Like many jaded individuals, I spent my youth dreaming of escaping my country for sunnier climes, where stress and depression were funny foreign words, like siesta or hakuna matata. It took 6 months in Africa and 2 years in Mexico to realize not only that life is simply life, wherever you go, but that my own country was in fact as interesting and hilarious as I was ever going to find.

London is a case in point. As a copywriter who dabbles in travel writing, you start to get repetitive strain injury from typing the words “bars, cafés and clubs”...and while that is indeed a part of what one wants from a place, I’m always delighted when London throws up something for the oddball to enjoy.

I am an oddball you see, ladies and gentlemen, and I wish I was unique enough to be alone. But I’m not. Which is why if you look closely at London and you know the right people, oddness abounds.

Would anyone like to eat or have a drink in total darkness? Some days it’s all you can think about, right? Well look no further than Dans le Noir? restaurant (don’t ask me why there’s a question mark in the title, I imagine they just want to be responsible for people giving a high inflection on the last syllable, as if Friends hasn’t done enough to our generation). Dans le Noir? London is a restaurant in pitch darkness with blind staff. The aim, it seems, is to heighten the other senses by taking away our most dominant one.

I have not been to this restaurant. I am not about to comment on the food, service or atmosphere. But I’m glad it’s there. I’m delighted to have returned to Britain, which during our numerous Skype conversations had been depicted by my parents as having become some kind of Dickensian funeral procession, to find that the quirkiness and originality of the place was in fact real, not a product of a lethal mix of tequila and homesickness.

A bar set in an disused tube station? A fire-spinning nightclub? A blind-staffed restaurant in pitch darkness?

God, it’s good to be back.