MOTHERSHIP:  Shauna. Are you sitting down? I have some terrible news.

SHAUNA:  Oh god. What happened?

M:  I've had a car accident.

S:  Oh my god!

M:  I slammed into a semi-trailer.

S:  Oh my god! Are you in hospital?

M:  No, I'm fine! I was only doing 15 km/h!

S:  Bloody hell, woman!

Our Scottish jaunt was largely funded by the sale of Manuel, our darling maroon-with-pink-stripe Festiva hatch. The Mothership bought him with the understanding that she would look after him and keep him clean. Writing him off just two months later was not part of the deal.

The accident happened on a tiny country road, where The Mothership crept out from a Give Way and didn't see the semi barrelling by. Luckily she is a infuriatingly cautious driver, otherwise she could have been a goner. She finally sent me the photos yesterday, and from the filthy state of the vehicle, I'm not convinced it was an accident. I think Manuel was so depressed by such blatant neglect that he wanted to end it all.

My habit of naming inaminate objects really must stop, because the pain of losing them is so great. Our time with Manuel was brief and bittersweet. It was devastating to see his crumpled, mud-streaked corpse.

Manuel memories:

- The competition to name him, which sparked an unprecedented 70 comments

- The near clash with a kangaroo

- The day I roasted a chicken under his hood

The highlight was the final time I drove him. It was from Canberra to Goulburn on the Friday night before we left. It was on the verge of a thunderstorm with The Dirty Three brooding on the stereo. Lightning scribbled across the sky, showing random bursts of sheep and gum trees out of the darkness. The road was empty so I drove too fast and tried to stuff all that space and quiet into my memory.

I just can't get the words out today. I want to be back in Iceland with all that space and nothingness, where the mind emptied then filled right up again with energy and ideas and ridiculous levels of excitement.

So there I was, sitting on a toilet at Edinburgh University, pants around the ankles and feeling rather confused.

Everyone warned me about the Scottish climate. They told me to pack thermal underwear and waterproofs and that I'd leave work in the dark and that it would rain and I'd feel shit.

Yeah yeah, I said when I bought my plane ticket. Yeah yeah, I said when we arrived to a bright and crispy April. I yeah-yeahed my way through the following seven months of delicious summery mildness.

Then last month we wound the clocks back and I went a little batty. I never expected it to get so dark so early so quickly.

The morning commute really baffled me at first. My brain kept thinking I was eight years old and going on school trip. When else had I ever been on a crowded early morning bus, headlights leaking all over the street, the aisles all fat with scarves and coats and hats and germs? On my way to the Snowy Mountains, that's when. Why did my fellow passengers look so blank and indifferent? Come on people! School trip! Tobogganing! Paltry snowmen! Hydroelectricity! Can't you get a little excited?

It took so long for my mind and body to connect and realise they were no longer in the Southern Hemipshere. On the Night of the Toilet, I wandered through The Meadows in a daze. Student couples cluttered up every surface. They huddled on benches, leaned against trees, hung upside-down from the branches, joined mitten to mitten with their tongue-piercings clashing. Evidently they figured out it was cheaper to get busy with someone than to buy another layer of clothing.

I'd signed up for a class at the university to make some friends and force myself to write. The first two weeks involved me in the back row with one hand shielding my forehead, pretending to write but actually snoozing. But the third week I was determined to focus, despite having had a shit of a day. It had rained that afternoon and I'd walked right through a huge puddle. An old man had sat beside me on the bus, reading a Spanish phrasebook and interrupting my brooding. As if the 4.30 darkness wasn't odd enough, the rain was like nothing I'd ever seen. It lashed at the windows and I couldn't see anything outside but a mishmash of car lights. The old guy kept muttering Gracias, gracias, gracias in time with the windscreen wipers. The way he pronounced it was grassy arse. Everything felt so surreal and claustrophobic, I wanted to scream.

So I headed into the loos to collect my thoughts before class. I didn't have any business to take care of, but you can get some solitude and it's so much easier to think with your dacks down.

I examined the student graffiti and tried to relax. It was hard to do because this bathroom was rank. The smell was sharp and grotty like nothing I'd smelled before.

I thought about how I liked it when people smiled and patted me on the head when I started moaning about the changing weather. It's so much better than the insane cackling and, "This is NOTHING! NOTHING! Just you wait!". Why can't people let me be bewildered and overwhelmed for awhile? It's a bit of an adjustment from sunlight on tap.

It occurred to me that the graffiti was a lot saucier than any university toilet I'd perched onbefore. There were the usual knock-knock jokes, a poster for the Trampoline Club, but then there was an awful lot of talk about penises.

And drawings of penises. Lots of those. In various stages of alertness.

Oh boy, I thought. I really admire these Scottish chicks. They know exactly what they want and they're not afraid to draw it in exquisite detail. I wish I could be so bold.

Then I noticed under one particularly spectacular member there was a phone number.

And beneath another was an open invitation to meet in this very cubicle on Thursday night for some unprintable action.

Holy crap.

I was in the Men's toilet.

!

I remembered thinking when I walked in, "Dude, those sinks are sure low to the ground. That's really handy for wheelchair access."

I yoinked up my pants and reached for the door handle, but then froze. I had to wait until the coast was clear. My lecture room was right across the hall, and these people already thought I was a twit for sleeping through the first two classes. I tried not to breathe as I listened to liquid hitting porcelain, zippers going up and down.

Finally I crept to the door and peered outside. The hall was empty. Grassy arse, lord.

I dashed into the lecture room and slipped into the back row, but then had to dash back out as I'd forgotten to wash my hands.

That was a few weeks ago now. Edinburgh gets dark so quickly but it looks beautiful in a whole new way. I continue to sleepwalk my way through the day, but I always save enough energy to look for the little stick figure with the triangle dress before entering a bathroom.

So the cops have raided Michael Jackson's house, but they're not yet saying why. My guess is he's getting busted for the misleading the public on the cover of his latest album. Look at that strain on his face, the intense concentration. It's clearly a number two.

Something strange happened in the back yard. One day there was Rothwell, the melancholy dog. Then the next day he was gone, and a giant trampoline was in his place.

I had Rothwell pegged as a soulful character. He was dark, shiny and mysterious. Misunderstood by his owners, he chose to wander to our side of the yard and sit next to me on the back step. It was as if he knew I was a little lonely in this strange land and craved someone to talk to. He would rest his snout on my shoulder while I told him all my secrets and scratched behind his ears.

But he turned out to be such a fakety fakeass. He knew a sucker when he saw one and really worked those glossy brown eyes. Before long he had me saving scraps of bacon and stray crusts. He'd appear at the door and wasn't interested in talking anymore, he'd just sit and stare at us cooking dinner until I cracked.

Then one day we found out his name wasn't even Rothwell. That was just his owners' name on the tag. Lazing in bed on a Sunday morning, I heard a singsong voice, "Here Chip! C'mere boy! Here Chippy Chip!"

I leaned out the window to see a small child, and Rothwell with a tennis ball in his mouth. He looked up guiltily.

"Your name is CHIP?" I spluttered, silently.

"Maybe."

"Dude, that is the dumbest name ever. I thought you were called Rothwell."

"Well, just coz it's on the tag doesn't mean it's my name. You thought I was called I AM MICROCHIPPED at first, remember?"

"What about all those times we said, 'Tally ho, Rothwell old chap!' and you wagged your tail in what appeared to be recognition?"

"I wag my tail for a lot of reasons."

Before I had the chance to be resentful and refuse him bacon, he just vanished. A few days later I peered outside, expecting to see him snoozing in the watery sunlight, but instead there was only a gigantic trampoline.

It was black, round and professional-looking. Not like the rusty deathtrap I knew from my childhood. What the hell was going on? Who put that thing there? Where did Rothwell go?

No one in our flat knew who it belonged to, nor had they noticed anyone erecting such a giant piece of equipment in the yard. And no one talked about how the dog disappeared at the exact same time. There was only one reasonable explanation: Our neighbour was Rick Moranis and this was Honey I Turned The Dog Into A Trampoline.

The trampoline has turned out to be way more interesting than "Chip" ever was. And way more popular. No one ever sneaked into a garden in the middle of the night to jump up and down on a dog. Around midnight, students start creeping down from the surrounding flats. The trampoline is hip hop happenin', like Harold's coffee shop on Neighbours or the Peach Pit on 90210. All the cool kids are hanging out there.

What they don't realise is how otherwise quiet the garden is. There's no noise from the street, and rarely a breeze, so their strange noises and chatter ping off the stone walls and right through my window. You can hear the springs creaking and the Bacardi Breezers sloshing in their bellies. It's like having my own private soap opera. I just lay there in bed waiting for something to happen.

It starts with the sound of feet slooshing across wet grass and giggles of anticipation, then ooof and boing as they struggle to climb aboard. Then there's bouncing, lots of laughing and swearing and, "Hey, hey, hey, did you ever do this when you were a kid?". Then more laughing and swearing as they discover they cannot do this anymore.

The most strange and entertaining thing is how the trampoline has the power to turn minds back a decade. It's gossipy and manic like a primary school playground, with added drink and darkness. The conversations are short and breathless. School sucks. Boys are evil. My mum's a dragon.

"Laura is so not invited to my 21st party," said a girl the other night to her friend. Bounce bounce bounce.

"Laura. Nobody likes Laura." Bounce bounce.

"She thinks we all like her. But I mean, look at her hair."

One night, when it was still warm, I was drifting in and out of sleep. The moon was full and guy and girl talked and talked and talked. Shy giggles from her, a horrible nerdy huhhuhhuhhuh laugh from him. An hour later I woke again and heard him finally say, "So, I think you're really nice," and she said "You too". Then trampoline springs creaked and static crackled in her hair.

And that is when I hid under my pillow. I like my soap operas with a PG rating.

(Still no idea where Rothwell went.)

I woke up when I heard the mournful cry of a harpooned whale. Actually it was the sound of a flatmate approaching orgasm. Then suddenly she was bellowing impatiently "C'mon! C'mon! C'mooonnnn! C'MON!", followed by a quick and cranky smacking sound.

You know when you have a bottle of tomato sauce (ketchup) and it just won't come out, so you tip the bottle up and smack the end of it? Hello tomato sauce, are you in there? Sure that is a pretty frustrating thing to happen. But bash it around like that and you're headed for trouble. Maybe she was just trying to be encouraging but it sounded pretty mean. Whatever butters your muffin, I guess.

So there's my sleep-in ruined. It's the 1st of November. It's my birthday, dammit.