SO THERE I was standing alone and half naked in the sea in Looe in deepest Cornwall, with my pasty white skin covered in goosebumps.

But as I shivered and snivelled in the freezing water last week, I had one consolation: I was 240 miles from High Wycombe and there was no one around on the beach who would know me.

Wrong.

A voice called out from the waves beside me: "I read the Bucks Free Press."

My instinctive, horrified immediate reaction was to cry in my best Garbo voice: "Go away. I want to be alone."

But then I realised I had to be nice, because I was still the editor and this was indeed my public. And besides, this sort of recognition is normally reserved only for the Beckhams of this world, not some paunchy ugly non-entity such as me.

So I sidled over and investigated. The reader in question happened to be the niece of a former accountant colleague, from Downley, who had worked with me in the 1990s. The accountant aunt was also in the sea and had recognised me earlier on the beach.

A bizarre phenomenon perhaps but nothing new actually.

A similar thing happened to me in 1988 after I left Berkshire to live in Sydney, Australia.

I had given up my flat and my job to try my luck in Oz and I positively raced into the sea filled with the joys of life and freedom on my first day on Bondi Beach.

But just as my feet touched the surf, a voice called out: "Are you Irish?"

"Er why?" I replied, stopping dead in my tracks.

"Because your skin looks so white mate," came the answer.

"Well no I'm from Slough," I said.

The stranger's response almost made me fall over: "Oh, I'm from High Wycombe," he said.

He was the very first person I had spoken to in the Antipodes, and it was the first proof of my theory that all roads lead to Wycombe.

Since then, I have had several odd experiences of this over the years.

But nothing prepared me for my holiday to Cornwall and Devon last week when I tried to sink into anonymity.

I was still stunned from my sea meeting when I travelled the following day in the rain to a weird amusement park called The Big Sheep near Bideford in North Devon.

This centre hosted various attractions such as displays of sheep shearing, dog training and horse whispering.

But best of all, there was a place for you to hit football free kicks. Basically, it involved trying to whack the ball through small holes.

A few children were trying it and I muscled in. It was very immature of me, but no one knew me so who cared?

Sadly, I failed to convert one single free kick and was put to shame by some small children who were much better than me.

But what did it matter, I thought, as I sidled over to watch my son jump up and down on a nearby trampoline. No one here knew me - I could do what I liked.

At that very moment, a woman walked up and asked: "Are you the editor of the Star?"

We had never previously met, yet she somehow recognised me and introduced herself as a reader from Downley.

Cue more open-mouthed astonishment from me. I reckon I could land on Mars and I'd still bump into Bucks readers.

l My holiday was also distinguished by the fact we went to Westward Ho!, the only town in the country with an exclamation mark after its name.

Now I have a fear of exclamation marks. At journalism college, we were taught never to use them. They are the literary equivalent of canned laughter.

Even to this day, I still have trouble locating the ! on the typewriter keyboard.

The town was named after a famous book.

So what was it like then?

Nice. But I think I discovered why it has an exclamation mark. Because it rained non-stop!