This story is the direct result of me sitting in the Athens airport departure lounge waiting for my flight back to the UK, picking bits of bright green expanded polyurethane adhesive out of my hair and dark brown polyester resin from my beard. I think that the realisation that I had glued my feet into my boat shoes and stuck my toes together brought home the absurdity into which my life had descended. My situation was hammered home when the security people asked me to take off my shoes before I walked through the airport scanner. I had to tear great lumps of skin from my insoles to get the...