I am delivered here on a wave of warmth, riding up front in a box-jammed Ford Transit driven by a kind, smiley, barn door-shaped Algerian, called, vaguely surprisingly, Andy.

And I'm fried.

 After months of planning and packing – or, more accurately, shedding possessions, and worn out by long farewells and no small amount of worry, I am definitely finally here, sweating on the creaking jetty, under the hot summer sky, over a hundred miles from ‘home’, feeling like a one-man travelling circus, staring at my paltry, residual belongings, and ‘Olive’, the retired 35-foot sightseeing cruiser that is to be my new residence.