I went to a party on Friday night. The sort of party which rules out further weekend runnings of any kind, let alone cultural. Be that as it may, it is the closest I’ve ever come to knowing what it was like during prohibition: it was held in some strange sweatshop looking building in Bethnal Green; you had to wait for and then get it in a lift with slidey doors after saying a password (sadly, I didn’t hear what the password was), go up five floors and there you were. A little bar and you could smoke! I can take it or leave it nowadays but kisses to be sweet must be stolen.

By 3pm on Sunday I was feeling fine and having listened to an commemorative ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue’ (with the late Humphrey Lyttelton on fine form), was ready for the latest episode of the Radio Four adaptation of Anthony Powell’s ‘A Dance To The Music of Time‘. Condensing a twelve novel series into six hours of radio isn’t going to be easy - you might as well try and make it a haiku. The Channel Four adaptation from a few years back was very enjoyable - lovely choice of music - and similarly, the adapters opted to choose a few episodes from the novels and dramatise them, this time retaining the narrator’s voice to introduce the scene and then reflect on its meaning. It works really well.

Anyway, talking of difficulties of adaptation, a literary genre I literally couldn’t be further from enjoying is anything about travel or, like, the wider world. Especially if it involves a bit of personal growth or suffering or something unpleasant like that. I’m quite happy to read a Raymond Chandler novel set in Los Angeles in the twenties as Marlowe generally just cracks wise, gets a split lip, chats with some blonde starlet and solves a chess puzzle while remaining thoroughly cynical throughout. But all this Kiterunning in Japan or being a Geisha in Afghanistan and so on. Nah. (Worryingly, I realised the other day that I’ve only breeched the M25 once in 2008, and that was when I had lunch in Whitstable, even if I did get home after midnight. Right now, I don’t even have a valid passport.)

So, when my friend started telling me about this book he was reading about this Australian guy who lived in India, I was a bit sceptical. He said it wasn’t the sort of book he’d normally read. He said it was pretty dreadfully written. “Overwritten” in fact. And 1,000 pages long. Hmmm… Then he started telling me how it has basically taken over his life for a week, virtually at the cost of eating, sleeping, interacting - this was backed up wearily by his wife - so I promised to give it a go. I bought the book in Foyles and indeed, he was right. It’s pretty awful, especially at the start. Florid, too wordy. But heavens to Betsey, you just can’t stop reading the thing.

I’ll try and explain - Australian guy escapes from prison, goes to India, becomes a doctor in a slum, then a gangster, then goes and fights in Afghanistan… It’s all kind of a true story, but kind of not. I wouldn’t advise anybody to read it now, wait until you’ve got a long journey to go on (not by my standards, which would be Harrow-on-the-Hill or Streatham, but like Paraguay or something) and buy it at the airport. The flight will fly by. In fact, you’ll probably end up asking the pilot to circle around for a bit before landing. Like ‘A Dance To The Music Of Time’, an adaptation isn’t going to be straight-forward, but apparently Johnny Depp has bought the rights and is going to star in a film version; will be interested to see how that turns out.

Ho hum. More next week.