There have been a few contenders for the grand accolade of 'Worst year of my life'. However, I once used it for this particular period, and the title has stuck. So read on, but be very afraid.....

Part One

For hours the plane flew high over vast, empty wastelands. I had flown quite a few times, but never before long-distance. Through an endless crystal-clear sky I made out what I took to be the Grand Canyon far below me, before spotting snow-clad peaks arrayed like little Christmas cakes. 

Just as I began to wonder if this seemingly infinite panorama of clarity was ever going to end, I spied a cloud of haze below and to the far right. As we drew closer, I realised it was sickly-yellow in colour, like cheap mustard, opaque. A bizarre pall, which occupied more and more of the sky as we drew near. Los Angeles.

I had to change terminals or something: it is long ago, and many details are vague. I managed to get off the connecting bus at the wrong place - in the middle of the largest and most anonymous car park on the planet. Even so, I arrived at my departure point in time to get a coffee before boarding the next flight.

The diner was almost empty, and a vivacious young waitress welcomed me. Looking straight into my sleep-deprived eyes, she smiled direct into my soul. "Hello! How are you ?" In the places that I lived, such a look and a smile was a total come-on, an invitation to a moment that could change your life forever. For a moment I was smitten. And then I realised that she welcomed every customer into the diner in exactly the same way. Welcome to the United States of America.

I took a commuter flight up the coast to San Francisco, then a longer flight to Honolulu, and another long flight to Auckland, New Zealand.

Here I was met by an acquaintance from the Auckland Buddhist Centre. This was the largest of 'our' centres in New Zealand, but I still had a short hop to make, down to Wellington, capital city of the country, and home to a rather smaller community of Buddhists.

The Auckland Buddhist was keen to fill me in on the people and politics of the place in Wellington before I arrived there. And boy, was there some politics to fill me in on! He paced me up and down the car park, regaling me with details of people that I had never met, but who were to be my colleagues over the next year. By the time he had finished, I had missed my connecting flight, and needed to be booked onto the next one. No worries, as some antipodeans are fond of telling you. 

Part Two

It's not a word that came to me at the time, but my visit was kind-of ambassadorial. The idea was that I would share some of the experience and inspiration that I had gained over the previous decade, living near the heartbeat of the Buddhist organisation that I was associated with - well, ordained into, to be exact. The centre in Wellington could do with an injection of energy and direction; that was the story.

It was a brilliant plan, apart from one fatal flaw. I was there to provide clarity and inspiration for those seeking the Buddhist path. But, far from being clear, my own life was beginning to disappear into a smog that rivalled that hanging over Los Angeles. And my inspiration, once lauded, was seeping down cracks and potholes opening up on a daily basis on my own Buddhist path.

I had relinquished my position as chairman of a centre in London around two years previously. Instead of asking the question "Hmm, I wonder what's going on with him, then", my hosts had simply seen me apparently roaming free, and concluded that I was up for another great challenge under the umbrella of 'more of the same'. This was the root mistake.

It's a funny thing. Many people will only look upon an extended stay in New Zealand as a dream come true. Unspoilt nature, fresh air, the great outdoors, far from the madding crowd. It just never worked for me. From my first day in New Zealand, it didn't click; and it continued  not to click during my entire stay there.   

The first full day in Wellington, my hosts took me on a grand tour of the local coastline. The great ocean, with waves breaking on darkened rocks; the electric blue sky and scudding white clouds of the antipodean springtime. It should have been wonderful; but I failed to connect.

And so it continued. Instead of wild and natural, the scenery manifested, to me, as empty. It was the same culturally. Everybody I met was friendly, some remarkably so, but there just seemed something missing. I was trying to gel with something inside people, but I was drawing blanks. I never got to quite figure it out. Either I wasn't resonating with something; or that 'something' didn't actually exist in the first place.

To my horror, I came to see how European my 'soul' was. Put me in Rome, Paris, Lisbon, Huddersfield, wherever; I might not like it, but I would recognise it. I instinctively felt at home. But here...

It was deceptive. Most of the people I met in New Zealand were of Anglo-Saxon stock - far more so than 'at home' in ultra-cosmopolitan London - and in appearance could easily pass as residents of Edinburgh or Cambridge. But speak to them and, generally, there was something distinct, different. On the level of instinct, we would be at cross purposes.

It might be brutal, distorted, psychopathic; but the collective unconscious of Europe, if we can speak in such terms, possesses depth, and reaches far into the recesses of the human soul. My own mind feels rooted in complexity, depth, and age. In New Zealand this state of consciousness could not be met. Indeed, the ancestors of many of the residents had made the definite decision to leave all that behind, to start afresh. I can understand that. But it was a consciousness that I could not meet. To me, all was empty.

Part Three

Other things didn't help. I lived in a quiet northern suburb of Wellington, overlooking a green valley. The surroundings were lush and verdant, and superficially attractive. However, they quickly presented to my own increasingly disturbed state of mind as devoid of character and of atmosphere.

I would walk down to the shopping centre along street after street of neat little wooden bungalows, each with its neat little garden that the inhabitants would dutifully tidy on Sunday mornings. All was calm and silent, but it spooked me. Beneath the surface I sensed a dark underbelly, an unspoken collective trauma, even. What secrets did these neat little residences hide? What horrors could they tell? Thirty years on, when Jacinda Ardern unleashed a vicious and undiluted authoritarian regime on the country during the convid years, it made more sense to me than to some other people.

A short time after my arrival in Wellington, one of the Buddhist regulars took me on a good walk over some hills around the city. We looked down on the site of Wellington airport. "That land was beneath the ocean until recently" she smiled at me. "It just came up after an earthquake."

So here was another thing to shake my insecurity. Nobody told me about the imminent possibility of personal annihilation as the earth beneath my feet opened up without warning. I felt as if I had been lured to the other side of the world under false pretences. Britain has many shortcomings, but at least it doesn't live under the ever-present shadow of death-by-seismic-upheaval. 

Jesus, my life seems to have been peppered by a steady stream of small yet cumulative traumas. No wonder I'm a bit jumpy, and my intestines are such a mess....

One Sunday afternoon, in the pit of this personal and private desolation, I took myself off on a walk to the top of the hill behind our house. I would relax, unwind, open up.

I sat down on the grass, surrounded by the lush greenery characteristic of this part of New Zealand. Surely this would do the trick. I took out my portable cassette player, attached the headphones, and turned to one of the most achingly beautiful pieces of music ever written. Mozart's Clarinet Quintet. I sat quiet, attentive, expectant. The opening movement gave way to the heavenly larghetto, and I turned up the volume slightly. I remained quiet and attentive, and felt precisely..... nothing.

Little did I suspect that, very soon afterwards, an unpredicted event would provide the perfect situation for the dam of pent-up feelings to finally give. The floodgates would open; and have not closed properly ever since.....  

To be continued.... 

Images: Los Angeles; my Wellington suburb; house in suburb; Wellington airport