a different room. I had no idea where to find Fiona.

Soon it started snowing, and the storm cloud started descending again. Most of the other people vanished and I thought they must have all died horrible deaths. But I was a survivor, and ended up escaping from the cloud just before it crashed into the ground. The woman ended up being one of many who had managed to survive the ordeal. I helped look through the wreckage of the cloud; several elderly people stumbled out, unharmed but rather confused.

I was walking through a shopping mall looking for work. When I came out, jobless, I went walking along a street. On one side were fancy houses and the other side was fields and the ocean. As I walked further down the road, the houses became more humble. One was a sofa with a small tent attached. A happy couple waved from the unoccupied part of the sofa. One house was but a windowless cube, barely waist high and smaller than the tent. A guy from my primary school rode by on a motorbike.

The only job going was as a “pizza topping expert” at a pizzeria at the end of this street. I didn’t get the job as I wasn’t sufficiently trained. I was feeling rather down, until I remembered that I have a job already.

I was getting ready to feature in Cinderella, the opera. Martin was in the lead role, as the father, and I was cast as the prince. I didn’t have a costume, and had to hide my New Zealand tshirt by wearing a pair of white overalls. I went looking for the stage door but ended up outside. By mistake I walked down the wheelchair ramp instead of the stairs, wasting more time. It was surfaced with rough cobblestones, and had a step at the bottom. “How much are the cans of Coke?” the ticket vendor asked. I had no idea, and gave a shrug. I went through what I thought was the stage door again, and practiced singing. I had to sing in castrato, but that was fine, my voice was very high and sounded good. If only I knew the script, I thought.

I went back to the restaurant where Renja was; she was still finishing off dinner and the three of them were laughing and chatting. I tried to leave again without being noticed but then Renja came out and we went to the sweet stand. It was outdoors, and there were tables full of sweets and extra stock on the ground sitting on wax paper. I got told off for having two sweets shovels that were stuck together. My pottle already had some coconut sweets in it and I tipped some of them out, but I got told off for that too. The shopkeeper was standing over everybody shouting out instructions and telling them off.

I was sitting around at the party. John was guzzling coffee from a cappuccino mug. It was going all down his jumper and splashing on the floor. “You’re getting it everywhere!” I exclaimed. “Nah, it’s ok, I’ll put another one on”, he said gleefully. When I saw him next, he had put a black jumper on top of the sodden green one. He looked very merry.

We made it to New Caledonia. I went inside a cheap eatery. I ordered a burger and chips for £4. While I waited to be served, I looked for a toilet. There were two inside the takeaway, just sitting in the waiting area, but both were incredibly filthy. The smell put me off eating, so I went to look for somewhere else. Soon I came to a very clean bookies with a spotless toilet.

We went down into a big basement store. Renja took the escalator and I took the stairs. I had to run and jump down the flights of stairs just to keep up but in the end I was so far behind that I ended up getting lost. “There’s nothing in here”, Renja declared before bounding off to shop some more. I decided to go back home.

I got into a car full of middle aged guys who were just starting a road trip. Three planes flew past leaving a trail of red, white and blue behind them. They weren’t equally spaced and it didn’t look nearly as effective as it should have. Moonshadow was playing again.

We came to a busy highway and I was driving. I kept having to change lanes and watch out for erratic drivers. It was now a video game and I was able to go fast, swerve between cars and ram into the ones that were in my way. The guys were all watching in the back seat. I kept offering the game to someone else. Eventually I crashed off the side of the highway and became stuck. I lost a life; I wasn’t sure how many I had left.

Instead of a car, I was now controlling a gorilla. I could climb up ropes and walk, but didn’t know the jump button. I tried everything but ended up stuck on a rope suspended above a massive mound of dung. It was now real again, and one of the guys was dressed in a gorilla suit. The gorilla man jumped into the pile of dung where it was at its freshest. I then fell there too, and was up to my knees in fresh dung. My shoes came off after every step, and when I tried wading through the older dung, I would break through the dry shell and be up to my knees again. I didn’t know how to get out as it was like a zoo enclosure. The walls were impossible to climb.

I got in the van, getting into the wrong side at first. The driver’s seat was very high up and it took two attempts to make it there. The van was big and slate-grey, with square edges. I pulled out of my parents’ driveway and started down the road. It took forever to pick up any sort of speed, and I was passed by some traffic. Eventually I put it into second gear; oh well, I thought, at least I have a van. I made it as far as the top of Barr Street, where there was a new roundabout. Two cars had crashed and the wrecks were sitting on top of the botanical decorations in the middle of the roundabout. A local was directing traffic. I drove through slowly; there were a lot of rubberneckers all along the footpaths, and people who wanted to have a turn at directing traffic.

There were speed camera signs up everywhere, and police vans parked in the road to slow drivers down. I slowed right down and drove through. There were no police around.

I made it to town, and decided to go to New World to get some supplies. I parked up the hill in the suburbs, and started walking down. I realised that I was barefoot and there were a lot of sharp things on the ground, so I tried turning back. Since I had taken a short cut through somebody’s garden, I had to retrace my steps. I met the old lady at her gate, which she held open for me, along with the curtain that was draped over it. She made some smalltalk and I was on my way.

At New World, I carefully avoided the butchers, but much of the shelving had been removed so they saw me. Nicola was sitting in an empty meat refrigerator scrubbing. She said it had been three years, and she was waiting for me to come in every day like I used to. I said it had been more than four years, and I didn’t visit last time I was in the country. Lyndon, my old manager, came around and gave me a hug and a kiss on each cheek, since I had been in Europe. He then pretended to make out with me as a joke. I tried to shrug it off but probably came across as a bit prudish. I thought I saw Darian, but it was just a guy in glasses who was a bit scared of me. There were a lot of people sweeping the empty floors of the supermarket. I joined them for a while, then left.

I was biking along a forest path and I realised that I had become a stranger in my old home town. Then I realised that this was Christchurch. I accidentally cycled down a dead-end track, and had to walk back with my bike as it was very muddy. My back tyre was quite flat. Tim Matheson went on ahead; I don’t know how he managed to bike over the metre-high concrete step but then I was never much of a mountainbiker. I became stuck trying to climb over with my bike, then noticed some colourful lizards. One crawled over my back and it tickled.

We were in Lappajarvi in winter, and were looking out into the clear night sky. I could see fiery explosions happening in space; everything was far far clearer than it normally would be. Soon, I noticed hundreds of spaceships silently falling, suspended in the air and semi transparent, dropping something to earth. I saw something tumble in front of me, so went to pick it up. It was an old Disney comic book, and the spaceships turned out to be American. I wasn’t sure if they were distributing the comic books, or trying to dump them in the lake as that was where most of them went. I told Mikael and Annika about this as I waved the comic book around; they seemed very interested in the story.

There was a loud explosion that came from the frozen lake. I looked out and saw some fishermen using dynamite to blow holes in the ice. They were readying themselves for another explosion. This one was louder, and the debris came flying towards the cottage. The spent stick of dynamite clattered against the window and woke Renja up. Jussi had gone out to scold them and when I came out there was a full-blown argument, albeit a very subdued one. The man was trying to reenact Jussi pushing him, and Jussi was telling him to stop whining and to leave. The fisherman’s wife did and said nothing, and I started pushing the man as softly as he said Jussi had done. I pushed him onto the ground and he left.

In Lappajarvi there was a famous water slide. Renja couldn’t remember if it was the longest, oldest, fastest, but she remembered that there was a superlative attached. I went down it in front of her and a queue of old people. It was made of copper and was very hard to slide on; eventually I stopped and everybody collided with me as the water pooled up. I let Renja continue while I went to the toilet. It was a room with an attendant, and it seemed the attendant had a friend hanging out there too. I turned my back and used the urinal, which took forever. I thought I had stopped, and was becoming self-conscious as I heard the friends talking about me, but I needed to continue. Now I was weeing into a copper jug which was close to overflowing. I could have done more, but by now it was farcical so I stopped. I awkwardly left.

I had my feet up on a stone wall that surrounded what looked like part of a gang headquarters. I turned around and a guard dog had latched its jaws around my foot. I panicked and shouted but nobody helped. An old man was nearby but he appeared to do nothing. The jaws were full of needle-fine teeth that went several rows deep. I eventually managed to prize myself free; the old man came back with assistance.

I had arrived at a restaurant in a new city, and found that it was run by a Brit. The man was overplaying the fact that we were from the same country to try and make me feel more comfortable. I didn’t want to order anything as none of it appealed to me so I went to find the toilet. Downstairs I could see what I thought was a giant urinal so I started to wee in it. I thought it was bad that the Chinese had left so much rubbish floating around in it, before realising that it was a recycling depot. I went downstairs again to find the public toilet.

I was with Tristram and Micheal Ross, and I said to them that we should go on the next train, wherever it goes. Instantly, I was in Hong Kong in a place that found accommodation. It was a giant room, like a warehouse, that was full of model skyscrapers, as well as full sized bedrooms and hotel rooms. I had climbed a very tall model skyscraper but the model rooms were far too small to stay in. I was worried about earthquakes so I climbed back down immediately.

The teenagers were gathered together in an overgrown, abandoned space. They were a mixture of Muslim, Croat and Serb. I noticed a flowerpot full of light soil and what appeared to be a succulent. “We are planting our first banana”, said one, before another excitedly exclaimed “cake!” They were mixing the dry ingredients in the flowerpot. It was fun to share in their excitement. I could see soldiers on horses riding past in the distance; they had more important things to worry about.

Israel was exactly how I had imagined it to be. I put this down to having read the guide book from start to finish, and was disappointed that there was no excitement. It was like a tidier Marrakech and there was hardly anybody around.

I went on a day trip that involved going in a van, then the shortest plane trip that could ever be. Just as we took off, the plane came back down again and landed in a canal. Several planes were taking off at the same time. From a viewpoint I could see some pyramids that had been floodlit. I tried to find the sphinx but it wasn’t there. Then I realised that those pyramids were in Egypt and I was not. Egypt was where Israel would normally be and vice versa.

From the top of a hill I could see Gore spread out like a city across the plains. I would be staying the night there as it was getting dark. First I went through a small town on the hillside called Wyndham. I walked past a small collection of shops, always thinking if I should go and get something to eat as it was a Sunday night and most places would be closing soon. I passed a branch of HMV that seemed to be full of bored staff.

In Gore I came across a confectionary shop that was being run by some kids as their parents were out. They didn’t seem to speak much english. The boy behind the counter served me his own favourites, including pink gummy worms and other animals made from pink icing. Another boy was eating ice cream and taking out the chocolate chips because he didn’t like them. I was surprised at how fussy some kids could be. It was expensive and I wish I hadn’t gone there. I went to find a hotel.

I was traveling through the Roxburgh Gorge with some English people, and tucking into some baked beans. They were Watties, and I commented about how much better they were than Heinz beans. We talked about cultural differences between England and New Zealand. The best that I could come up with was to compare town names. “We don’t call our cities fancy names, like “Hamilton-on-the-Waikato”. We just call it Hamilton. I couldn’t come up with any other examples but people thought it was a good point. We passed a modest hill that had been used as the cover photo on the newest edition of Lonely Planet.

I got back to our beds and quickly put my bag on my bed to reserve it, as an American Marine was coming in. I knew he had a gun and I wasn’t scared. He came in, gun first, and I grabbed the end of it and forced it away from me. I eventually took it and pointed it at him. It wasn’t the least bit tense. The gun was made from yellow plastic; I pulled a large cardboard packaging tag off it as it was annoying me. Caroline came in, looking annoyed. “Is that your bed?”, she asked. There had clearly been a mix up but I stood my ground. She said something else that I couldn’t make out. “What?” I replied. “Oh, don’t start!” she shouted halfway out the room as she stormed off. I realised that she said something along the lines of “why does this always happen?”.

My parents’ house was full of people. PJ was getting married and had hardly given any notice, and everyone was frantically preparing for the big day. “This is going to be a lot of work”, I heard Jussi say as he walked past with Elisa. “There has to be at least 100 guests”. I could tell that he was enjoying it. The wedding had become an internet sensation; there were a lot of rubberneckers. A Japanese tour group stopped outside our front door and took pictures of sculptures. I went out and they ran away sheepishly.

I went back into the kitchen. It was packed full of people. I saw Robin, his wife and Ben all talking. I poked him as he was in deep conversation. My finger went through his aran jumper. He acknowledged me but kept talking. They were all wearing aran jumpers. I saw Shannon; she said hello to me, but I could tell that she had forgotten who I was. There was an asian guy with spiky hair. He was happy to see me but I had forgotten who he was.

The kitchen cupboards were all left open, and were full of old baking trays. They had been ransacked by eager chefs making dishes for the wedding. I found some old things: a huge container of honey that had honey stalactites forming on the lid, old ads for furniture, and for cheap flights from Hamilton.

I wasn’t invited to the wedding, so went to my room. It was full of Spanish students wandering around. I tried to pull my curtain but it didn’t shut. There was clutter everywhere. Carl was sitting on the floor opening gifts he had received from customers. The first one was a gold chain from an American Marine. He was having trouble reading the letter as he was drunk. He and I read different things from the same letter because he was reading it upside down. “I have to make an apple crumble for the wedding” he shouted drunkenly as he scraped at an old apple crumble in an old baking tray, “but it has to be somewhere warm and low. Your oven is too high, and you don’t have a TV!” He meant microwave.

Later, I came back to the canals with some guests. The owner of the tourist attraction was enthusiastically speaking about the place, and our loyal patronage. I was walking in bare feet; there were patches of broken glass on the ground. Further along the ground was covered in cubes of smashed windscreen glass. A police bulldozer screamed past, clearing a small path through the glass. It made quite a sound.

It was free to go to, so I went and got my camera and waited by the main stage as other bands and DJs played to tiny audiences nearby. A couple of fans were waiting with me. As the stage time got closer, more people arrived and space was made for the new audience members. I was given instructions to move closer to the front. The stage was far away and the audience were in a roped off area. As I was moved even closer, I found myself in a swimming pool. It was a great view, except soon people stood on the edge, blocking my view. My camera was face down in the pool; I dived to retrieve it but it had stopped working. The LCD screen was wearing away, revealing the inside of the camera.

Running, I went to a camera stall manned by Alex. “I need a two or a four”, I said hurriedly, refering to the memory card size. “Which one then?” asked Alex. “I don’t mind, a four or an eight, or a two, just not a one. A two or a four will do”. He looked confused and slightly bothered. “A two, I’ll have a two. No, actually a four would be good”, I said before realising that there were also different coloured ones. In my haste I had also bought a new camera, but told Alex to hold it until I checked my old one.

I made my way back to my place, to find my old camera. On the way there was a line of fishermen being taught how to cast a line. The footpath was covered in silt, and crickets and other live bait crawled around. A huge toad had buried itself in the silt. I covered my eyes so as to avoid having a hook swung into it. A frog was taking a free ride on my sock. I narrowly avoided standing on some of its friends.

I tested out my old camera with a new memory card. It worked, and Portishead came out and started performing. The singer had a green wig on. I managed to get some good pictures before putting my camera away to enjoy the show more. One familiar song started playing, and I realised it was The Rip so I sang along with the rest of the audience. The singer saw me singing and started to cough. “I can’t finish this line”, she spluttered to me, while coughing. The show was now in a dark tent and images were projected onto the sides. The band all had fake blood painted all over their faces, and they looked like a metal band. The audience was tiny.

There was a bus shelter with post it notes on it. One set were for a man and one for his wife. I left one telling them to trim their rose bush.

Renja surprised one of her workmates by buying her a dress. Nobody liked this girl, and she had just been voted out of a competition. We went to visit her in a hospital, where the dress was presented. I had to get it out of its packaging, which was awkward and took forever. I severely damaged the fabric in the process.

On the way back, I walked around a lake, and Birmingham and Manchester were on the opposite sides. I walked with a group of people behind me. It was dark and rainy; I walked past the place I was staying and had to backtrack.

The Mexican guy that we flatted with was also annoyed about the crash pad status of our flat as he had been living there even longer than us. He couldn’t do anything about it as his visa had expired and he was hiding in our flat.

I went to my room which was an outhouse. We had been describing windmills and comparing them to the Dutch type of windmill. I drew sketches with arrows annotating the movement of the blades. Outside my window was a wind turbine with three blades; two of the blades formed a straight line while one went off at a strange angle. It was just about to start up; I wouldn’t be getting much sleep tonight. A patch of mud in the back yard started boiling. Soon all the patches of mud had turned into boiling mud. I thought it might be dangerous, especially for a dog. Tomorrow I would go whale watching if the weather stayed good; I lived in Iceland after all.

When I came back, Michael Palin was in the same ward as me. I tried not to let on that I knew who he was, until he said something funny to me. I couldn’t understand as he said it too fast, but I laughed anyway. He laughed too and was soon in stitches. I wished I had heard what he said, but enjoyed the moment nonetheless.

In the next cubicle (the hospital looked like an office), a girl was having surgery, and some of her friends and family were watching. She was on a bed and was covered by a flat sheet that hid her shape. Only her head was in sight. The doctor took a 30cm ruler and measured down from her chin, then made a long incision through the stiff sheet, right across where her chest was. Soon, the cut became bloody. She was motionless but her eyes told me she was in extreme pain. A trickle of blood dripped from the corner of her mouth.

It was my break time. Renja and I went for a walk. Now it appeared to be Northeast Valley, only it was still a film set. The three snobby girls were behind a fence, snooping on three supposedly ugly girls, and laughing at them. I got in their way and made them more conspicuous while they tried to hide behind my parents’ fence. The “ugly” girls were talking about how neither Jack nor Jackson had shown up to take them to the prom. “They’re not coming”, I shouted out, ruining the take.

I walked down the road, back towards the shop. “See this snow?”, I said to Renja. “Fake”. I reached down to prove my point; it was real. I shouted “actor” at all passers-by, still convinced it was a film set. I wondered why the jewellery shop was in a bad area of town.

We were in the back room when Renja started talking about Kent, and that she hoped he didn’t show up. I thought he was a character, but then I heard someone breaking in. We locked the door and pulled the blinds in the back room and stayed quiet. I heard things break but there was a long silence. Then he tried our door. He shouted out a garbled sentence to us; I had no idea what he said but he was obviously deranged. Renja answered the phone with a very fleeting “hello”. Nobody was on the other end. “Hello”, she said more clearly. We held the now unlocked door handle tightly as it started shaking.

I got a message through my work email. It said that a kitten had fallen into the bucket, 43 minutes ago. I scooped the kitten out; it was sitting on the bottom looking up and mewing silently under the water. It had somehow survived. Its name was 21 but I decided it should be named 43 now.

My car was a campervan. Its roof was dark green and see-through. I parked in a camping ground that was indoors. It cost $11 for the night, and the proprietor was Finnish, although she didn’t look it. She had given Renja a stuffed toy penguin, and now I got one too.

We were parked on a lake, and there was a helicopter overhead. It had a rope that went under the surface of the lake. The water was disturbed, and soon a waterskier surfaced from the lake. I showed Renja but she thought it was too crazy and didn’t want to look. The waterskier was going in the other direction from us, being towed by the helicopter. They then came back towards us and the rope cut a jagged line through the roof. There were some blokes with us; one had a severed ear.

On the way back again, I was going much faster. When I came to a hill I accidentally changed up a gear instead of down, so had to get off and push to the top. I went back through the town, with all its traffic, and made my way to the voluntary chocolate makers. It was through a fence that I had to climb over with my bike. There was barbed wire around the fence but it had been broken.

Guy from Elbow was running the chocolate place. He told me that because I didn’t turn up at the rehearsal, I couldn’t make chocolate today. I pointed out that I got to do it last time. There were a few chocolate animals on sticks lying around the place. I wanted one but they were for the volunteers. It was getting late. I told Elizabeth that I was going to stay in a lodge nearby. Her parents knew the owners and she emailed them for me. I asked if she could call as I needed to know straight away, but she was speaking to someone using speaker phone. I went to the jetty.

The last ferry had already left. Renja had sent some texts but they were all in Finnish and the connection was slow because Nik was on the internet.

When I came back, the german shepherd was lying on the ground, too full to move. The snake had gone. One slice of pizza remained and I thought it would be a shame to throw it away, so I took a bite. I got dog hair in my mouth. Looking closely, I saw lots of dog hair and pawprints all over it.

We started biking along the Headford road at the bottom of the hill. I turned my light on as it was getting dark. Renja was walking; I reminded her about her bike. Moments later, she was walking again; I reminded her of the bike again. The town looked like Svolvaer, Norway.

At the front, I looked around and didn’t recognise anybody. A boy was told to open a cardboard box; it was full of papers that looked like Business Response Forms and he began distributing them to the other guests. It was something about Renja’s achievements. The ceremony was going badly, and I wished we hadn’t agreed to do it.

I was visiting Ben and his new wife at their house. It was on the edge of Christchurch; there was a large field with cobblestones that led across it. “So much space!” I commented, comparing it to London. I looked back towards the house. It was right next to the Olympic Stadium and was being taken over by car parks and holiday huts that were going to be rented for the Olympics.

I was driving around in my Morris Minor on the steep streets near Carisbrook. Going uphill was almost impossible as the car spluttered and slowed. I held a lot of traffic up. Going downhill, I could never brake hard enough, and kept going through intersections too quickly.

I got into the Morris Minor and Zig was there, very happy to see me. I left him in there while I was at work, which had been since eight that morning. I wondered how he managed to go without needing to poo all day, but wondered no more as I looked on the back seat. I couldn’t really blame him.

In the end I found my old film camera. I took a picture of various aunts and uncles posed beside a temple. I wound the camera on, and it kept winding, even though I had only taken 21 pictures. I picked a camera off the ground, thinking it was mine, but it belonged to a confused tourist who already had two other cameras, all with huge lenses. He asked me a technical question and I ignored him. I went to take a picture of the crab, but it had gone inside a cement works. My Dad and I went in; it was a concrete shell of a building set into the ground. The crab scuttled around a corner into the part of the works that was still in use. I started to follow it, until I saw workers filing out. I escaped through a small gap that led back to ground level; I wasn’t sure how my Dad would make it out again. The workers didn’t care about us being there at all.

It turned out that I was just reading about Bill Bryson’s adventures in Africa. He started off the Nairobi chapter positively, so I didn’t bother to read it. I didn’t finish reading as he got mugged in Angola and didn’t end up going to Chile or Argentina.