Marc Quinn and I were dining on a ceviche of local fish at the Explora Hotel on Easter Island. I can’t tell you anything more about this, the remotest permanently inhabited place in the world, because I’m embargoed by the magazine that paid for my trip.

Ah yes, it is as if that famous Pacific island, a tiny bit of volcanic Connemara, cut off from the Hibernian main and flung down in tens of thousands of square miles of cobalt-blue Pacific, were ringed by giant statues; stone heads displaying a monumental ataraxy. And that were you to ask one of the gentle Polynesian natives who exactly these megaliths depicted, they were to reply: “We call that one ‘Conde’ that one ‘Nast’ and those two over there ‘World’ and ‘Traveller’.” But then, those who live by the junket also die by it, wouldn’t you say?

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A few words on this video clip. It was filmed — as should be obvious — in the back of a London cab, beginning as it crossed Vauxhall Bridge, continuing as it headed up through Victoria, and then continuing, as its route and the route taken by Dave Rudman, in the opening sequence of The Book of Dave, intersect. Finally, it comes to an end on the Edgware Road, where Dave’s fare is staring bemusedly at the promenading Arabs.

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Tony Blair should watch it: he was up late on Tuesday night sending out a “personalised” email to the 1.8 million car drivers who added their signatures to the petition against road pricing on No 10’s website. I can’t help feeling that the PM will leave us with one, peculiarly “Blairite” legacy: namely, a political process in which protesting is either ineffectual or electronic, which amounts to the same thing.

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Will is going to be taking up a two-week residency on the Isle of Jura in May.
Read what Will thinks about the residency,
Listen to Will talking about it

Will is due to attend the Flip literary festival in Brazil in July and will also be at the Edinburgh Festival, which runs from August 10 to September 2.

Will is going to be talking to Philip Hensher on Tuesday February 27 at the Parker Moot Room, Amory Building, University of Exeter from 7pm to 8.30pm, £8/£4 concessions, 01392 667080.

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It matters where you are born. Not only the country or the city, the burg or the hamlet – but the precise location, its height above terra firma, its positioning in the welter of the world; for this is the still point at the exact centre of the ever expanding shock wave of your life.

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