Gentle reader, it's been a difficult week, one which sees my piking at the nanna-approved hour of midnight, taking to my bed with a cup of tea and a cat at the nearest opportunity, and making long phone calls to my BFF (who, with hands full of children and family drama, probably doesn't need them) to whimper about the unfairness of the world while I clutch a pillow to my hard-done-by bosom.

Such vague complaints about hard weeks, difficult times and the capriciousness of the universe are common in the blogosphere, and I'm always irritated because no one wants to elaborate any further. So, here is my week; it began last Sunday when I met a snake-eyed man (don't really know what that means) with tight jeans, cowboy boots and greasy hair. After lighting each other's cigarettes we decided we were in love and ran away in his Monaro to our own love-nest in a caravan park near Tathra.

His name was Johnny, for the record.

On Monday, having donned a pair of acid-wash jeans, bleached my hair and changed my name to 'Patsy,' I found a dog. He was a great dog. Admittedly, he had three legs, and couldn't see very well, and he had a bad skin condition, but I loved him and named him Ralph. Ralph and I had a great time frolicking in the bindii, washing Johnny's underpants and reading New Idea.

As you can imagine, for the whole of Monday night I was blissfully, blissfully happy. I had Ralph by my side, a dinner of 2 Minute Noodles in my belly, and my man was tinkering with his meth lab outside. You know, I'd never thought it possible that I, of all people, could have found my own domestic paradise, and I fell asleep next to Johnny's twitchng form in a bubble of gratitude and love.

I woke the next morning to find Ralph gone, Johnny gone, my clogs and Winnie Blues gone. There was no note, only a pile of dirty laundry and the smouldering remains of a meth lab attracting the attention of the local constabulary. Not knowing where to go or what to do I hitched a ride to Darwin with a truck driver named Stan, who had Tourettes and a hook for a hand.

Stan let me sleep in the back, nestled between crates of Delta Goodrem underwear and incontinence pads. I was grateful for his kindness but he wasn't much of a talker. He spoke only in monosyllables when he wasn't spasmodically jerking his head and spewing dirty-sounding syllables. I found myself with only my broken heart, the open road, an uncertain future, and countless pairs of pastel underpants embroidered with roses for company. This was when I began to realise this might not be such a good week for me.

When we reached Darwin Stan and I said our goodbyes. I went to wander the docks looking for a new life and somewhere to bandage the major lacerations from shaking Stan's hook hand. A Norwegian sailor named Oslo took pity on me, and invited me to join his crew as a cook. That night I was aboard the Kottur og Stulka preparing lutefisk for 90 burly sailors with fairy tale accents and tattoos of anchors. I couldn't understand a word they were saying, but they declared my codfish soaked in lye delicious and toasted my health

Afterwards, as I tended to my chemical burns, I sat on the deck watching the heaving black sea and contemplating how Johnny must be doing, if he'd gone back for his laundry and whether he was remembering Ralph's scabies ointment. I went to sleep that night curled next to Oslo's foot locker with a heavy heart, wondering what the next day would bring.

During the night the ship hit an iceberg, which stoved in the hull and split the ship in half, so we found ourselves clinging to crates of counterfeit Fendi handbags like lifeboats. A group of sailors and I managed to stay alive by burning a few miraculously dry Croissants and Baguettes and sharing a bag of Maltesers I had snuck on board, but most perished in the glacial waters of the Bering Strait. After a few hours a group of Inuits, who were taking three bloated, slab-faced Americans on a pleasure cruise, rescued us and took us to the Diomede Islands. I was given a mug of cocoa and a penguin-skin coat, which I took reluctantly given my recent pyromaniac dreams, and left to consider what to do next.

Oslo and his friends Galt and Halvor suggested that we have a three-way wedding and start a commune with an ideology based on free love and seal clubbing, but I had to decline. It wasn't that I didn't like Galt and Halvor and Oslo, but my heart still belonged to my Johnny and, besides, Galt had really bad athlete's foot. I farewelled my Scandinavian companions, and departed on a Kodiak boat with the Americans Judy, Hank and Cody.

While I had no money, no passport and hadn't showered in two days Hank, a salesman of restaurant supplies, decided he liked the cut of my jib and hid me in his suitcase for the long flight to Tampa. By Thursday night I had found a position as a dishpig in a retirement home filled with ageing American stereotypes. As I scraped applesauce and cream of eel from countless plates I felt wistful. Florida was sunny and full of palm trees and hanging chad and all, but what I really wanted was to go home. But how? I only had enough money for a flight to Sacramento.

I asked my kitchen compatriots Jorge and Stan for advice. Through various routes and channels they supplied me with a balloon full of cocaine, which, thankfully, I only had to tape to my belly rather than conceal in other areas. We bought a ticket for a flight, and they drove me to the airport.

The plan worked perfectly. It took only moments for teams of burly customs officers to descend upon me and my belly full of hte finest Columbian. Within hours I had been searched, interrogated, and soon found myself on a 'plane headed for Sydney, escorted by two unsmiling FBI agents.

Back in Australia I confessed to the Feds that I had been beaten and brainwashed by Stan and Jorge and the charges were dropped. I hitchhiked home to Canberra, where I found that few had noticed my absence. After watching a couple of taped episodes of Foreign Correspondent I went to sleep in my own bed, with my own cat, grateful to be back to normal.

Saturday morning I discovered my car had been broken into and someone had stolen my camera.

It was a shit of a week, let me tell you.