I had a strange hour in which I wandered in a kind of trance feeding money into machines and playing games I couldn't follow. I drove racing cars into bales of hay and obliterated friendly troops with lasers and unwittingly helped zombie mutants do unspeakable things to a child. Eventually I ran out of money and stepped outinto the night. I had just a moment to note that the rain had eased a little and that the street was flooded, evidently from a clogged drain, when a red Fiesta sped through the puddle at great speed and unusually close to the kerb, transferring nearly all the water from the puddle and on to me.

 To say that I was drenched barely hints at my condition. I was as soaked as if I had fallen into the sea. As I stood there spluttering and gasping, the car slowed, three closecropped heads popped out the windows, shouted some happy greeting along the lines of 'Nyaanyaa, nyaanyaa!' and sped off. Glumly, I walked back along the prom, squelching with each step and shivering with cold. I don't wish to reduce this cheery chronicle to pathos, but I had only recently recovered from a fairly serious bout of pneumonia. I won't say that I nearly died, but I was ill enough to watch This Morning with Richard and Judy, and I certainly didn't want to be in that condition again. To add to my indignity, the Fiesta came past on a victory lap and its pleasurestarved occupants slowed to offer me another triumphal 'Nyaanyaa' before speeding off into the night with a screech and a brief, uncontrolled fishtail slide that unfortunately failed to bury them in a lamppost.

 By the time I reached my distant hotel, I was feeling thoroughly chilled and wretched. So imagine my consternation, if you will, when I discovered that the reception area was in semidarkness and the door was locked. I looked at my watch. It was only nine o'clock, for Christ sake. What kind of town was this? There were two doorbells, and I tried them both but without response. I tried my room key in the door and of course it didn't work. I tried the bells again, leaning on them both for many minutes and growing increasingly angry. When this elicited no satisfaction, I banged on the glass door with the flat of my hand, then with a fist and finally with a stout boot and a touch of frenzy. I believe I may also have filled the quiet streets with shouting.

 Eventually the proprietor appeared at the top of some basement stairs, looking surprised. 'I'm so sorry, sir,' he said mildly as he unlocked the door and let me in. 'Have ypu been out there long?' Well, I blush to think at how I ranted at the poor man. I used immoderate language. I sounded like Graham Taylor before they led him off and took away his warmup suit. I accused him and his fellow townspeople of appalling shortages of intelligence and charm. I told him that I had just passed the dreariest evening of my life in this Godforsaken hellhole of a resort, that I had been soaked to the skin by a earful of young men who between them were ten IQ points short of a moron, that I had walked a mile in wet clothes, and had now spent nearly half an hour shivering in the cold because I had been locked out of my own hotel at nine o'clock in the fucking evening.

 'May I remind you,' I went on in a shrill voice, 'that two hours ago you said goodbye to me, watched me go out the door and disappear down the street. Did you think I wasn't coming back? That I would sleep in a park and return for my things in the morning? Or is it merely that you are a total imbecile? Please tell me because I would very much like to know.'

 The proprietor flinchingly soaked up my abuse and responded with fluttering hands and a flood of apologies. He offered me a tray of tea and sandwiches, to dry and press my wet clothes, to escort me to my room and turn on my radiator personally. He did everything but fall to my feet and beg me to run him through with a sabre. He positively implored me to let him bring me something warming on a tray.

 'I don't want anything but to go to my room and count the minutes until I get out of this fucking dump!' I shouted, perhaps a trifle theatrically but to good effect, and stalked up the stairs to the first floor where I plodded about heatedly in the corridor for some minutes and realized that I didn't have the faintest idea which was my room. There was no number on the key.

 I returned to the reception area, now once more in semidarkness, and put my head by the basement door. 'Excuse me,' I said in a small voice, 'could you please tell me what room I'm in?'

 'Number twentyseven, sir,' came a voice from the darkness.

 I stood for some time without moving. 'Thank you,' I said.

 'It's quite all right, sir,' came the voice. 'Have a good night.'

 I frowned and cleared my throat. Thank you,' I said again and retired to my room, where the night passed without further incident.

 In the morning, I presented myself in the sunny dining room and, as I had feared, the proprietor was waiting to receive me. Now that I was dry and warm and well rested I felt terrible about my outburst of the night before.

 'Goodmorning, sir!' he said brightly as if nothing had happened, and showed me to a window table with a nice view of the sea. 'Sleep all right, did you?'

 I was taken aback by his friendliness. 'Uh, yes. Yes, I did as a matter of fact.''Good! Splendid! Juice and cereal on the trolley. Please help yourself. Can I get you the full English breakfast, sir?'

 I found this unmerited bonhomie unbearable. I tucked my chin into my chest and in a furtive grumble said: 'Look here, I'm very sorry for what I said last night. I was in a bit of a temper.'

 'It's quite all right, sir.'

 'No really, I'm, um, very sorry. Bit ashamed, in fact.'

 'Consider it forgotten, sir. So full English breakfast, is it?'

 'Yes, please.'

 'Very good, sir!'

 I've never had such good or friendly service anywhere, or felt more like a worm. He brought my food promptly, chattering away about the weather and what a glorious day it promised to be. I couldn't understand why he was so forgiving. Only gradually did it occur to me what a strange sight I must have presented a middleaged man with a rucksack, visiting a place like Weston out of season for no evident reason, fetching up at their hotel and bellowing and stomping about over a trifling inconvenience. He must have thought I was mad, an escaped lunatic perhaps, and that this was the safest way to approach me. Either that, or he was just an extremely nice person. In either case, I salute him now.

 Weston was surprisingly lovely in morning sunshine. Out in the bay an island called Flat Holm basked in the clear, clean air and beyond it rose the green hills of Wales, twelve miles or so across the water. Even the hotels that I had disdained the night before didn't look half bad.

 I walked to the station and took a train to Chepstow and a bus on to Monmouth. The Wye Valley was as beautiful as I remembered it from years before dark woods, winding river, lonely white farmhouses high up on steep slopes but the villages between were rather astonishingly charmless and seemed to consist mostly of petrol stations, pubs with big car parks and gift shops. I watched out for Tintern Abbey, made famous, of course, by the wellknown Wordsworth poem, 'I Can Be Boring Outside the Lake District Too', and was disappointed to find that it didn't stand out in the country as I recalled but on the edge of an unmemorable village.

 Monmouth, however, seemed to be a fine, handsome town with a sloping High Street and an imposing town hall. In front of it stood a statue of Charles Stewart Rolls, son of Lord and Lady Llangattock, 'pioneer of ballooning, motoring and aviation, who died in a crash at Bournemouth in July 1910', according to the inscription. He was shown holding a model of an early biplane, which made him look rather like King Kong swatting away attacking craft. There was no indication of what his local connection might be. The Monmouth Bookshop on Church Street had a book of mine in the window, and so of course gets a mention here.