I would have been happy to pay her entry fee but not at that particular moment. Respect for the aged was a luxury I could ill afford as I guessed, quite accurately as it turned out, that within the next five seconds my digestive tract would go into meltdown.

It was a memory of a large plate of spaghetti bolognaise which returned as I stared at the television screen in the living room and wondered why I had never before noticed how many food advertisements were broadcast in prime time, for I hadn't eaten in 24 hours and was ready to start gnawing at the coffee table to assuage my hunger.

This fast was in no way related to the search for the deep inner me, for I am perfectly happy with the shallow, superficial, outer me. That my stomach was an echoing, empty pit was due to the imminence of a medical procedure that required no solids be consumed for 36 hours. I stared at the jugful of mixture which would cleanse my interior until it gleamed like stainless steel.

   "Anything happened yet?" asked my fiancée.
   "Nope. Nothing," I said.

Another hour passed and still nothing as we sat, our gaze alternating between the clock and the television screen.

   "Maybe it won't work," said Kassya.
   "It's like liquid dynamite," I said. "It'll work."

Within minutes of uttering these words, the mixture overcame the reluctance of my organs to submit to its demands and I fled the living room. I continued to flee it for the rest of the night and my fiancée declared it the best entertainment she'd had in months. It was an interesting evening, most of it spent watching all-night TV as every time I slid between the sheets, a now familiar signal would be sent to my brain, launching me from the bed and sending me screaming towards to bathroom.

I awoke the next morning feeling as if I had been passed through a huge set of rollers and that every millilitre of liquid had been squeezed from my body. It occurred to me that my efforts of the previous evening had probably moved forward the declaration of Level 3 water restrictions in Brisbane by at least two weeks. How many megalitres do you consume when you flush 120 times?

The hunger had gone now and given way to a tongue-swelling thirst. I re-read the instructions - nothing to be taken orally, so I sat and watched TV ads for food and drink, my body occasionally protesting as a noise like water rushing out of a bathtub gurgled from somewhere within me.

A few hours later, I was wheeled into the hospital room. "Anything you'd like to know?" asked the specialist. There must be something clever a person can say to someone who is about to insert a camera where you would not normally expect to find one, but it eluded me. "No," I squeaked as my mind faded to black.

"You can have a cup of tea and a biscuit now," said the nurse as I blinked my way back into consciousness. I might not have leapt out of bed, but I exited it with more pace than grace, ripped off the hospital nightie, dressed and trotted off to the recovery room where I downed three bikkies and a cup of tea in a minute.

I was still crunching and slurping when my fiancée arrived to take me home.

   "I could have driven," I said.
   "They said you couldn't," she said.
   "They just say that," I replied, for men know that nothing as insignificant as a general anaesthetic could impair their peerless driving skills.

At this point a nurse appeared to remove a needle still taped to my arm. "Press on this," said said, putting a piece of plaster on the puncture mark. Inexplicably, instead of pressing on the plaster, I pressed down on the table at which I was sitting.

   "You might consider getting them to insert one of those cameras inside your head to see if there's anything there," said my fiancée.
   "It's the anaesthetic," I said.
   "Of course it is, honey," she said. "Why don't you have another biscuit?"