Andy Richardson: Feet are itching, passport is ready

At least you didn't, until I told you. Doh! Me and my big pen.

This week, your meander into the World of Man is being brought to you by a hologram. Actually, it's a holowriter. And we're thinking of patenting that title before anyone else does.

The holowriter has assumed control because I'm away. And, who knows, my Editor might even create a funky little graphic for the bottom of the page to say: *Andy Richardson is away. Though now she doesn't need to because I've already done it for her.

Besides, I'm not 'not here'. This is all of me, live and unexpurgated. I'm just in holowriter form. Give enough monkeys a typewriter and they'll write Shakespeare. Give a holowriter a Dell PC and a complicated algorithmic formula and it'll write a column. Or else, the writer will write it in advance, before he starts his holiday . . . Hey, hey, hey, Midland Press Awards. Is there a category for best column written while the writer was on holiday?

I'd like to tell you that I'm on an exotic beach, sunning myself beneath the ultraviolet rays of a Caribbean sun. Or else I'd like to whisk you into my exciting, jet-set life and report on my encounter with Rwandan mountain gorillas. It would be delicious to tell you that I'd flown back to Tokyo to eat the world's best sashimi at Tsukiji Fish Market or, better still, that I'd booked a mountain biking holiday in Vancouver. But then again, I did that once and nearly broke my wrist, flying over the handlebars on my first descent and crashing into a rock. Kaddump. Man and mountain bike equals danger and I have the rumpled bones to prove it.

As is the case with most blokes, my life consists of lists featuring a Top Three. I've got a Top Three albums, bands, books and films. There's a Top Three dates, dinners and destinations. The Bottom Three lists also exist, though I try not to dwell on those.

My Bottom Three Holidays are: a £1,000 Italian holiday that didn't get passed passport control because it was cancelled without warning; a more-expensive trip to Laos and Thailand that resulted in a dose of dysentery, rapid weight loss and a visit to the doctor. And bringing up the rear would be a childhood holiday in North Wales that was cut short after two days when a severe illness resulted in a rushed trip to the now-defunct Dudley Guest Hospital.

My Top Three would be: A solo roadtrip around California at the age of 22 that involved 2,500 miles of wonder and endless possibility. Fuelled by Taco Bell, I travelled along the spellbinding Route One, to the Grand Canyon, Death Valley and Joshua Tree, via Los Angeles, San Francisco and Monterey. Number Two would be a similarly youthful trip through Thailand and Malaysia, where new food, landscape and experience were a revelation. I ate sticky blue rice and satay from bacteria-rich street food vendors, and didn't succumb to a moment's illness. I saw pristine rain forest and slept beneath the stars with newly-made friends from Germany, France and Asia. And I learned more about the differences between people – and their similarities – than a text book might ever teach. And the third? It's yet to happen. But I'll tell you when it does.

So while holowriter steps in, I'm off on my jollies. The truth about my holiday, however, is more prosaic, as the truth often is. The cherished time away from the office will be spent trying to make inroads into the mountain of DIY jobs that have accumulated during two years of 'I'll-do-that-tomorrow-itis'. There's something deeply cathartic about the battle between man and ivy, there's something remarkably therapeutic about hands-and-knees-floor-laying. It's time to take stock, save a few bob and catch up with the life I left behind. There are walls to be painted, fences to be fixed and friendships to cherish.

My retreat into domesticity won't last long. My passport's already itchy and looking forward to its next trip to a destination where the air is warm and the streets are dusty. And so, next year, I hope to be able to report to you on sojourns to Africa, Asia and the US of A. If they'll let me in. Bon voyage.

Andy Richardson cancelled his holiday. He was only joking. He isn't away. He's sitting in the corner with 25 monkeys, trying to write as well as Shakespeare.