By the time you read this…

To my sweet readers, kind friends, adoring fans, and joy-famished family, by the time you read this column, I will be gone.

It is too late to try and stop me, for what has happened cannot be undone.

Like time itself, passenger planes only travel in one direction, and on Sunday I boarded one bound for Lanzarote.

Things are different here; nothing like they were in the old world.

Beaches are black, pints cost a pound, and swimming-pools stay warm without anybody even having to pee in them.

A ball of fire dangles over the island, like a rattle above the head of a milk-drunk infant, supine and content.

I met a man called Augustus the other day, and the two of us have since become ‘best amigos’.

He is a local, he knows the craic, and he knows I know he knows the craic, so he keeps joking with me that the celestial inferno that keeps the water warm is actually the sun.

“As if,” I say, but it doesn’t matter how many times I tell him that I am too wise to be caught out by his aul’ codding, he keeps saying it, anyway.

But that’s Gus for you; he doesn’t let a good joke go.

What else can I tell you about this place?

Well, nobody has to work. There are people serving drinks, and stuff like that, but I’m pretty sure they’re all volunteers, or doing community service for really petty crimes that they probably didn’t even commit in the first place.

Speaking of work, I must tell you about this weird thing that keeps happening to me.

Sometimes, when I am lying on my deck-chair, just about to drift off, my closing eyes cutting the sunshine into iridescent shards of bliss, I get this feeling that I am about to sleep in for work.

My heart skips a beat, then I realise where I am, then I laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh, until the intoxicating mixture of mirth and relief almost makes me vomit.

I imagine it’s similar to how it feels when the warden knocks on your death row door and tells you that you’ve been pardoned.

Anyway, I always find it hard to get back to sleep after that happens – you know, with the electrifying sense of euphoria and ecstasy – so I usually go for a few beers at a nearby pub where everybody calls me ‘Little Liam Neeson’.

“A pint of San Miguel for the beer assassin?” shouts the barman, as soon as I walk through the door.

I always pretend to shoot him with a gun made from my finger and thumb, and he always holds his chest as if I got him.

“I suppose one won’t hurt,” I say, holstering my weapon.

Anyway, my belly is starting to look a bit red, so I guess it’s turnover time; this back ain’t gonna bronze itself.

Right, I must shoot on, but I hope you are all having a neat time back on the cold grey rock.

Say hello to everyone for me, and carry this page around with you and make sure everyone reads it. I don’t want anybody worrying about me.