I am on a road trip, from London to Athens in a 1973 VW Beetle. The car is the same age as the UK’s accession to the EU and, since my government is hell-bent on taking free movement away from me, I thought I’d make the most of it while I can.

Three weeks ago I was on a sun lounger in Italy, trying to remember how to say ‘beer’ in another language. It was quiet, bar the odd splash in the pool, and there was nothing to do except read. Today I am sat at my desk in London, where it is nowhere near as hot or peaceful, and I’m longing for someone to come round with a tray and an order pad. Like most people at this time of the year, now that I am back from my holiday it seems hard to imagine that the other place, that very…

This week I had to start spending the money to make my ‘It’s Never Too Late’ trip happen. Reader, I hesitated. I hesitated for lots of reasons. First, the budget looked quite scary. At a basic level, even living cheaply, nine weeks away was going to cost me about £4500. Which I am borrowing. And that assumes that nothing breaks. Which it will. Second, I have been shortlisted for the Bath Novel Awards, and the announcement party falls in week three of the trip. So I needed to budget the time and the money to leave the car somewhere around…

It’s been a tumultuous, but predictable week in Britain. Boris won. He installed his mates. Many people, including me, are wringing their hands in horror. Apparently, ‘do or die’, he will force us out of the EU in October, with or without a deal. The consequences of that are extreme, but Boris and his chums won’t care; the country will collapse, people will die for lack of medicine, the pound will go into freefall. Me, I’ll be on the other side of the Channel somewhere which might be the best place to be in the circumstances…

Meanwhile, I’ve been ignoring…

I fell over two months ago. Fell over carrying shopping and smashed my nose against the ground. I was picked up by two Arsenal fans who were walking to the game. One of them ripped open my bag of loo roll to get some tissue to mop up my blood. The other asked if he could call someone for me. I was five minutes away from my flat and I was aware that my beloved was about to go to the football too. I said I was fine, that I would call home and get help. I didn’t want to…

In two months’ time, I will be setting off around Europe in a 46-year-old car, a 46-year-old VW Cabriolet Beetle. I have owned this car for 18 years and every year I wonder if it’s our last. Especially since we break down everywhere these days. The garage that looks after it has advised me never to drive for more than an hour without stopping and I’m nervous about going to the supermarket in case I get a flat tyre.

Which is why, also every year, usually just before the MOT is due, I think about getting rid of it. After…

A month before my mother was born, 75 years ago this week, a division of the SS sealed off Oradour-sur-Glane, a village in the centre of France, and spent the afternoon killing the 642 people who were there, some residents, some just passing through. The women and children were locked in the church, which was then set alight. When they tried to escape through the windows, they met machine-gun fire. The men were rounded up in barns where they were shot in the legs then set alight too. Only about 20 people survived. …

My grandma would have voted Leave. She only went to Europe once, as far as I know, on a coach trip to Rimini. They didn’t like it much, she said, when they got back. And Grandpa’s only souvenir, or perhaps my only memory of what he told us, was showing me how he’d stuff his pockets full of toilet paper so that the pickpockets would find nothing else.

They read the Daily Express*, never ate ‘foreign’ food and never willingly chose to explore anywhere beyond the British Isles. …