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In tourist thought and discourse home is never exotic, obviously. Exotic is other places, and almost always other times.

There is certainly a reluctance to see the present as exotic. Time perhaps that we did? What could be more exotic than the world today? In Cairo I am sitting at night under an awning at a street wedding. I am sharing a table with a beautifully uniformed senior policeman who takes a toke of a joint and with the greatest care and politeness passes it on to me. Drinks are served by a dwarf in a gallabeah. (All true but I guess all rather 'Alexandria Quartet').

I am in Jakarta at the time of the Jakarta Highland Games (don't even ask). I find myself in a very dark and louche bar in Blok M, wedged between two drinking companions: on my left a kilted Scotsman who fixes me with a defiant eye as he elaborates the finer points of caber tossing. On my right, pressing herself against me, a bar girl; there is much less to her skirt. So in my left ear I have…"well the thing you dinnae want to do when you aactually release the caber is…." And in my right: "You wan' fuck me? You like fuck? Cheap price. You wan' fuck? etc"

Outside my very window in Brixton I hear a row in the street. I look out. A driver has got out of his car and is arguing with a pedestrian. The pedestrian has a large snake coiled carefully around the top of his shaven head (not unusual; I've seen him round a few times (indeed he was in St Martin's Lane last night, well out of his manor). Things get heated; Snakeman reaches into his jacket pocket and brings out (as one does in emergencies) a…spare snake and points it like a pistol at the face of the motorist who jumps back into his car and drives off. Snakeman folds up his spare snake with solicitude and puts it gently back into his pocket.

I travel with my nine year old son to Cartagena, the historic Caribbean coastal city of Columbia. He has been there before and I have not; he speaks Spanish, mine is just an optimistic admixture of Italian to Portuguese.
He is my guide.

I already know his skills as a guide; we stand in front of an imposing walled mansion in Bogota. "Look Dad." He says in in clear piping voice, pointing as only a child can point: "That is the house of Gacha ,the second biggest narcotraficante in Columbia". "That's nice " I say, eyeing the bodyguard at the gate with his sub machine gun "Now let's see what's down this street."

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