My stay at ZAP culminated in a staff trip to the incredibly popular, predominantly white middle-class annual celebration of sex, drugs and nudity in the Nevada desert otherwise known as Burning Man. Surprisingly, there wasn't a Eurotrash camera in sight! If the interminable beating of drums, rolling around naked in the sand and lots of fire is your idea of fun,this is for you. Er, if not see if anything good's on the telly that weekend!

In the weeks leading up to Labour weekend, the R&D staff had been spending out of work hours, putting the finishing touches to their novel electric vehicles for display at the festival. These included an electric crucifix and an electric chariot which proved to be crowd pullers at the festival. Admirable though the ethos of Burning Man may be: simplify, find your inner beauty, release yourself from the 9-5 monotony, lose your inhibitions, (er, well in the case of Burning Man, this oh-so-tediously automatically means take lots of drugs) focus on more important things like lots of (safe) sex with random strangers, rolling in the sand etc etc, it was disappointingly, though not unsurprisingly environmentally unenlightened: motorbikes and scooters everywhere, not pleasant inhaling a lungful of tailpipe emissions when you find yourself horizontal with aforementioned random stranger at exhaust pipe level! A huge mobile bar with sofas made a constant tour of the campsite. It would have been great but for the dark black fumes it produced. I have a vivid memory of a rather drunken but heartfelt argument I started with the driver:
"C'mon I thought this was supposed to be some kind of utopia here where we all love and care for each other but this thing is disgusting. It's so dirty. There are 11,000 people all cramped together on this campsite and you're spilling out these carcinogenic fumes everywhere. Don't you care about that?"
Those who could be bothered to argue shouted unprintable things or just stared as if somewhat baffled by my anger. Or, er, maybe they were just stoned. Oh well.
Forgetting that I was allergic to smoke and the significance of the word 'Burning' in the festival title, I returned to Sebastapol, my sights set on the big city 50 km away with sore red eyes and a temperature.I had a good time though, very memorable.