There once was a girl who felt a bit lost. She had no idea in which direction she wanted to go; just that she did not fancy the direction most other people seemed to be going. She felt that something momentous had to happen before she would start to feel alive, but nothing momentous ever happened in the Northamptonshire (UK) countryside. Thankfully for her, there were still 20 years to go before the British public lost its collective mind: departure from the European Union still nothing more than an improbable fantasy in Nigel’s head. So when the girl was 18, she decided to go to Spain, where a summer trip “just to learn the language” was able to turn into an 8-year odyssey of discovery – as opposed to being called to a halt after 90 days as it would be in today’s sunlit Brexity uplands.

Hopefully funny in places, hopefully thought-provoking in others, and with more factual information on a wide variety of topics thrown in to keep readers on their toes, this is ultimately the story of a girl unable to tether herself to a conventional life.