This is for the blokes out there

Only because I know that women don't read in the toilet. Guardian columnist Simon Hoggart has a new book out and what a clever idea it is. Get people to send you emails that their kids have sent them from their gap year travels, organise it a bit and get paid for it! (Why don't I ever think of shit like this and when I do why don't I ever act on it?!) Anyway it's clearly excellent toilet reading. If you've an adequate diet a couple of emails will suffice but it your health regimen of chips, bacon butties and pork scratchings fails to provide enough dietary fibre than you'll probably get through a whole section a day.

A few samples to whet your appetite:

Dear Mummy and Daddy, how are you? This may come as a shock but I am thinking of eloping with one of my students to Assam coz he is from the Naga tribe, and I want to be a Naga girl and go hunting monkeys with bows and arrows and fishing with spears like they do, and then come back and do tribal dancing all night, coz it's so much fun, and all the tribal people here are so great and brave and strong. Obviously the political situation in Assam isn't ideal, but I'll be OK. Love you lots. Only an idea at the moment. X, Me

Never eat deep-fried guinea pig and llama kebabs before travelling on a bus for 20 hours, then boarding a light aircraft. It just doesn't work. Not unless you want to see them again, a little sooner than expected.

We were all kitted out in our wetsuits, waterproofs, helmets and lifejackets, and had just started out on the river [in Peru] when our instructor started shouting instructions to us to turn the boat and back it up . . . I turned around to see the body of a young woman not much older than us floating in the water face up. Our instructor asked us to grab the body and attach it to the raft. The six of us were all in shock, as it was for all of us the first dead body we had ever seen, so dumbstruck, the only thing we could do was to keep paddling. We got her to the side. We all stood in a circle and said a prayer for her . . . We carried on rafting, and luckily all was not ruined, as champagne was brought to celebrate my birthday and we stayed in a lovely campsite with an excellent view of the mountains.