The most dangerous Christmas present I have ever had came from a girlfriend, who, years ago, bought me an Atlas. An innocent paperback but a thorough time bomb of a present. No other gift has wrung so much out of me. Nor has any ever driven me to the precipitous, vertiginous distraction this one has. It beats the drum, I dance; it leads, I follow.

It has led me by the nose to strange and familiar places; to trek across mysterious and mundane worlds; to places of shattering boredom, to those of exhilaration, to others that have teetered on the edge of unpleasant; and encounters where I would have openly welcomed the comfort of others to have experienced (try a morning in a foreign Police station). What an overseer. Night after night snared by this damnable book.

A beautiful, intoxicating poison shudders through my veins, the instant I crack open this demon. Out of it's pages pushes a perfume of beguiling, enchanting names: Tashkent, Samarkand, Akron, New York, Odessa, Ushuaia, Pondicherry; the Plain of Jars. On and on and on. Names that are dangerous, seductive; all of them. Places that demand that the weak-willed character I am, has to go to, or at bare minimum, wrack his mind thinking of.

The whole book is a spider's web of unbreakable strength that I cannot struggle free of, however hard I try. I'm pinned down on to a page, tracing the route of a railway with my tremulous finger, my eyes flitting across the course of a river; worrying whether I can get from here to there without needing to go there. It's the Femme Fatale that lives on my bookcase, slipping off the shelf to stalk me through my flat. Every night a tug on the shoulder; try this, try that, go here, go there, and the worst of all - you know you want to. Enough ! Why do you keep reminding me?

In some way, shape, or form, I've shown each of the seven deadly travel sins, and on occasions, in malicious combination: -

Gloomy: "I'll never get there"
Worrisome about time: "there's not enough time left " Nothing like tracing a route out and hearing the rumble of time's winged chariot hurrying by.
Sweating: "How am I going to earn enough to be able to afford to go there…?"
Envious: "Wish I'd been there".
Feverish: "I must, I must go there!"
Gluttony: "...need to go to more places.
Wrath - "How much for a visa!"

Oh this is a bondage all right, I'm in deep here. The strange thing is, I like it. I'm complicit totally. I love flipping through the pages, idling over it's maps, wondering, pondering. It's almost another species of imagination, this atlas. Unimagined possibilities If this innocent looking paperback decides it's time, then I'll usually go, accepting naturally, there's money and time available.