A Modern-Day Nomad is Born

Where to begin? Not at the very beginning, that’s for sure. Heaven forbid I bore you irrevocably at this early stage. So how about at the moment I decided to leave England?

It pains me to relate any of my story up to that point, but I feel it has to be done, at the very least a potted, no frills version.

There was I; young and exceedingly silly; working as the junior receptionist in the medical centre of the small market town near which I had grown up. I was indubitably the worst junior receptionist they had ever had. Bored, lazy and unmotivated; the majority of my evenings and weekends were spent in the dubious company of ‘friends’, behaving unwisely in the local nightclub or in fact any of the boozy hotspots to be found in my little corner of the Midlands.

The rest of the time was spent in futile arguments with my despairing parents.

I had to admit it: I was going nowhere, and surprisingly fast. Eighteen years old, not an A-level to my name: having been rather unceremoniously ejected (inebriated, of course) from my Rutland school mid-GCSEs; stuck in a job I neither aspired to, nor was good at; and in such a dizzyingly downward spiral that those aforementioned despairing parents were wincing in anticipation of the impact that would herald rock bottom.

But to my surprise, and their everlasting relief, it didn’t come.

Instead I took my life into my own hands at long last, and decided to go to Mallorca for six months to learn Spanish. It was scary, but funnily enough, not as scary as the thought of sitting in a sludgy heap in the Midlands till the end of my days. So I packed my suitcase, and pretended not to hear the collective sigh of relief when I handed in my notice.

That was me, setting off into the unknown…