The day I entered my 40th lap around the sun – otherwise known as my 39th birthday – was the same day I checked out of my normal life and checked in for a flight halfway across the world. Starting in Melbourne, I embarked on a five-week adventure, travelling through Australia, New Zealand and Japan like some kind of mad, condensed “gap yah”, except grubby hostels were very much traded in for nice hotels with spas.
When I returned to the UK, I had another month off work: four beautiful, indulgent weeks of brunches and saunas and yoga classes and drinking frozen margaritas in the middle of the day while slowly chipping away at my much-talked-about-but-never-before-started YA novel. It was all a bittersweet taste of what life could’ve been like, had I only been smart enough to marry rich.
