The box aroused my curiosity.  Not being a cat I wasn’t worried.  A little red wooden box, quaint and innocent, mounted on a badly-painted red wall. The box had a door, suspiciously without a handle.  Now why would there be no handle?  Scratched on the door was the word ‘help’. I got out my keys and set to work.  Five minutes later I was still at it, hacking frantically at the box. The door swung open…

I woke up in an antiquated pub that I didn’t recognise. Groggy, confused and with a throbbing head. It was crowded. Muttering, clinking, men telling tales, little round tables with little round stools. They dragged me to a table in the corner where a dodgy-looking character in a Manchester United shirt tapped away on his laptop.  Cigarette in one hand, whiskey in the other, a flickering candle setting the scene.  “Sit down,” he said, “let me get you a drink.” “There’s only one Leeds United,” I said, regretting it immediately, he obviously hadn’t recovered.

Elegance walked over, a lady in red, heels clicking on the ancient floorboards. She set a tall glass of beer on the table.  German it was, Erdinger perhaps, or Schneider’s Wiesen Edel Weiss, it’s hard to differentiate with such a throbbing head. “I’d have preferred a stout,” I said.

“My name,” he said, “is X, and I’ll get you a stout in a minute you pernickety sod. I represent the Illuminati. The red box is a teleportation device, a portal to wherever we want. I got it installed last week, knew you couldn’t resist.  I’ll cut to the chase. We like your blog. The observational humour, the wit, the beer. We’d like you to blog for us, be the Illuminati’s representative for the blogosphere, you know, give us a friendly, modern feel and all that, we’re fed up of all the bad press. We’ll pay you very well, give you anything you want.”

“No thanks,” I said,  “I won’t do anything for a Manchester United supporter.”  Seconds later I fell out of the red box onto the floor.  X, Elegance and Schneider’s Wiesen Edel Weiss were nowhere to be seen.

OK, so I made all of that up, you got me there.  I’m possibly crazy, a total fruitcake. But I do wonder what is inside the little red box, mounted above the urinals in the Old Bell Tavern.  Maybe next time I’ll force open the door with my keys and take a look.

Sleeping sweetly, snoring probably, dreaming of nonsense that I can’t remember.  Oh blissful slumber. Ineffably fabulous, frustratingly rare.

Poke, poke, poke.

Dream interrupted, rudely awakened by relentless poking, delivered to my ribs with surgical precision.  My wife, still asleep, has some nonsense to say.

“What?” I ask, swatting her hand away from me.

“If you like,” she said, “you can sleep in that corner and I’ll sleep in this corner or,” she offered kindly, “I’ll sleep in that corner and you can sleep in this one.”

“I’m fine where I am,” I said, “but thanks anyway.”

I found him in his van stirring a giant tub of adhesive. Bought for a fiver, he said, with supreme relish and an inane grin, retail value one hundred quid. Spoken with the matter-of-fact air of a chap who was used to such bargains. Satisfied, relaxed and definitely sleepy.

I’d met Baz down the Marquis the night before, but prior to that it had been a long time. I’d been down in Brighton getting married, making babies, commuting to London. He’d been gallivanting round the world. India, Thailand, Tibet, Guildford, Milton Keynes, all sorts of exotic places. Come and see my van, he’d said, so here I was, the fumes already hitting me hard. Guess I picked the wrong day to quit sniffing glue.

I mentioned the scratch I’d seen down the right hand side. ‘Handbrake snapped off,’ he said, sheepishly, ‘found myself rolling down Dad’s drive.’ He’d fixed the handbrake himself. I had visions of a broom handle rammed in its place.

It was an old VW. Technically a transit but an abnormally large one, once royal blue, now faded and sorry. He’d gutted the thing and was in the process of converting it into a home. Didn’t pay for this, he said, or that, or that, got this for a tenner, found this by the road. Thriftiest man I know and the son of a carpenter, his handiwork was beautiful. Fitted bookshelves, nifty bed-come-sofa, cute little gas stove mounted on a perfectly-crafted “kitchen” area. ‘What’ll you do about water?’ I asked. ‘You can always find an outside tap,’ he said with a sly wink.

‘Where are you off to?’ I asked. ‘Two weeks in Norway, ‘ he replied, ‘doing a bit of “environmental research” then up North in the van.’ I wasn’t sure whether snowboarding counts as “environmental research” but hey, why not?

He showed me the leisure battery, explained the relay switch, demonstrated where his gadgets would charge from. TV, laptop, phone. He was in the process of insulating the van.

‘Regarding insurance and all that, is this legal?’ I asked. He laughed, ‘don’t you worry about that. It will get a bit complicated when I install my wood-burning stove….’

Last I heard he was working as a “freelance environmental consultant” somewhere in the North of England. But what I’m really trying to say is, if you see a large blue van rolling backwards down a hill, a trail of burning books in its wake, chased by some angry victims of water theft, let me know.

It was one of the most unhelpful things I’ve ever said.  If you exclude countless random quotations from my toddler’s TV shows, typically made at inappropriate moments. “Oh no, it’s the Pinky Ponk” is a great eyebrow-raiser, for example. On this occasion my wife looked a bit surprised, though not unpleasantly so, and she was mildly amused I think, though not impressed.  I should work on that really, impressing my wife I mean…

One gift still under the tree, the room almost tidy, but not quite, that wreckage known as “what’s left of Christmas”, clutter on the acceptable side of chaos. A desultory crowd of reindeer lounging about on the stove, remotes scattered about (maddening I tell you, they should be lined up), the occasional fallen Christmas card abandoned mercilessly by its friends. Tins of chocolate everywhere, clearly some sort of godforsaken attempt  to make me fat.

A strong Belgian beer beside me, a book in my right hand, my left hand freely alternating between the beer and a plate of crispy duck niblets which, in my experience, are the answer. Ba da bing, ba da boom, I could easily spend the rest of my life in harmony with beer and crispy duck niblets. A happy though pointless existence.  Across the room my wife sat in a little spot filled with property papers, garden magazines and an arty book on home design with an infuriatingly trendy cover.

“Arrrrgh!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands to her head, “my mind is going completely mad.”

“Is it a bit like driving at high speed through a cloud of flies and watching them splat on the windscreen?” I asked, helpfully.

She laughed, somewhat artificially, “not really, no, but thanks for your help.”  I do like to help. Maybe I should have gone with the Pinky Ponk line.