‘MY HUSBAND is from New Zealand, and we’ve spent a lot of holidays there, visiting family. The best was a few years ago when I went with my daughter, Sonia.

The highlight of the trip was going to the Abel Tasman National Park, on an undulating peninsula at the north of South Island. It’s one of the most stunning stretches of coastline, with golden beaches and turquoise seas backing onto a vast expanse of native bush. Because it’s a national park, there’s very little development. Access is by boat, and the only thoroughfare is the Abel Tasman Track, a footpath that winds its way through the hills along the coast. We stayed at a lodge and spent the days swimming, walking and bonding.

When I started writing A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, I had no interest in tractors at all, but as I began delving into the mysterious world of farm machinery, I became hooked. Because New Zealand is very much an agricultural country, there are lots of amazing tractors to be spotted. I spent much of my time scanning the horizon, armed with a book called Tractors Across New Zealand by John Wilson.

I was given a tractor-driving lesson on a farm by the most beautiful, petite, immaculately made-up Kiwi farmer named Anne. I had told her that my publishers were thinking of getting me to drive a tractor down The Strand for a publicity stunt, so one night she took me out into a moonlit field and we went bouncing up and down over the furrows, scattering sheep in all directions.

Initially, I found it quite hard to control the speed and manoeuvre, and at one point I raced across a stream, dislodging Anne from her perch behind me and leaving her lying on the ground – fortunately unharmed.

Ukraine is a place I’ve wanted to visit all my life. While researching the novel, I discovered various relatives were still living there. After the book came out, I went for the first time – again with Sonia. We flew to Kiev before taking the overnight train to Luhansk, where my mother’s family come from. The train journey was like going back into the 1940s. We had a bunk room to ourselves, with a TV showing various Russian programmes, and bought food from the restaurant car.

It was wonderful to move slowly across the vast Ukrainian countryside, glimpsing these remote places from the carriage window. The track itself was very rough – it felt a bit like being in a horse-drawn cart – but I can’t think of a better way to travel.

The most idyllic place we visited was Krasnyy Derkul, near the Russian border. It’s set on the River Derkul, where we swam and sunbathed. The village itself is picturesque but very poor, with no electricity or sanitation. Although the living conditions are uncomfortable for the people who live there, it was nice to see this part of the world where people still have a traditional way of life and are as yet unaffected by tourism.

When Sonia was young, we had camping holidays with friends, then graduated to rented houses in France or Italy. Last summer, we stayed at a huge house in Citerna, a beautiful medieval hilltop village in Umbria, which looked out across the valley to another medieval hilltop village. It was like being in a Renaissance painting.

As a child, I never really had holidays, but as soon as I was old enough, I began hitch-hiking around Europe with friends. It seemed perfectly safe at the time, although we did have a few scrapes, the worst being when I was kidnapped in southern Italy. I was with a boyfriend when we accepted a lift, but they forced him out of the car and took me to a hotel in Brindisi, where they tried to drug me. I imagine they were trying to get me into prostitution. I was terrified, but I locked the door and refused to open it until I heard voices of the police. My boyfriend had walked back, raised the alarm and somehow managed to discover my whereabouts. But the incident never deterred me from hitching. In fact, the first holiday we had when we didn’t hitch seemed boring, because we didn’t meet anyone.’

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