The plane landed smoothly and I reached for the black leather attaché case, my only item of luggage. The bag contained the contract that had been negotiated by my agent. I was now heading for a meeting with him to smooth out the finer details of my forthcoming star role in the big-screen adaptation of Mr Topsyturvy.

All lies, of course. Now the truth and nothing but it.

Little One and I landed at Leeds/Bradford airport, bound for an action-packed visit to my Mum and Dad (Little One’s grandparents). We were greeted at the airport with a familiar smell of malt vinegar and stale beer. Bizarre advertisements decorated the airport walls: "Welcome to Leeds, Athens of the North... (it could have been Machu Picchu, Samarkand – I can’t remember) blah blah.... a whole host of retail opportunities!". Strange though, the couple next to me on the plane from Spain had told me they had been to Barcelona on a shopping trip (information offered willingly, requiring no wheedling). Why bother, when the airport ad openly asserted that fruit and veg were readily available in West Yorkshire? True, four months had passed since my last visit and things could have changed in that time.

The visit went swimmingly. I remember every tick of the clock on the mantelpiece above what once had been a fireplace and was now occupied with a true-to-life gas heating unit. Somehow, the time passed without me being aware of it going by. I often get the feeling that I’m a spectator of life and that somehow even my own existence doesn’t involve me very much. This leads to quite a bit of existential strife, the psychological causes of which I have explored with my shrink and won’t go into here.

On the return flight I sat next to a friendly but uptight couple who were selling their two-up, two-down house in Beeston. Instead of spending their capital gains on a swankier box in a posher suburb of Leeds they thought they might invest the money in a villa with a Meadowhall shopping complex-like design, complete with flunkies, somewhere in Britsville on sunny Spain’s Costa Daurada.

He was eager to buy immediately and get out on the golf course. He showed me a brochure that featured computer-simulated pics of properties (meaning they hadn’t been built yet) next to a sun-basked golf course on which tanned, happy-looking older people in red Lacoste jerseys and checked trousers were whacking tiny white balls about with long sticks.

She, however, was more cautious. They didn’t speak Spanish (I pointed out they wouldn’t need to. If a foreign language was required it would be German). She was also worried that Mexican sombrero-wearing, bandit-type latin estate agents would rip them off mercilessly. She voiced this concern several times until I pointed out they could always just give the money away. I suggested a well-building project in Meribara, a small village near Kadugli in Sudan, where villagers with an average life span of 45 years suffer from a host of waterborne diseases, many of which could be combated with the construction of the wells.

Sometimes these things just slip out; like a flasher’s willy.

A prolonged silence followed. I became aware of my own hypocrisy and the pointlessness of guilt trips. If I had the money, I’m sure I would look after myself, Wifey and Little One first.

However, poverty does involve everyone. It’s not just an issue for Bob Geldof to wheel out every ten years or for western government figureheads to solve, even though they are in a position to wield much greater influence than your average punter. Governments are voted in on economic policies that benefit the population's pockets (if not, shirtiness ensueth); policies that enable a lot of westerners to get cheap stuff on the basis of economic systems that are detrimental to much of the world’s population.

So, if I was a happy-looking golfer, I could opt for a cheaper, Crocodylida-less jersey and do something useful with the unspent difference.

Way the by, tomorrow see you.