Stranger in a strange land ...

What a bloody weird place. I m standing here in a tiny airport , it s pissing down with rain , most people speak English , the rest are either staring or complaining and I m waiting for a girl I ve never met in my whole life. I call it strange land. Other people might refer it as France.

This place , Ryan air calls it "Toorz"in an Irish accent ( if anyone could politely tell them that we don t pronounce the final s , that would probably help some French people to not miss their flight) , we call it Tours.

I realise I cannot even locate this place on the map and France is the country I know the least in the whole world.

Why would you come here if it was not to meet the guy who is publishing your book about your travels around the world anyway? Unless you re English and u want a cheap house or Aussie and u like bloody castles ...

So I m meeting this girl I ve never met but who designed the awesome cover of the book and who can t wait to meet me. She probably does not believe that a person is capable of that many fuck ups in only 158 pages.
Try me.

I m now staring at all young French women I m seeing around . With the a " have we met before ? " smile.

Ok I m freaking everyone out now .

I clearly feel out of place in this country.

" do you speak French ?" The guy at the counter says.

" reasonably " I answer randomly.

Fuck where am I from already ?

Ah right , yeah. It says on my neck .made in France .

I say good bye to the Brit I met on the plane . He lives in France and can t remember England much . I live in England and can t remember France much. We had a lot in common .

For some random reason we both wanted to buy the naked staff calendar from Ryan air . But we didn t. He promised to buy my book instead.
Wise decision .
Everyone is smoking around me. I only think of one thing to say : bloody French.
The girl who made my cover comes at last.
We chat like we re old friends already . I always have that relationship with strangers . It gets more complicated later . When I chat to old friends like we re strangers . Anyway , here we are in traffic chatting about travelling , going away but weirdly , not about coming back.
" so where do u feel at home " she finally asks me.
" I feel at home with people " i answer randomly , just realising how bloody true it was .

Well as long as it is not in France i thought but i shut up. For once.

Driving on the right side freaks me out. Everything about this country freaks me out actually.

We keep chatting about our creation . aka ze book . I soon feel like we just had a baby together. Mmm strange new feelings in this strange land ...
Anyway,

I was going to meet the guy i worked with for the last 8 months , the guy I always trusted with my money and words . I talked to him on the phone once last week. And ze book .
" come on then " she says to me as we were about to enter the guy s house .
Mmm let me think .... No . Actually it s better to not think. Rule number one for ze traveller.
I suddenly felt like I was coming home again but with the huge urge to get the hell out of here.
Bloody travellers . U never know what u travel for. Escaping , learning , creating , letting go ....

And the strangest of all is when you re about to reach your destination ....

The book of my life

" so what do you write about in your book Annabelle , is there sex and everything " asks me my Italian friend the last Napolitan obviously pondering whether or not he should go through the trouble of buying it and google translate it.
" it s about my life darling , so obviously no , it s not about sex"" I answer naturally although I m a but lying and a little embarrassed by the number of men I actually meet / hang out with / in the damn book.
What was I thinking? My chances of a long healthy relationship were already quite slim. Now that my whole country can read my fuck ups , I am destined to be the crazy old lady with cats.

I had to read the book again and give my consent to the publisher . That was my final step.
Mmmm let me think . No.
I wanted to lie and go " yep , perfect go ahead " but I can t lie and I would have written the truth sooner or later.

After a couple of day reading other books about spiritual awakening ( you d think that I d be fully awake by now but no) I decided to give a go to my own book. The one I wrote about my life traveling from January 11 to December 11. 158 pages of my life.

Of course I decided that the chick on the book was not me. You don t expect to face my own crap and move on by reading that book do you ?
That d be too easy.
So it s that chick who leaves her manager job to find answers about life and she comes back to Brighton with more questions . Awesome.
Next book?
Come on , let s be nice to this chick
So she ends up in the jungle in Malaysia first , working close to nature ie fearing for her own life checking her bed for deadly scorpions every night . Was supposed to stop smoking but had to keep her lighter to check her bed because she had no electricity so se decided to not stop smoking I the end . Then she got bitten by a rooster named sarkozy. A French chick who got bitten by a rooster named sarkozy in Malaysia what a fucking good book huh .
Then she goes to Australia. She thinks she a super traveller and is planning to see the whole country in a year , like everyone else. She ends buying a car living in a house get friends a job that she was desperately useless at but they kept her as the waitress because she had a French accent and it sounded cool. And she was sort of fun too. She travels 40km in 6 months and then sells her car to go to live in .... A Thai monastery ?????
Wtf ?
After 1 month of living in silence on A concrete mattress she realises she was probably not made for spiritual life as such.
She then lives in Bangkok for a couple of weeks with a friend of a friend he just met and became good friends , goes clubbing and go hit on by a Brazilian guy whom she did not go home with . Thank god for that because that would have definitely ruined what was coming...
She then decides to go back to England in her old life . After living all this ? Dream on girl... I could have told her. I probably did but she did not listen.
In her old life everything had changed but she got on with it , not realising that she was the one who changed d oh. she meets friends who can relate to her experience but she keeps thinking she can fit back into who she was .
She meets 1 guy . Doesn t work then 2 then another one . What ???? In one month ?
I m so embarrassed for this girl. And the fact that my mum and dad bought the book yesterday .
"You know there s a bit of fiction in it mum , it s not all true , otherwise it would not sell you see "
#embarassinglifethateveryonecanread
Best of all , she then decides to go back to Australia because she needed another change. I m now Screaming at the damn book. That s you who changed crazy cow ?
Oh shit. I should have read that book before ... Right ???
Well anyway the second book is going to be even more awesome . More fuck ups more men and still less money .
Annabelle or how to feel good about your life reading hers.

I m currently on my way to the airport going to France to meet my publisher and this first book of my life and I l m laughing.
When i finished reading it i thought : This life is a good book innit . Because it s funny and authentic. I love it, actually , no matter what !
In the end , your life is as good as you want it to be.
What story would the book of your life tell?