Are We Nearly There Yet

by Lucy Vine

  I can’t even think about it, it’s too mortifying.

  So, being the adult I am, I hid in my room for another four hours straight, before I finally rang my brother back. I asked after our stepdad, Steven, and I knew it was bad because he was actually really nice to me. He told me not to worry about anything and just get some food in my belly. He carefully mentioned that he’d booked his flight to Australia to see Mum and Steven, and that he was stable for now, but he didn’t ask if I wanted to go with him. Thankfully.

  I know it sounds heartless, but I couldn’t face any of it, it’s too much.

  Then I crossed the hall and got into bed with Eva, where she just stroked my head and asked if I wanted her to put Saturday Night Takeaway on from the planner, so I could watch ‘Anton Du Beke’ – which is what she thinks Ant and Dec are called. She also thinks they’re brothers, but so does everyone, right?

  Eva is so clever in lots of ways – she’s a corporate lawyer and she went to one of the best universities in the country – but she’s also the dumbest person I know. Her family are super rich and she grew up in the poshest area of Surrey, where there are six-foot metal gates and golf courses everywhere. She didn’t get drunk or even watch any telly until she was about eighteen because she was too busy riding horses, hanging out with princes, and, like, learning the rules to water polo (I don’t know? What do rich people do with their time?). She’s not an arsehole about it though, she’s really generous and lovely. She’s just sheltered, y’know? And it meant when we met at work – aged twenty-two – I got to corrupt her.

  We watched telly together in bed like that for ages, while I wondered what the hell I was going to do with my life. I’d lost my job, I had to move out, and . . . well, all the Mum and Steven stuff I couldn’t even let myself think about. I was feeling so weird and alone and confused, absent-mindedly scrolling through my apps – and then I found the note on my phone.

  It was addressed to ‘Future Alice from Drunk Alice’, which I must’ve written when I was in the taxi, crying all the way home.

  It was long and incoherent, but it was actually super wise – if you discount all the messy typos and segues into Friends episode critiques. Basically, Drunk Alice was telling Future Alice that her awful night needed to be a wake-up call; that it was time to change her/my life. I couldn’t keep bumbling through, waiting for stuff to happen. I needed to figure out what I was going to do, find my own path without relying on Eva and Mark – and stop messing around with TD. I had to find my own answers and change everything. Throw my life up in the air and see where it landed.

  The important part went like this:

  It is timed to figgure oout WHO YOU R and also FIND TE FUN. When was the last time you had fun??? When did you last let yourself have an adventure? You are so stuck in this rut, pretending to be happy – but are you actually happy? What is happiness to you anyway? Is this everything existence has to offer? Shouldn’t you be asking for more? Wat r u actually DOING WITH your life?? No friends, no job, no boyf, ducked up family. You need to change everything. start agin. Go travelllin!! Go and run around for a year like Forrrest Gump (might get free trainers?????? Get more followers on socel media??? Can I post on Instagrm and run at same time???). You could Climb a mountain! Sale around the world in TEN DAYS???? Is that posibl? Buy drugs, take drugs. Hve sex with LOTS more people or like lits anyone. U need 2 be more lik constance. Go find the joy.

  INSPIRATION BRainstorme:

  -BARE GRYLLS

  -DAVID ATTENBRUH

  -BLOGGER CONSTANCE BEAUMONT

  -BUY DRY SHAMPOO AND ALSO BREAD BECOS YOU NEED BREAD

  MOOD BOARD:

  -dchbjvdhhvdwch

  Which is when I think I must’ve fallen asleep in the taxi.

  It was mostly silly nonsense, but, bizarre as it sounds, I was inspired by Drunk Alice’s enthusiasm. She gets me in a lot of trouble but I know she only wants the best for me. And I knew she was right. I had to change things. Of course I did. Everyone else around me was moving on, having babies, getting married; ticking off the life goals you’re supposed to. Why was I the only one who hadn’t figured things out yet? Don’t I deserve to be happy? Happiness comes so easily to everyone else, why haven’t I pinned it down yet? And, knowing how unhappy I am, why have I been so set on staying in this one place; so determined nothing can ever change? It was time to choose something else. And either way, I couldn’t stay there, getting left further and further behind.

  I spent that whole next day thinking and thinking. I thought about everything that was going on, and everything hanging over me. I thought about the rut I was being forced out of by other people changing their lives around me. I thought about how it was time to take control of my own life.

  And so I went online and I booked my flights to LA. It was an impulse decision but for the first time in ages, I felt excited about my life. Everything seemed clearer and more hopeful. I even deleted Facebook! Well, I mean I didn’t delete it because I’m not a fucking idiot, but I’m not really looking at it that much any more. I’ve started a blog on AWOL.com instead, so I can be like those cool chicks online, being spontaneous and happy.

  I’m evolving, you guys.

  So yes, coming to LA is the first leg in a three-part plan for changing my life.

  Firstly: fun. I plan on spending my time here laughing and having as many silly adventures as possible. I want to sunbathe and party and chase celebrities around in circles – it will be as shallow and mindless as possible. I want to find the joy here; that’s the plan for this section of my trip.

  After some mindlessness in LA, I’ll give the mindFULness thing a go, with a month in Asia. There will be hostels and backpacking, because that’s how a person finds themselves, right? By not showering for a month and crying themselves to sleep on a cement mattress?

  After that, I’m going to take a third, spontaneous adventure somewhere else. I haven’t decided on that bit yet. Maybe I’ll get on a sailboat for a month. Maybe I’ll climb a mountain. Maybe I’ll become a scuba diving instructor. I’m leaving it up to fate to decide where I end up for the third part of this trip.

  Fate, or Lastminute.com.

  The idea is: three trips to change my life. Just like Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love. But not enough like her to, say, get sued.

  I’ve never done anything like this before and I’m so scared and nervous.

  But excited.

  Obviously none of this is coming cheap, but I’ve decided to use the money I got when my granddad died last year. I had planned to put it towards a deposit on a house one day, but since I’m only a temp (and now not even that), I couldn’t get a mortgage that would cover even a broom cupboard in London. So I figured I might as well spend it running around the world, making memories and changing my life.

  I officially gave Eva a month’s notice on the flat. She protested weakly, but we both knew she’d need me out soon anyway, what with Jeremy and The Foetus moving in. But she couldn’t believe it when I said I was going travelling for a few months. Mark was really shocked, too. They both kept saying they couldn’t picture it. Mark said I’d give up and be back within the week and Eva said nicely that she’d keep my room empty just in case.

  I get why they were both so surprised. Because the thing is, I’m not really a travelling type of person. At least, I never thought I was. Because I have always had a very specific idea of those types of people, and it just isn’t me. Travelling Types are naturally thin, tanned and don’t need to wear make-up. They wear denim hotpants like they are comfortable and don’t cause chub rub. Travelling types just naturally wake up in the morning without an alarm clock on their phone. Actually, they don’t even have a phone because they are too free-spirited. Or maybe they just have one of those Nokia 3210s because they’re retro and ironic, and don’t have the internet. Because Travelling Types don’t worry about the internet. They’re secure enough in the
mselves without the validation of strangers. But at the same time, they make friends easily, with, like, the guy sitting opposite them on a train. They have hair that doesn’t need ‘doing’ and they don’t get too tired to do anything after 9.30 p.m. They like sunsets and they’re not afraid of the ocean. They like all different kinds of food and don’t need to know exactly what is in this dish and who made it and did they wash their hands properly. They don’t get travel sick. They don’t write bin collection dates on their calendar or get excited because Boots are doubling their Advantage Card points this month. They are laid back and spontaneous and go-with-the-flow.

  And, see, I am none of those things.

  Plus, my massive, speculum-eating vagina would consume denim hotpants in one bite.

  Genuinely, my body isn’t built for spontaneity. I need to be wearing the right underwear for spontaneity. I can’t just take off running in some new direction – not without wearing at least three sports bras. And my back rolls are made – and I say this with genuine fondness – for fetish websites, not string bikinis that disappear into my folds. My hair gets frizzy in heat and if mosquitoes were on Tinder I would finally be a guaranteed right swipe. I burn and boil and sizzle like bacon in the sun.

  Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a normal holiday – lying on a beach in Tenerife for seven hours straight, not realising I have burnt immediately, then spending six full days in the shade complaining about the sun. Taking eight hundred filtered selfies in sunglasses that all look the same. Drinking weird-coloured cocktails with umbrellas and screaming ‘EYES EYES EYES’ at Eva when we do a cheers.

  But travelling is different. It’s where you’re supposed to become one with the world. Where you learn about and embrace exotic new cultures. Where you try and speak the language and eat deep-fried spiders. None of it has ever appealed to me.

  But I’m going to try.

  I’ve spent the past couple of weeks immersing myself in the travel-y internet, researching places and things to do, staring at photos on travel agent websites and ordering every single thing Amazon Prime recommended – including an oddly tall rucksack with seven hundred buckles, and a mosquito net that could realistically cover an entire four-poster bed.

  I’ve even been to my GP to ask about jabs! But then failed to get them because you have to do them all a hundred years in advance. Adulting fail, but oh well.

  I’ve become obsessed with travel blogs, and Constance Beaumont’s blog, in particular. She makes it all look so serene and laid back and sunny, with her beachy waves and seamless tan. She’s got it sussed, so why can’t I? I can’t wait to be just like her. That’s what I’m doing with my AWOL blog. I want it to be just as deep and cool as hers.

  Actually, she’s the reason I’ve decided to make LA my first stop. She was blogging from Venice Beach recently, using words like ‘bohemian’ and ‘quirky’, which sold it for me because I have a bunch of floaty skirts and off-the-shoulder tops that sound like they will be perfect for that kind of place. The photos all looked so lush and there were topless men on scooters everywhere. I am here for all of that. And here I literally am, just a few weeks later. Five and a half thousand miles away from my life and my flatshare in London. A life and a flatshare that isn’t even mine any more.

  And I couldn’t be more ready for it.

  3

  AWOL.COM/Alice Edwards’ Travel Blog: Living My Dream and Feeling Very #Blessed

  20 April – 8.13 p.m.

  Good evening, dream chasers,

  I have just arrived back at my friend Isabelle’s luxury apartment here in the Sunshine State of LA. She picked me up from the airport in a limo, and we enjoyed champagne in the perfectly regulated air-con, as we drove back to her incredibly impressive home in Santa Monica.

  She is the very same Isabelle I remember from the UK. But – if it is possible – she is even more serene and wise with the benefit of a little age. I can confirm she has not been changed by her huge success in the movie business, despite admitting – when I pressed her – that she now knows Leonardo DiCaprio!! I feel confident we are going to get on very well during my stay with her.

  All in all, it has been a wondrous first few hours here, and we are about to don our best attire and hit the hottest bar LA has to offer.

  Oh, also, sorry about that picture I just uploaded. We drove past Owen Wilson and I was trying to get a photo and share an insight into this world I now inhabit. But I don’t understand about re-sizing so it came out upside down and too large. I don’t know how to delete, so please just ignore it.

  All my love and peace to you all,

  Alice x

  #PleaseDon’tLookAtThatPhoto #WillGetTheHangOfThisSoon #OwenWilson #TravelBlogger #Travels #Travelling #Wanderer #GoneAWOL #AliceEdwardsBlog #OffTheBeatenTrack #BloggerLife #Blessed #Brave #DreamChaser

  1 Comments · 0 AWOLs · 1 Super Likes

  COMMENTS:

  Karen Gill

  | I’m staying up for the jet lag craic to set in, then you’ll be less smug.

  Hoiking my massive backpack further up my shoulders, I am swimming in sweat by the time I finally spot Isabelle across the car park.

  Sweating: another thing Travelling Types don’t do.

  She’s picked the furthest away spot and I trip over myself as I pick up speed to reach her. I’m feeling hot and cross, like some kind of Easter bun.

  ‘Hello!’ I shout jovially from a distance, trying to communicate that I need help with my bag. She waves back, but doesn’t move, and I almost stop in my tracks as I take in how different she looks. She’s platinum blonde, dressed head-to-toe in yoga gear, and even from twenty feet away, I can make out the tight sheen of a face full of Botox. She looks good, don’t get me wrong, but very . . . different.

  Isabelle was our family’s neighbour when we were little, and the pair of us were quite close until we started secondary school. That was when she – a brunette back then – turned into an uppity heinous bitch just because Karen with the cool Irish accent started paying attention to her. The two of us didn’t speak for, like, five years, but then we reunited in sixth form, which is around the age you realise uppity bitches can be brilliant. After that, Isabelle, Karen and I were pretty close – along with Amelia and Slutty Sarah from our year – until Isy moved to the US about eight years ago. That was around when I met Eva while I was temping for her legal firm and we moved in together. I can’t believe how long ago that is now. And how much has changed, and maybe no one more so than Isy.

  Anyway, when I told her I was coming over to LA for a while, she got super excited and insisted I stay with her for the first week. Which sounded really generous in theory, but then she casually mentioned that she’d need me to pay rent and was quite specific that I’d have to move out after a week because she needed the space back to use as her dressing room.

  I love her, but there’s always small print with Isabelle.

  ‘Where’s your car?’ I huff, out of breath when I finally reach her.

  She waves at something odd-looking beside her.

  ‘It’s a hybrid?’ she says, climbing in and pressing buttons. I open the passenger side, throwing my giant bag in and climbing in after it. The plastic-y floor quivers under my weight.

  Isy continues, speaking in her delightful new upspeak accent. ‘I paid double because I care about the environment? But also because it used to belong to Leonardo DiCaprio? You’re sitting where Leo would’ve banged at least a half dozen blonde twenty-year-olds?’

  ‘Is that why it smells weird in here?’ I say, crinkling my nose.

  ‘No, that’s probably the gem-infused protection mist I’ve sprayed everywhere?’ she says, nodding authoritatively. ‘It is a psychic vampire repellent, to stop any bad energy infecting my aura?’

  ‘Um . . .’ I have nowhere to go with this and yet I am overwhelmed with questions.

  She continues smoothly. ‘I
’m a subscriber to the lifestyle website Gloop. They talk a lot about the importance of staying on top of these things because there are so many people around here who want to suck away your life energy.’

  We pause at traffic lights and a man who looks like Owen Wilson crosses in front of us, stopping in the road to flash us. Isy doesn’t react.

  ‘Wait,’ I say, pausing in the act of taking a picture. ‘Did you say Gloop? Do you mean Goop?’

  Isy tuts. ‘Gloop is way better than Goop and far more open to alternative medicines? Like the regular at-home coffee enemas they recommend? I’m detoxifying while also stopping myself getting any and all cancers ever?’

  ‘By squirting coffee up your anus,’ I mutter, deliberately without a question mark.

  ‘I’ll send you some links?’ she says, her face unmoving.

  ‘Fantastic!’ I reply, enthusiastically, waving cheerfully at Owen Wilson still in the road. The vampire repellent doesn’t seem to be working.

  Isy lives in a three-bed flat share in Santa Monica and as she unlocks the door and pulls me inside, still not helping with my bags at any point, she tells me there’s a pool in the complex. But – she adds superciliously – she doesn’t ever use it because it’s ‘full of actors with fake pecs’. Which, conversely, is the exact reason I want to check it out.

  ‘Aren’t you an actor?’ I say, confused.

  She waves her hand dismissively at me because I clearly just don’t get it.

  ‘Yeah, but I’m a proper actor,’ she explains, rolling her eyes. ‘I’m a stage actor. They do adverts and shit like that. That’s why I used air quotes when I said actors.’

  ‘Aha,’ I say, nodding my head, resisting the urge to point out that she definitely didn’t do any air quotes and does she actually know what they are. Usually I love pointing out Isy’s pretention, but I’m too tired right now.