Unlike most travel memoirs, this isn’t a story about destinations. It is a story about conversations. Travelling through Australia, Europe, North America and across the Atlantic during the 1990s, D. J. Gifford reflects on hearing loss, chronic illness and the unexpected encounters that shaped his understanding of people long before smartphones and social media changed how we connect. Through humour, curiosity and honest observation, the memoir explores what can happen when strangers still talk to one another and when life’s greatest adventures are often found in ordinary moments rather than famous places. Part travel memoir, part personal reflection and part social observation, *No, I Won’t Buy You a Drink! * invites readers to rediscover a world that now feels surprisingly distant.