No, I Won't Buy You a Drink!

Travel used to contain a surprise. Technology now unwraps it before we arrive.

D.J. Gifford's No, I Won't Buy You a Drink! is an Australian travel memoir set largely in the face-to-face world of the 1990s, before smartphones, social media and algorithms changed the way we travelled, communicated and discovered the world around us. Ricardo travels from Australia through Europe, the United Kingdom, North America and the Bahamas, encountering Mediterranean sailing, hearing difficulties, recurring pancreatitis, unstable work, hospital stays, detention, border crossings and the uncertainty of not knowing what comes next.

Back then, travellers asked strangers for directions. Now we ask Google. We said hello before checking a profile. We admired people before knowing what everyone else thought of them. A destination could still surprise us, a conversation could change our plans and a stranger could become part of the story without first appearing on a screen.

What does hearing difficulty make you see? Why do some conversations stay with us? When did saying hello become one person's job? Are we becoming harder to know? What happens when certainty replaces curiosity?

Ricardo doesn't begin with answers. They emerge through travel, illness, mistakes, uncertainty and years of observation. Experiences that seemed unrelated at the time gradually begin to connect, leading to ideas such as Socialising Equality and Fakaging, as well as Eight Guilt-Free Hours.

This is not a memoir about overcoming hearing loss or illness. Those experiences shape the journey, but they are not the destination. It is a travel memoir about curiosity, authenticity, human behaviour and connection, told through a time when getting lost could lead somewhere unexpected and discovering a new place still meant discovering it for yourself.

Every copy now includes an Eight Guilt-Free Hours certificate, because giving someone a book can also mean giving them the time and freedom to enjoy it.