I’m not talking about people who get off on ‘specialist’ websites, that’s fine, I’m talking about a completely different breed of internet freak. Because some people on the internet feel they are naturally superior to every one else and must devote their lives to irritating strangers as much as possible. While I don’t fully understand the psychology, they seem intent on getting to people. They also seem to fancy themselves as great detectives or super hackers.

This usually involves them spending about a week to find some pointless detail of your online existence and then revealing it to you in what they obviously feel is a very dramatic way. This won’t be something like your bank account details, the name of the person you sit next to at work or a photograph of you weeing in a swimming pool as a child, it will be something more like your email address, your IP, a Facebook photo or even just your full name, in an apparent attempt to scare the bejesus out of you.

It may come as quite a shock to you but I don’t actually keep my name a secret. Often I introduce myself with my name as otherwise I’ll feel I’m not getting the full benefit of it. If my (dynamic) IP were something I considered a great secret I wouldn’t use the internet and if my Facebook photos were not intended for display online, they wouldn’t be there. Even my home address isn’t a secret if you know where to look.

But still some people try to freak me out by telling me my own name as if this would send me into a paranoid frenzy and make me leave the internet for ever, a clear victory for the lonely internet freak. All this effort simply to come off as pathetic seems to be a great waste of time on their part, but I suppose everyone likes to feel important. If you really want to scare me though, sending samurai warriors to my house dressed as clowns would be much more effective.

The final straw in my brief and naive encounter with religion came when my mother decided to cart my sister and I off to a youth group at another church every Friday at 6PM. As anyone who grew up in the nineties will remember, this is when The Simpsons was on BBC2. To say I was unhappy with this arrangement is a drastic understatement. But complain as I did, I was unable to stop this weekly torment.

This was not the sort of fun-loving youth group designed to keep kids off the streets that my sister and I were expecting when we rolled up for the first time. After being registered we walked cautiously into the church where chairs were laid out in rows with a big aisle down the middle and we were immediately split up because apparently God is a fan of sexual apartheid. As I sat terrified on one side of the room knowing that my sister was in a similar situation on the other side, silence was called for and we were reminded that, save for singing, communication was unacceptable. We were told that on the way out we would be given sweets (which turned out to be 1p tuck shop sweets) but only if we remained in silence – three strikes and this offer would be retracted. If three children made a noise in the next two hours, no children would get sweets, how very fair.

Throughout the evening we were given a variety of lectures about how we are horrible people, and then began an apparently regular fixture – a slideshow about the exciting adventures of “Commando J”. Commando J was a walking letter J who devoted his or her life to spreading the fear and hate word of the bible by giving heathens stern tellings-off. Before this delightful storytelling kicked off we were told that church minions would be patrolling throughout and would leave sweets on the chairs of well-behaved children – but would take them back if we moved or tried to touch the sweets. Because I was by this point terrified and holding back tears, I did as I was told and sat in silence, pretending I was somewhere nicer such as school. A woman slinked along the row behind me and, it turned out, left sweets of some description on my chair. This made the small, petrified boy in said chair jump, and the cow took the sweets away because I moved.

Finally the circus of torment ended and we were given homework in the form of a sheet that required colouring in, coating with praise for God and returning by next week. When I got home, after an argument with my mother about the prospect of having to go back there, I wrote an angry message on the back of my homework sheet in my messy child’s handwriting. In this brief but pointed message I complained about the seating arrangements and how it was generally horrible and boring, and used the word ‘hate’ several times. It was a very strongly-worded letter for a child of about 8. Having written this letter, I decided that not returning my sheet at all would be more rebellious and threw it in the bin.

Every week for longer than I care to remember I was dragged back to the church – sometimes kicking and screaming and holding on for dear life to the garden wall – for this hellish ritual. Every week my soul was crushed a little bit more and every week I would emerge to beg my mother to have pity and not take me back next week, occasionally after spitting out a disgusting penny sweet (we weren’t allowed to choose what we got). My mother, as I have learned in subsequent years, is not a particularly pitying woman and I continued to be sent there against my will for a considerable time.

About three months after we finally stopped being sent there, I got a birthday card from the people who ran it. It was green with three large, ginger cats on it and inside was the standard “Happy Birthday”. And, in small letters at the bottom, “PS – thank you for your letter”.

A week ago, Monday the 7th, I got a phone call from my father. He is a manager at an international delivery company, and a delivery to the South of France required an attendant – he wanted to know if I was free to fulfil that role. Essentially this meant a free trip around France, with the only requirement being that I didn’t leave the lorry unsupervised. For sitting down and enjoying the scenery for a few days I would be paid around £350. It’s a hard life.

The next morning, after an accidental late night and only four hours of sleep, I was up at the industrial park bright and early. While sat in my dad’s office I took a break from Solitaire and decided to make a few notes of my journey on my iPod in the hope that this would at least make the blog I’d promised to write interesting on my return. Thus, this post will quote my former self throughout.

Tue, 10:02. Sat in office waiting for lorry

to be ready, then I need a health and safety briefing (fun) and then we’re off! Little bit intimidated by the value of the load we’re carrying and the fact that it’s destined for space – fortunately we won’t be taking it on the whole journey. Not eaten, hungry, bored.

The health and safety bloke apologised as he handed me a large high-visibility jacket when I should have had a small one, though I reasoned that this would make me more visible which is probably better. Lecture about not jumping out of the cab over, I sat in the passenger seat and waited for the driver to arrive – the first time I met him was when his head popped up next to his seat. We were off.

I was frightfully hungry and headachy, didn’t have enough food to last the four days, hadn’t got round to converting my money and wouldn’t have another chance, didn’t have my safety boots and was struggling to make conversation with the man I’d be spending the next four days trapped in a box with. But none of this was going to get me down.

10:25. this seat is so much fun!!!

Despite the fact that I can see France from my bedroom window and the lorry yard is only a 45 minute drive from said bedroom window, we needed to drive halfway up the country and back before we could start on the way to France because we needed to collect the space junk. On the way up I got myself acquainted with the state-of-the-art lorry cab’s many features.

10:40. I think this mirror is to let me get a better look at roadkill.

Collecting the space junk and putting it on the trailer took hours due to “a problem”, but this was no concern of mine because I didn’t have my boots so health and safety required that I remain in the cab, listening to music and photographing a rather tame wasp.

19:15 England. After many delays, finally leaving England. Bored again.

These delays were a real nuisance – having waited ages to get parked on the train we were finally settling down in the carriage when the driver decided, after long deliberation, that brakes would be required for the journey and as the train we were on had none we had to get off.

00:13 France time. Parked and ready for some well-deserved sleep. Goodo.

I can’t recall anything interesting happening between those two events. Wednesday was largely free of anything interesting as we were simply driving from one parking space in France to another parking space in France with only a brief stop at a service station on the way.

Wed 13:09. Got some French Pringles. I popped and thus far the fun just has not stopped.

France is an odd place. Of the two foreign languages I learned at school France was not one, and it appears to be based on no logic whatsoever. I quickly got bored of trying to guess what various road signs meant. And by the way, France has far too many road signs. I realised that at no point on our journey was there a moment when at least three road signs weren’t easily visible. There are signs on the front of a tunnel warning you that you’re entering a tunnel, and signs a short distance after leaving a tunnel to remind you that you’re no longer in a tunnel. In no situation would these signs save lives or assist drivers in any way. Meanwhile, my enjoyment was subsiding.

18:07. This chair is getting on my nerves. It thinks it knows better than me. No, chair, I’m in charge here.

We parked in a lorry park a short distance from the space place to which we would be delivering and settled down for an optimistic 10-hour sleep. Next morning, after being briefly amused at the graffiti in the toilet of the lorry park, we went to deliver our precious cargo.

Thur 09:02. Sat inside the space place. Saw a big rocket.

Sadly I wasn’t allowed to photograph anything inside the space place and my passport was held hostage during my time there so Thursday will not be interesting to you. Upon collecting our passports and leaving, we headed to somewhere nearer to Calais, where we’d spend the night before returning home.

Fri 06:22 France time. Freeeeezing 6AM start but we’re goin’ home! Yayayayay!

It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy France or was feeling homesick, just that everything in France is so overwhelmingly French and I wanted to get home and do my hair properly. As we hadn’t changed our clocks to French time it was a bit like the cab was British and we were locking France outside so it couldn’t seep in and move things around and mess with the time, which was reasonably comforting. I realised that this trip was the first time I’d had proper contact with French people while sober for years. It was going well.

07:46. I keep saying hello to the French when I mean to say thanks.

11:47. I just interacted with a man who had the most wonderfully soft hands.

It didn’t take long to get to Calais, where we stocked up on drinks and went to the Channel Tunnel terminal.

12:42. UK Border Patrol wanted to know why the driver and I have different surnames. “We’re not related” seemed an unsatisfactory response. Leaving France now.

12:22 England. Yay.

To summarise, I went to France and came back. If you did the sensible thing and didn’t waste your time reading the above lengthier version of that story, well done; if not I commend your attention span and apologise for stealing part of your life from you.