Va va doom

So my European dream of single girl alone, hair flapping in the wind zooming round the Cote d'Azure in a Twingo (for excellent ref please see chic dark french beauty in Cleo ad avec thierry Henri)
Was smashed. Pretty much.
It was never a good start that, I suppose that I am not 'dark' but the whole package blond, blue eyes, hair, translusent skin etc. Or that when I stepped in to the car I simply could not remember which pedal was which or how the fuck to make the stupid thing reverse.
Anyway. I did make it reverse.
Into a man on the street.

Lucky me, this he found hilarious and called for his mates to come and watch me finish attempt this manouvre.
Two wing mirrors and 45 minutes later. I had turned the car around.
The men seemed reluctant to let me go and wanted to know which country I was from.
Once I had convinced them that I wasn't Russian, didn't want to sleep with them and was infact English.
They took pity on me, told me they were mechnics for the garage and fixed both wing mirrors.

I would have been pleased except for the harsh reality that even French car mechanics are turned off at the prospect of touching an English girl.

I quote, 'Non, to eeeasi, egh?'

Our reputation proceeds us.

I decided that driving in France alone, for the first time, would be a fine because when I worked in South Africa on a shoot I drove everywhere.
In hindsight, driving in a country with no specific road laws, quite often with no roads and policemen with 'flexable' opinions on the highway code, isn't quite the same.

Funnily enough, the team I was with in South Africa was entirley Russian. After driving the Fashion Director back to her hotel after dinner one night she shook her toothpick-esque arm at me declared she felt like vomitting her (2) oysters she'd had for dinner and took the car away.

Which is fine because I was able to spend the rest of the trip getting hammered in the evening and being driven everywhere.

We had nearly two weeks to shoot a mens swimwear story.
After one day in the desert with a 'forward thinking' photographer and his boyfriend watching poor teenage boys in lame speedos being asked to play the spoons on the sand......
my job was pretty much done.

I just had to follow the Russians about in 40 degree heat with big black jumpers and factor 100 sunscreen.
How the fuck you can be brought up in Siberia and find South African desert heat chilly is beyond me.

Actually, it transpired, the Fashion Director was not from Russia. At dinner on the last night I attempted conversation about origin, home town etc... and she announced, 'Agh, eeenfact, it ish, nowt that I am froms Russia, but Kazakhstan'
Foolishly I spend the rest of the evening peeing myself with laughter even after her request to stop, was i 'deesrespectings her couuuntry!?
Needless to say. I was not re- employed.