'Where are you flying from? You need to know the details!'

Oh, God. Colin is right. What if Tom starts asking me questions? What if he wants to see photos? What if I am not 100 per cent up to speed with the intricacies of Turkish travel the next time I see him? I'm supposed to be leaving in the morning!

That night, I do some research. I see that from Gatwick I'd get to Ankara, which is the capital, having replaced Istanbul, which is actually bigger and used to be Constantinople. I see the country thrived in the Bronze Age, although there's no mention of silver, or thimbles, and I find that to get to a village an hour away, I would have to have got a transport service from the international terminal to the main bus terminal in town, which would have taken sixty minutes, before finding a train, the ticket for which would be about £3, or 6 lira.

My phone suddenly rings. I'm frightened. What if it's Tom, checking to see if my phone has an international ringtone yet? I am relieved to find it's my mum, who's phoned to tell me a story about someone I don't know doing something I don't understand. But I'm shaken.

'You can't lie in this day and age,' says Colin, on the phone, later. 'One ill-thought-out Tweet. One errant status update. You have to go dark. Turn your phone off. Close your blinds. You're taking a big risk.'

I find it hard to sleep that night. I look at my wife resting peacefully beside me. What dark world of secrets and deceit have I brought her into? What dangers and troubles has my ruthless ambitions to stay in and watch telly in my pants brought to her? How will she react when I tell her we have to live a lie together - a lie which dictates we must forever refer to little silver thimbles from very specific areas of a country we've never been to?

I am just like Tom Cruise in a Tom Cruise film.

The next day, I cancel my trip, and I go to Tom's party instead.

It's fun.

POTATOES

There is almost nothing that annoys me about my wife. Nothing, apart from the fact that every meal she eats - no matter how small - will always end up with me staring at her plate, shaking my head.

Tonight, it has happened again. She has left a tiny piece of potato on her plate. Everything else has gone. Only the tiny piece of potato remains. She's put her knife and fork down next to it and given up. Given up, on Britain's smallest piece of potato. Sometimes, it's not potato. It can be anything. A hint of sausage. A mention of spinach. A rumour of cheese. But tonight it's potato.

Silently, I take the plates to the kitchen while she continues to watch The X Factor.