Continuing with my quest to conquer the social side of my year abroad, this week I actually engaged in conversation on public transport.

This is maybe the third time in my life this has ever happened, and only one of these instances has occurred in Britain. That time, I was trying to help a girl who was interviewing at Cambridge, and was a little perplexed at the Citi bus system. Although the girl herself seemed grateful, frankly, her mother looked quite embarrassed to be seen making eye contact with a fellow passenger.  I think when I helpfully smiled, ‘You need the St. Andrew’s Street stop, just by John Lewis,’ she saw my lips moving but heard my dulcet Northern stylings utter, ‘Just go home, love. Ta ra.’

My current reading matter served as the catalyst I needed to break the cardinal rule of communal travel. The chosen book? Alan Sugar’s autobiography. A Christmas present. Not the most scintillating of reads, it has to be said, but then again I haven’t got to the dirt on The Apprentice yet, which from my limited knowledge of Big Al is probably the book’s USP.

My companion, a louche-looking Spaniard, asked me who the guy was on the front cover and what the book was about. I explained that Sugar is a famous businessman in the UK, owning several companies with varying degrees of success, and a bit of a television personality to boot. This guy clearly wasn’t intimidated by the rather harsh, face-on picture of Lord Sugar adorning my hardback; indeed, as my mother would say, ‘he’s not the bonniest of lads.’ But he is recognisable, and rightly so, and this episode made me realise that fame, even on a significant stage, often doesn’t transcend national frontiers.

On a lesser but related note, anonymity can be a liberator when in a foreign country. So what if I’m a nerd with a penchant for all things organisational back in Cambridge? I may be proud of this fact, but I do somewhat revel in the realisation that here I can choose to invent a whole new personality for myself at little expense to my comfortable old life. Or rather, reveal a different, woefully untapped side to my character, in defiance of the current favourite women’s magazine mantra, ‘New Year, New You.’ I’m not changing, merely upgrading. And it does help that because nobody knows me here, I find it more acceptable to book table reservations under Spanish-friendly names such as ‘Sara,’ my own moniker ‘Zoë’ having been thrice-confused with ‘Isabel,’ and more frequently replaced with that ever-popular, Magic Roundabout-esque choice, ‘Ze-be.’

So maybe this freedom is the push I need to get out there and convince the world, and myself, that I can sip an afternoon coffee, stare pensively into the middle distance and reflect upon how the Prado’s latest collection has made me re-evaluate my place in the consumerist society we live in today. Or some such waffle.

Essentially, the British don’t really enjoy being the centre of attention, and so perhaps sometimes we become confined within one version of ourselves. Maybe it’s time we got a little more three-dimensional, a little more passionate about things other than self-deprecation and Tool Academy. In the words of everyone’s favourite moonwalking vitiligo sufferer, I’m starting with the (wo)man in the mirror. Sadly, I am not quite as mysterious as I would have liked. Staring into my bedroom from the kitchen this weekend, it became apparent that the shutter and curtain are not entirely as opaque as I had thought, and I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to my flatmates for four months of indecent exposure. Sorry.