The Life of Shell: The day a dream came true and i didn't even realise.

Ive tried to write this many times and each time it just hasn’t seemed to read right. So I apologise to those who have already heard this story from me but I am going to tell it just as I have been to those I have recently spoken too.

A few days before I was to get on the plane back to Australia, Becka came home from work with a surprise for me. Jewel was in town, I couldn’t believe it I had been checking her schedule up till the day l left for the US and the closest she was going to be was Colorado, which really wasn’t that close.

But no she was going to be in DC, now Becka had always said to me she would never go see her. So I asked when and where and how we were going to work it.

Luckily she was coming for the National Book Fair which I had seen setting up in the Mall for the last couple of days. She was going to be giving a talk in the Children’s tent. It turns out she had recently written a children’s book. Being a new mum all her latest stuff has been children orientated.

Now this was perfect as I know how good a story teller she is from the one and only time I had seen her at Day on the Green back in 2004 and Becka has nothing against her just isn’t into her music and being a book fair we were both very excited!

It fitted into the itinerary Becka had planned for me on my last day very well, the only problem was we had to cut our bottomless Mimosa brunch short. Probably a good thing or our whole day could have been spent in the pub!

Turned out to be bottomless bloody mary's or screwdrivers. We werent that upset!

We got to the book fair 15 minutes before she was to start the fair started off very well with free bags and posters. We love our free stuff.

I was on a high, and not just from the mimosas, I was going to see Jewel now those who know me well know how much this meant to me.

We thought we would head to the book sale tent first to see if we could get me her book incase there was a chance the line for the book signing wasn’t too much. There was a line for the book sales tent! This did not bode well.

So we headed to the Children’s Tent. The guy who was on before her was still talking so I was content to stand at the back until everyone left when he finished. Becka didn’t agree, saying that people were probably camped out for the day. So when people were getting up to leave near the front but to the side she rushed us to get those seats. There was a speaker in my way I was not happy. But it turns out these weren’t the seats we were after. This was just a point to be able to launch off for front and centre seats. Becka was on a mission to get me the best seats possible!

I had no idea what was going on. When everyone left we stood up to get better seats. Becka told me to stay where I was and disappeared. I stood there like a lost child in everyone’s way until I spotted her grabbing 2 seats 3 rows from the front right in front of the microphone. I rushed over to join her and when I got there the lady we were sitting next to was laughing at something. Apparently Becka had asked her if the seats were available and had said it was Guerrilla warfare. She was getting the best seats for me at any cost.

We sat talking to the lady for a little while, she was one of the ones who were there for the whole day, and then Jewel arrived. She hasn’t changed still looks the same as when she first released an album.

She was amazing and that not just my star struck self talking. She is a natural born story teller and fame has not made her stuck up in anyway she was laid back and just talked about her journey to get to where she is today as though it had been a normal life. Too her I guess because she had been there and got through it she can now talk about it so casually but we were sitting there in awe.

I didn’t know she had been homeless and lived on the streets before her first song finally got accepted and I thought I was a die-hard fan! (then again I still haven’t finished her autobiography, I was reading it before I left for England and its still in storage!)

Then it was question and answer time, Becks was at me to ask a question but I had none, I was content just to listen. Plus it was the children’s tent, let the kids ask. It was a mixture of people and luckily not too many gushy fans asking questions. The kids who asked questions really made the day.

me totally and utterly captivated

Someone asked her to sing and so we heard her sing the lullaby her book is based on, then someone else reminded her she had promised to yodel, her grandma had taught her to yodel when she was a young girl. She had hoped we had forgotten this promise! It made Becka’s day.

Then it was over. She was to be signing books at the book-signing tent in 15 minutes. With all the fans in the tent, I knew there was no point heading down there but we thought we would go see what the queue was like and if we had a chance to see her, hope she would sign my free poster seeing as I hadn’t been able to get her book.

We hurried down there and the queue was already pretty crazy, there was heaps of little marquees set up for the authors with chain link fences depicting the queues. It was about 38 degrees and we really didn’t have time to line up, we had known this and I was ok with it, I had seen her talk it was better than a signature.

She arrived while we were standing there and Becka told me I should get a photo with her. I was like a little girl, I went up as she was getting out of her golf cart but I couldn’t get near her I then followed her to her seat, standing on the correct side of the fence. I felt like I looked like I had problems. I may have said excuse me but I was too quiet if I did, she was about to call up the first person in line, when Becka said excuse me Jewel but can my friend have a quick photo with you she has to go catch a plane to Australia. We didn’t exactly lie…

It was the quickest photo ever taken, both Becka and I were very embarrassed as we were queue jumping. Those poor people in the line had been waiting to meet her in the heat for a long time. It was like a photo at a party I leaned over the rail Becka quickly snapped the photo and then we ran. I thanked Jewel trying to convey how much it meant to me only later to realise I still had my sunglasses on and she couldn’t see what I was trying to say anyway! How rude.

Becka said she had wished me a safe flight but I hadn’t heard a thing, way too star struck and flustered!

Unable to sleep the night before I had gone through everything I would say if I had a chance to meet her. I didn’t get to say anything it was over like that! I was on a bit of a downer after but not for long we had the International Spy museum to attend!

But not before we did a little more clothes shopping, and then donned our real personalities and entered the Spy Museum. Now this museum is amazing, it is sooo full of information and a lot of it im not sure should be on display! How to make bugs, cameras, how operations were pulled off. It would have been even better if it hadn’t been a Saturday and filled with people. But we got our cover, assignment and destination and made our way through the different areas. So much to read I couldn’t take it all in. Got a bit freaked out when it started telling us about Internet spying and the new age of terrorism.

We completed our assignments only to realise that we completed them easily as the questions were multiple choice, I couldn’t believe the lady in front of me managed to get the whole thing wrong!

If the officer on duty had grilled me I’m sure my cover would have come unstuck but we had left that adventure to the kids.

We headed home after that, way too much of an information overload. It wasn’t until I was telling Becka's housemate about meeting Jewel that I realised a dream had come true. If I had been asked who I wanted to meet it had always been her. But unfortunately it wasn’t quiet the circumstances I was hoping for, im not sure It can actually count as a meeting, Still it took another couple of days for it all to sink it.

We had one last night at the pub (which included a game of the 'game of life' without the rules and half the pieces, so who knows what we played, before getting up extremely early and heading for the airport for my flight home. I couldn’t believe it was time to go.