So from now on, when I get home, I run through a check-list of people I like to know the fate of. This consists of Bamber Gascoigne, Michael Foot, Wendy Richards, Jimmy Carter and Pete Doherty. It's a pretty unreal approach to life and death, but then, much of everyday existence is a confused amalgam of the real and unreal anyway; this is something I shall be discussing at this year's Hay-on-Wye literary festival with Kurt Vonnegut.
Talking of death, my holiday featured a close encounter with it. We went off on a pretty adventurous wander round Chile and the highlight was a visit to the San Rafael glacier in the Patagonian ice field, the largest continuous mass of ice outside the two poles. The glacier is spectacular but in retreat; it's been melting for centuries now, but in recent years, the melting process has accelerated.
As my family approached this monument to nature on a small, vulnerable rubber dingy, we could see the melting take place. Creaks and groans could be heard as cracks formed and small sections fell into the sea. As I stared at it, several confused thoughts ran through my mind.
These were: 'Look, this is global warming in action, people should see this before it disappears. No, hang on, if more people travelled here to see it, that would increase air travel, which would only add to the global warming that's destroying it in the first place. But sod the planet, this has got to be seen.
Our planet is dying. Wait a minute. What's happening to me?
I've come a million miles from civilisation to get all emotional about ice. My God, I'm turning into David Cameron!' At that point, as if to emphasise the necessity for concerted world action on climate change, perhaps via a rock concert or something to do with Madonna, a massive bit of the glacier fell into the sea.
I say massive, but that doesn't quite convey the size. Imagine you were in a small paddle boat and a helicopter flew over and dropped the Royal Festival Hall not far from your head. That's what happened to us.
Suddenly, a beautiful, languid symbol of nature's fading struggle to preserve its dignity became an evil tidal wave of murderous, stupid ice. As my family fled to avoid the engulfing, evil killing machine that is twisted Mother Nature, fresh jumbled thoughts flew though my mind. These were: 'Ice.
F***ing ice! Get rid of it. Use a thousand blowtorches or something.
My God, if I die now, David Cameron might actually use my death to prove a point. That must never happen! I will survive.
Die, ice, die, you solid bastard!" This isn't the first time I nearly died on holiday. Some time ago, at the Kruger national park in South Africa, my wife and I were charged at one night by an angry hippopotamus.
It was out feeding off some daft leaves and we had come between it and the water. Coming between a hippopotamus and the water is not something you should do, since hippos, being products of Mother Nature, are both thick and evil and will charge at you out of spite. Imagine a small zeppelin filled with beef, given wheels and placed on a train track, with a small hydrogen bomb strapped to the rear.
We survived and again what pulled me through were the thoughts going through my mind as we fled. I had to live, you see, because if I died by being trampled to death by a hippopotamus, I knew none of my friends would have taken the funeral seriously. While in Chile, as well as taunting a collapsing glacier, we slept at the foot of a live volcano, visited a place called the Valley of Death and slept though a small earthquake.
All this and we came home unscathed. Which makes it all the more ironic that the taxi taking us home from the airport crashed into another car just 500 yards from our house. What are the chances of that happening?
Actually, as I bent in pain with whiplash, I did think that a show called What Are the Chances of That Happening? would be quite a good title to a lighthearted, panel-game format. The format was self-explanatory and I determined then and there to send it off to Channel 4.
I'd quite like Richard Whiteley to host it.
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