It’s an occupational hazard of being a travel writer: to visit a country and think: “oh! this place looks INTERESTING; I wonder what it would be like to live here.”

The answer is always: Much the same as a yeast infection, HAEMORRHOIDS or AMOEBIC dysentery, so move along; nothing to see here.

Keep Wondering and keep wandering.

Do not stop.

But I stopped.

I should have learned.

But I didn’t.

And then I whined like a bitch for the next 12 months as my life circled the drain.

Pretty much every day, during my time in Qatar, was worse than the day before.

It was worse than the time I drank a bottle of wine and decided to get on the roof and fix my TV aerial.

It was worse than the time my mother thought I’d alighted from her vehicle and drove off with me hanging out of the door.

It was even worse than the gin-fuelled time I made a ladder out of garbage bins to climb in through the second storey balcony after locking myself out of my apartment.

So many broken bones.

My Doha life was no less fractured, hurtling from one calamity to another.

It had been crappy from dot.

My first day at my new job I should have known. 

The moment she reached around, I should have known. 

I thought perhaps she was brushing off an imagined imperfection. 

But no. 

Hands like shovels, she (my new boss) dug deep into her gusset and removed her briefs with a deafening snap of knicker elastic. 

Bahhhhhh! 

I screamed in my head. 

And again Bahhhhhh! as she offered me her hand. 

At that precise moment, I should have hightailed it back to the airport and caught the next flight home. 

But I didn’t. I chose to stay. 

I chose to spend 183 days living my worst life.

I wan’t blind or even blinkered. I was informed… well aware.

I’d spent time in the Middle East before so I knew exactly what to expect. 

I'd been there before; worked there before. 

I’d been to Qatar twice. But this time was different. So, so different.

And now I was working on a magazine and directing a fashion shoot.

“Dude, she’s put her chest on back to front. I’ve got bigger tits than her,” said the photographer.

She had and he did.

RBF Model glared.

The photographer motioned me over.

“She’s too bony for that outfit,” he said.

He had a point; she had all the grace of a wicker basket.

Earlier I’d been thinking, when the call to prayer woke me at dawn, that today would be less crap. Dunno why… just a feeling. And work wasn’t going to be too bad. At least I was out of the office and away from her…my boss, not RBF Model.

Just one of those things: a garden-variety fashion shoot I told myself.

I got this.

Until RBF Model arrived: face like a slapped arse, thieving the happiness with every breath she took – a thunderous pout someone mistook for glamourista-chic.

She chain-smoked and flicked me ‘if-looks-could-kill’ evils between sips of Diet Coke and scowls. 

Hate her.

The shoot began. And all was well for a while.

But later that day.

"Can you just give me one more look in the pink outfit before you get changed,” I asked politely and gave a thumbs up to the photographer. We were almost done with the spring/summer shoot, and we were pooped. 

“Can you just go f*%k yourself,” RBF Model muttered under her breath. 

To be continued…