Packing It In forms a fascinating coda to David Rees's highly-praised autobiography Not For Your Hands,

This collection of essays - written and arranged to form a year-long diary - opens with an all too brief vist to Australia, continues with a tour of New Zealand and a final vist to a much loved but sadly depleted San Francisco, before returning to familiar Europe (Barcelona, Belgium, Rome) and new perspectives on the recently liberated Eastern Bloc countries (highly individual observations of Moscow, St Petersburg, Odessa and Kiev).

Written from the distinctive and idiosyncratic point of view of a singular gay man, this is a book filled with acute and sometime acerbic views written in a style that is at once easily conversational and utterly compelling.