Down the east coast, the landscape becomes flat and agricultural, the gaps between half-hearted towns ever longer. My playlists are sorted. There’s a lot of Marvin Gaye going on, Michael Kiwanuka’s new album, blasts of Kamasi Washington and Miles Davis. Sometimes I sing a top line for a new song into my phone. Ooh, I’m just so achingly cool, man…

I’m heading to Dunedin, the Edinburgh of the South. Lord knows why. S says it’s the most boring place on earth. The guide books highlight the railway station. But it’s people that make places.

Dicksy welcomes me like a long lost friend. I am a constant disappointment to him, not planning to spend a month here in his glorious city. He’s determined I will love it. As soon as I’m in the door, we’re out. First to a private art gallery in a refined suburban villa. Two gentle, loving women – Rosemary from Dunedin, and her partner Agnes from Austin Texas – show us round their home, describing every painting, every sculpture. The artists’ life stories, the provenance of each piece – the prices. I am feeling a little uncomfortable – I think he’s told them I am a collector. There’s an assumption I will be buying. No piece is under 5,000 dollars. Agnes insists I enter their holy of holies – their bedroom, and it gets a little weird with Freudian self portraits on the wall. And a headboard made entirely of layers of beeswax that smells like a florist’s. And immaculately placed soft furnishings like every hotel, motel and B&B across the country, with at least eleven pillows on the bed. Even I do not have the imagination to figure out why. Everything’s in the best possible taste. I try to leave, but they drag me into the garden to show me sculptures ‘just like Brancusi’. Eventually, we give our thanks, and make our excuses and I yank Dicksy out by the elbow.

I need some air, and Dicksy runs me to a steep cliff with a trail down to the sea complete with a tunnel through the rock that a 19th century Scottish magnate built for his daughter. One day her horse returned unaccompanied. We lollop down, almost getting blown clean into the sea. We march back up – he’s the last one there! I realise I’m actually quite fit now.

I’m sorted for the evening – Dunedin Folk Club. It’s open mic night, and Cameron who runs it says he’ll have a left handed guitar for me. He hasn’t. I’m obliged to sit through a procession of anti-music: well-meaning, earnest nonsense. There’s a song about Wilson Carparks. This passes for agitprop here. There is a group called The Three Wise Men. Self knowledge not evident. If one of them could play it might be passable. If one of them could sing I might forgive them all. It’s like the first session of a music therapy collective. The one where everyone confesses their problem, everyone nods sympathetically and says ‘I know how you feel – I’ve been there too’. Why relive the pain? There’s a moment when everyone sings The Bonnie Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond together, each person in a different key. I’ll take the high road. They don’t sell alcohol. Or even tea. What I really need is Diazepam.

So what do people hear when I play? How do they plan their own getaways? (Note: this is a rhetorical flourish. I’d rather remain in ignorance, dear reader). Open mics the world over have their own rules: mutual support, non-judgmental, benefit of the doubt. In other words, you be nice to me, and I’ll clap for you too. No one really wants to hear anyone else. It’s just a deal, of sorts…

Vanessa and Mick are from Glasgow, Jeremy from Aberdeen, Scotty (yes) from Perth. Scotland’s loss is New Zealand’s gain. I get announced as a visitor ‘here to watch from Engerland’, and thirty heads turn, ready to give me a Glasgow kiss. I’m neither Scottish or Kiwi. So close, and yet so far.

The next day I go to see different kinds of albatross sailing over the sea. There are seals and terns and spoonbills. I get a photo of a barracuda jumping clean out of the water. Probably the best photo of the trip. Pure luck: I was trying to snap the penguins.

By sheer coincidence, the following evening one of my favourite duos are playing in Dunedin. The Tattletale Saints are Kiwis who live and work in Nashville. They’re touring home and promoting their new record. They are on at the Folk Club. They are everything I’d like to be: great songs, great guitar and double bass playing, great harmonies. These are modest heroes to have – no-one else has ever heard of them, even in New Zealand. I chat to them afterwards, Cy and Vanessa, and they are earnest young people who are always in work, as a duo, and as musicians in other people’s bands. Good luck to them. Heroes I’m delighted to have met.

The next day Dicksy and I go for coffee with his mates. His brother Frank is 74, not Scottish, but he is wearing a kilt. He looks exactly like latter day Neil Young, only without the charm, and without the teeth. He plays drums, and as I’m a guitarist, he’s sure I will love an album from 1974 by Uriah Heep. He forces me to download it. Later I’ll listen and remember why I have always hated Prog Rock. He’s just bought a tiny plane and wants me to go flying with him. He’s not taken it out himself yet. I’ll pass. He’s a figure skater and is still competing. He plays ice hockey and kicks the shit out of teenagers. I meet Chas. He’s not Scottish either. But he’s a legend in New Zealand surfing (apart from being a property tycoon). A mate of his – also in his 70s – went out two days ago, and hasn’t returned. Chas tells me tales of hidden surf beaches, only shared amongst the old guys, the ones who don’t have apps or GPS or any of that stuff that stops you from living the good life.

There’s more than meets the eye in Dunedin. Any place that has an Islay Street can’t be bad, after all. There’s a sort of counter-culture nestling in a straight-laced, po-faced Scottish Presbyterian town. These people don’t play by conventional rules, they are frontiers people. Whether they can or can’t play music, can or can’t fly, can or can’t still surf the old waves in the old ways. I think Dicksy’s right, this is a good place, made so by good people. And even better albatross.

It’s the middle of February and I’m finishing up. Another five weeks after last year, and I still haven’t finished with this country really. But honestly, there are other places in the world. Canada? India? America? Or given budgets, the Isle of Wight? So then, Laz doez the Coloniez. But next time I think with company… I need an Ernie Wise to my Eric Morecambe. Any ready, willing victims? Give me sunshine….

I’m writing this all in a rush in Hong Kong airport. It’s empty. No planes even on the tarmac. All the cabin staff wear masks and gloves. The airport cleaners are dressed like surgeons. An airport that’s usually throbbing with a seething human flow is silent. No footfall. No shops. Zombie zone. I’ve been checked twice for coronavirus already. I’ve worked my way into the business class lounge. Here I have 400 seats, 4 restaurants, a bar and tea bar all to myself.

I just wanna get home… just want to be in wonderful London. Aah, when all’s said and done, home is where the heart is… and it’s people that make places.