Discover the novel’s funny lines

01The Viking Lurks in the Scrubland…

• His hands: “Michelangelo sculptures, pure marvels… Covered in grease.”
• LinkedIn: “two views! Ah yes, it’s confirmed: this profile is completely obsolete.”
• “I picked up a pen to recycle my anger into creative compost. It’s very eco-friendly.”
• Coraline: “Don’t worry, the real Viking is a myth. No Vikings were harmed.”
• The note: “My hero is a madly charming fifty-something, vain, controlling and slightly singed-toasted. I thought you’d be perfect to promote the role.”
• The Viking: “for fear it was contagious, I watched her from a distance, to take her temperature…”
• “I chose to create, not to take a shot!”
• The Viking: “I’m your emotional catalyst.”
• “It’s good for the emotional planet, apparently.”
• “I had to put a full stop to my sentence one day! I chose an exclamation mark.”

02My Gallery of Imperfect Gems

• “Original bodywork. Going forwards, my chest leads the way as a scout. Reversing, my bum warns me of obstacles.”
• “I was the hand double for snow shovels.”
• “My comebacks often come at dessert time.”
• “If you think I have no flaws, you’re wrong. But let me reassure you straight away: I don’t own up to all of them.”
• “I suffer from an incurable allergy to control and unsolicited advice.”
• The profiles: “I love life. Me too. Lightning connection!”
• “I close the app with the grace of a soufflé collapsing. Drained, limp, my soul shrivelled up.”
• “A real human, with a brain and a heart. Now a protected species.”

03Code Rose

• “Emotion-guided missile engaged. BOOM!”
• “The men grow like giant bamboo shoots and look like mutant asparagus.”
• “With that little gap between his teeth, just big enough to park a bike in.”
• Saturn in Capricorn: “And after that… You get a headache!”
• “I file that between Don’t go out alone at night at 54 and Don’t iron my clothes while I’m wearing them.”
• “I’ve got a life jacket, in case the evening ends up like Titanic.”
• “OK, switch off the parental GPS. Give me a bit of space, or I’ll switch to aeroplane mode.”
• Dad: “It’s not in his head that he’s got ideas!”
• “A graveyard of good intentions, full of zombies jumping on anything that moves. Better to scroll than to sink!”
• The Viking: “At least I knew her family could identify her body if she disappeared at sea.”

04The Rear-View Mirror of Fate

• The Viking: “NO! It’s fake! You see, fake mirror, FAKE!”
• “No need to unleash Ragnarök over a bit of plastic. If the mirror’s broken, no need to call Odin, you ring the insurance.”
• “The Viking is wound tighter than a G-string.”
• “I play Switzerland: I neutralise the hostilities.”
• “I’m used to it… my parents spoke the same language, but they were used to dragging my sister and me into it. Stuck between two parents who made a drama out of everything… we were the buffer between them, and we very quickly settled on romcoms… (fewer decibels)”
• The Viking: “We sold everything: spices, boats, ideas, and even hot air!”
• “My ego went phut, or tchoufa, as we say back home! It collapsed like a soufflé.”

05Hold on!

• “He comes back with a racing hobbit-cat. A flat-pack mini-kat, made by trolls.”
• “Him, hyper-focused. Me, hypo-novice.”
• “Luckily, he mimes… Unluckily, I’m not fluent in mime.”
• “I zigzag like a competition crab.” / “We dance. A perfect tango!”
• The yacht: “Must be the Beckhams’ or Beyoncé’s?… we look like two plastic bags on a pedalo.”
• The harbour bloke: “Right, you clowns, we’ll tow you in.”
• “Nobody at sea is more of a wobbly jelly than me.”
• “Light as a 250 kg seagull.”
• “The Viking holds on to the helm, catches the beer, holds on to the booze, and meanwhile… the boat sails off.”

06Jet Lag

• “Being polite: I’m sorry, sorry, sorry and sorry again. Not very common among the frogs!”
• “I apologise for being so humble, it balances things out!”
• “For being overqualified, because in France I’m asked to justify my skills, and nobody’s ashamed of not paying for them!”
• The nurse: “This is all your fault! You should have been born on time, instead of swimming in bliss!”
• The Viking: “You should have worked for British Rail, you’d have fitted right in!”
• Dad: “I’m like an onion, I’ve got layers! — Yes, we’d noticed, you lay it on thick!”
• Dad: “That’s serenity: panic, well held!”
• Dad: “In every church, there’s always something that doesn’t ring true! Me, I couldn’t care less, I’m a Protestant!”
• “I stopped voting for my ex… Better to be free.”
• Dad: “I have the gift of observing and reading the future, and my wife the gift of setting things alight! So I lend her my lighter!”
• “He’s a little twerp! — Jean! That’s rude! — What? He shouldn’t have hurt my daughter!”

07Ring ring, my parents

• “My dignity has just run out of the room!”
• “I’m doing a sociological study on how many people can give me a funny look in 3 seconds.”
• “The community of peaceful yogis kindly showed me to the door.”
• “That’s why white people have no rhythm: we learn to dance without it, of course!”
• “Nuclear alert, with reinforced protection. It takes 3 passwords to open it: Urgent Mum Dad.”
• “My sister, clearly livid, is stationed outside my door, ready to identify my body. My panicking parents have mistaken her for the fire brigade!”
• “Apparently, my phone has a better social life than I do.”
• The Viking: “So if you don’t get in touch, it means you’re dead? — Yes, dead funny!”

08The Road to Lower Valhalla

• “It’s flat as a pancake!”
• “The hips are the foundations, he gets divorced, everything goes to pot, and Zip! Bam! Crash!”
• “Condemned to eat cold hot dogs and cold beans, it must have smelt a bit of cabbage all the same!”
• “He turned green with envy!”
• “You don’t mind if I call you Vik the King? — No problem, I’m used to being The King. I’m a demigod.”
• The window that was refused: “You have to go outside to see the sea, and walk 500 m to the office to go to the loo.”
• “I scan the landscape to flush out the elves.”

09Overstag!

• The catamaran: “It looks like an elegant dragonfly resting on the water, giving us the eye.”
• “Thor lifts his 250 kg longship, which weighs a tonne and a half when it’s wet!”
• “Doubled up with laughter, I crack, and affectionately nickname him: The Viking.”
• “The mating display to seduce the female works on me 100 %.”
• “With him, I never know if I’m going to get flowers or the chop…”
• The Viking: “I couldn’t be less so. She’s absolutely bang on target, at missing the point.”
• “You’re my hero! And so humble!” — The Viking: “Or the other way round? Who knows…”

10The Viking in Game of Thrones

• “If they succeed, it’s thanks to him. If they fail, it’s their fault.”
• “A Viking hero… of happy hour.”
• “He drinks to forget… the weepy cries of depressed seagulls.”
• “His mother overprotects him, his father ignores him, it’s like a David Attenborough documentary.”
• “The demigod’s kiss on the hand makes me melt, even two centuries late.”
• “You put up a wall, you take off a tyre, or you monologue for three hours while emptying a bottle. Good training for your liver!”
• “You watch the war like a football match! Kick-off at 8 pm. Anxiety compulsory.”

11The Unlabelled Viking

• “An Apple Store on wheels. I nicknamed it the Blizzard… It can drive across the middle of Antarctica without disturbing a polar bear.”
• “His high-tech, cell-memory underwear is better qualified than I am.”
• “He’s got squirrel syndrome. He buys in bulk, in XXL size, all of it WITHOUT LABELS.”
• “That way, I can survive a war completely self-sufficient, and hold out under siege for a year!”
• The Viking: “If the world burns, I want to die in the sun. I’m a Viking, not a smoked salmon!”
• The Viking: “When you’ve got no talent, you’ve got cheek!”
• “A bomb that stops at the Portuguese border? Makes sense!”
• “I couldn’t tell if he was having me on or not.”

12Savage National Chaos of France

• “His world falls apart when he meets… the Society for National Calamities on Railways.”
• Back home: “A cow on the line is treated as a national crisis!”
• “The Viking starts to fume. Literally.”
• The panic calls: “WHERE ARE YOU?” / “WHAT IS THIS COUNTRY OF SAVAGES?”
• “Your incompetence deserves the dungeon! (Round two.)”
• “We’re all going to die stuck on this train, no water, no exit, no Wi-Fi!”
• “He took me for his 24/7 crisis management centre.”
• “I got squeezed like a lemon. Acid, juice in the eye!”

13The Mountain Saga, Part 1

• “Just the word mountain and I frost over.”
• The medium: “She arrived with lumbago. She left set free. She just handed me the baby.”
• “He says nothing for 3 seconds, which, for him, is a geological event.”
• “What medium?… I never said that. You’re making it up… I’m going to sue her.”
• “It took me 47 chapters to untangle truth from lies.”
• “Those who give advice don’t pay the bill!”
• The receptionist: “Is this a joke? Where are the champagne and the confetti?”
• “I work. He grumbles. I do overtime. He fumes. The rota changes. He sulks. I come home knocked out. He drinks beer. Lots.”
• My sister: “He’s not lying. He really believes it. Perfect, insane logic.”

14The Mountain Saga, Part 2 — Roxanne, The Police

• “You’re evicting me from my kingdom on wheels?!”
• “General Melchett bellows at me. — Report for duty!”
• Him — I’m a Lögmann! I’ll have your badge! Me (in French) — He thanks you for your patience.
• “Huge relief. For one second. Then…”
• “Roxanne, you don’t have to put on the car light! Bliss! I can vouch for it, I hate the mountains!”

15Antenna XXL — The Mountain Saga, Episode 3

• “Perched on the roof of the drak-car… halfway between MacGyver and an 8-year-old playing soldiers in a giant’s body.”
• “To talk to the whole world, from Alaska to North Korea. — To Mars, if you can?”
• “The Viking builds his megalomaniac phallus for revenge: an enormous thing 20 metres high… just to spoil the guests’ holiday photos.”
• “While Mister Viking picks up cosmic signals with his satellite dish from the year 3000, I’m stuck in the drak-car with Big Dog.”
• “You cure me with the disease, and not in homeopathic doses. In horse doses.”
• “And then we wonder why we put on weight! Isn’t life grand?”

16The Chestnut-Stuffed Turkey

• “After a week of conflict, the Viking waves the white flag. It’s a truce… He hasn’t grumbled for fifteen minutes. A record!”
• “We put our table (or rather his ego) in the middle of the corridor.”
• “We’re leaving! It’s me or your boss! Either you follow me, or it’s over!” — “Lovely atmosphere!”
• “The betrayed emperor gobbles like a turkey.”
• “I’m his insecure tenant of love, his part-time luxury rough sleeper.”
• “Great New Year present: a year of hell!”

17A Stopover on the Presqu’île du Sel

• “I’m back from hell, and it’s hellishly good!”
• “… you’re getting a knuckle sandwich, I need to let off steam!” — “Except of course… I said nothing, not-at-all-at-all! I stayed very polite.”
• “Rows give me hives.”
• “He smashed his forehead on the ceiling pipes… the Viking’s head is harder than cast iron.”
• “Extreme destination: the peninsula of the loonies.”
• “You’re too soft. You need toughening up! Translation: come and freeze, no shower and no heating, with my hackles up and dog hair everywhere.”
• “With your frozen willy, your aching hips, your Big Dog and your antenna pointing at Mars.”

18The Cold War

• “Amazing how one tiny two-letter word can trigger a cold war, an endless siege and repeated bombardments!”
• “Voice-note monologues of 3 hours 33 every day through the long winter months!”
• “He sings me The Lament of the Abandoned Viking.”
• The Viking: “You choose comfort over passion! You prefer your bed to my soul!”
• “Three CVs a day, a real marathon!”

19Monolong

• “He talks at the table, he talks in bed, he talks in the shower, he even talks in his sleep, with his own voice-over. But above all… he loves the sound of his own voice.”
• “I serve as a visual aid, a marker post, a decorative flutter of eyelashes.”
• “The Pianist’s Groupie, that would make a good title for my book!”
• “It was a monologue sponsored by a beer brand.”
• “His sentences are so loooong… they’ve run out of full stops! Every full stop has done a runner.”
• “Chatty as a parrot and drunk as a lord!”
• The Viking: “Every beer is a meditation, every sip a heroic poem. And the numbers are just to impress the enemy!”
• “I’d say more like Radio Viking FM, volume 200 %, 24/7, adverts included.”
• The Viking: “If I shut up, I think. And if I think, I panic. So I talk. There.”
• “I survived. I demand a medal. With emotional time off in lieu.”
• The drak-car: “It’s as romantic as a freezer with Wi-Fi.”

20Heading for the Nord Ultima!

• “Here, we’re laid-back right down to our flip-flops.”
• The Viking: “In a giant ice tray where it’s -30 °C. Breakfast: frozen dried fish. Main activity: waiting three hours outside, bum in the ice, for an aurora borealis to deign to show its face.”
• “We’re riding an electric scooter all the way to the Maldives.”
• “We know you Vikings! You run mainly on anger for heating! — No, on booze, actually!”
• “We’re going to sleep in an ice hotel! — Are you trying to finish me off? — Exactly, it keeps you fresh!”
• “I’ll leave you a souvenir of me, Iceland frozen-salmon edition.”
• The hákarl: “when it smells of rotten cheese, it’s for the children; the grown-ups wait for the smell of corpse.”
• The aquavit: “The smell of fart that goes ahead of us. The villagers flee… We conquered quite a lot of territory with that strategy!”
• The Viking, on the book: “A good log fire that’ll last all winter!”
• “I’ve got an axis!… a paradoxical one… I go straight ahead… in zigzags… I beat about the bush, it steadies me.”

21Fridge on Wheels

• “I’d rather be sucking Mr Freeze ice pops with my feet in turquoise water!”
• “A treehouse!… A boat!… A refrigerated lorry! Not a toy fire engine. No, a 38-tonner! XXL!”
• “With your relationship with the shower, you’ll last several weeks.”
• “He dreams of grease and stainless-steel screws sorted by mood.”
• “I’m not a two-for-one deal. My needs count, as much as yours, and they get a vote.”
• “It’s called a couple, not a fan club… otherwise it’s called kidnapping.”
• The spy map: “Here, it’s too dangerous… too many mosquitoes… too many people. That only leaves there: 400 km from any living soul!”
• “It would have saved us six months of medieval siege, three emotional crusades and an unfunded PhD on verbal harassment.”
• The Viking: “In case of nuclear attack, I head out to sea in my longship. I’m 100 % self-sufficient. Nothing can happen to me!”

22Rikiki the Maggot and the Little Button

• Epigraph, after Coluche: “Virility is like coffee: some are strong, others decaf.”
• “Pocket igloo edition.”
• Him: “I’m not extravagant, I’m demonstrative. That’s different.” — Me: “Yes, with a slight excess of zeal, perhaps?”
• “Some are discreet and well endowed, others have fully equipped XXL drak-cars, to compensate.”
• “When you’ve got a series that keeps you on the edge of your seat… You skip the short film, far too short! The ending leaves you hungry for more.”
• “He’s married to beer. And there, when it comes to fidelity, he’s truly beyond reproach!”
• Him: “I’m not excessive, I’m complete.” — Me: “Completely plastered. A complete alcoholic.”
• Guinevere, Kaamelott: “The things of life, I sit on them, and I’m speaking figuratively.”
• Sister Anne: “As long as you don’t lift your nose out of your book, there’s not much chance your Prince Charming will drop from the sky in front of your screen!”
• Him: “What I love most is having my name at the top of the bill!”

23Jazz… the Dark Side

• The Viking: “I can kiss the hand of the Queen Mother of Lower Valhalla, discuss painting with a gallery owner… But I’m still an XXL Viking.”
• The Viking: “I love opening the glove box of my Bugatti Atlantic, taking out two crystal glasses to savour a Scotch… then I open my door to enjoy my herring in the rain. I love it! That’s life!”
• “The axe was threatening to chop off my finger, so, out of goodwill, I wrote the script.”
• “The Hammock and the Hummingbirds was meant for Jeff Bridges.” — Him: “With Me it’s going to be dynamite, an absolute blast!”

24The Ticket Puncher and Me

• Epigraph, Roland Magdane: “Official letters are a game: you have to answer them before you’ve received them!”
• Epigraph, the Shadoks: “Why make it simple when you can make it complicated? The more it fails, the more chance it has of working.”
• “I went from silly, noisy laughter to clever laughter without the siren.”
• “The software boomerang sends me back, like a precision metronome, the same letter three months later.”
• Dictionary of the absurd: “Administration: a machine for making things last that shouldn’t last.”
• Dictionary of the absurd: “Computer: an electronic brain that reproduces our mistakes faster than we do.”
• “Life after life, I must have driven quite a few people round the bend by talking too much. So God said: Let’s teach her to listen.”
• “I receive the Golden Ear for Best Supporting Role.”
• “The importance of a little apostrophe… Learning to listen to myself!”
• “If I’m going to lose everything, I’ll keep the irony. Might as well go down in style!”

25Counsel for the Prosecution — At the Windmill Court

• Epigraph, Raymond Devos: “One word can hide another, especially when it’s lying in ambush in a dictionary.”
• “On Monday he tells me white… Tuesday black… Wednesday grey. Thursday green, and on Friday I see red!”
• “I take down his words word for word, with the meticulous neutrality of a Swiss court clerk.”
• “His name plate reads: Counsel for the Prosecution.”
• “He’s the jury, the lawyer and the judge, all by himself. And I’m the accused.”
• Him: “Anything you say may be taken down and used against you, and will be repeated, twisted and amplified!”
• “You are sentenced to reread The Art of Losing, even when you do everything right!”
• Me: “I’d rather be free than be right.”

26Job Interview

• “My parents never miss their target. They call me right at the critical moment.”
• Mid-interview: “DRRRRIIIINNG. Mum.”
• The recruiter: “Answer it, miss, then you’ll stop worrying.”
• “Er… excuse me… it’s for you!”
• Mum: “My daughter always answers the phone. She holds the world record for the Pavlov reflex. You won’t find better on the market!”
• “150 calls a day, ringing on four phones at once, all different and at full blast. I smashed my record! No, actually… I was the one that got smashed!”

27Manoeuvres

• Me, as Bourvil: “Do you think it’ll fit?” — Him, as De Funès: “It’ll never fit!!”
• “Cut down the tree! — Yes, boss!… Knock down the wall! — Right, boss!… Trim the fence! — At your orders, boss!”
• “TELL ME IF IT FITS!!… I CAN’T see you in the mirror! MOVE!!”
• Him: “Perfect! Clumsy as ever, my stupid French woman!”
• Him: “I spend ten hours on my engines, but I whinge like a kid as soon as you want to go for a walk!”
• “The Sun King doesn’t need to try, he already shines naturally.”
• “We had to put our sunglasses on, he was beaming so much… sunburn… the mark of the glasses, and highlights gone all blond!”
• Liliya: “For you I can only do a little plait, you haven’t got enough material! But I can make you a wig.”
• The hair: “The Einstein cut… the sun with rays all around!”
• The menopause on screen: “Real ones, not redone!”
• “I see cartoon characters in my head… La Linea, the Shadoks, Dick Dastardly and Muttley, the whole Muppets orchestra!” — The Viking: “I’d call it a right racket!”

28Shuffle Mode On

• Epigraph, the Shadoks: “Why make it simple when you can make it complicated? I pump, therefore I am.”
• Epigraph, Raymond Devos: “I have a sense of direction, always broken down. I’m for everything that’s against and against everything that’s for.”
• “King Louis XIV on holiday in a mobile watchtower, drinking his beer in non-iron sailor’s shorts.”
• Him: “I want a view of everyone… but nobody must see me.”
• “The Viking and his mobile delusions of grandeur!… he wants to come back in a Titanic on wheels.” / “Small draught, big ego!”
• The name of the boat: “The Galley!”
• His searches: “Steel boat. Boat that can reach the Canary Islands. Boat that parks itself. Boat with no ex-wife on board.”
• “Three Daubs for a Tub, that would make a good title!”
• “The Viking is the Amazon Prime of megalomania. He orders in XXL. He sends everything back. And he always gives the seller a bad review.”
• “Listening to yourself talk makes you deaf.”
• “Like this whole conversation, really.”

29The Viking Lands among the Vegans

• “I survived the Viking’s winter siege of 3 hours 33 a day.”
• “My colleagues, a group of sporty vegans, breathe spirulina and fasted hiking.”
• “He turns up with a fag in his mouth, a beer in each hand, both covered in grease… His metre-high dog chases the boss’s chihuahua. The vegans are petrified. The Viking, in stitches. Me, scarlet. I disappear into a fern.”
• “Everybody loves me! I’m already a unanimous hit!”
• “Even when I run away from the cold, the blizzard finds me…”
• The President: “Megalomaniac dictator… clinging to her power like a mussel to its rock.” / “I nickname her It… one gives orders, twelve turn over.”
• “I do overtime on my overtime. I don’t sleep any more. I switch off.” — “And him? He snores!”

30Love in drak-car

• Epigraph, Audiard: “When they put the idiots into orbit, you’ll be going round for a long time.”
• “They say love is blind. I wouldn’t know, without my glasses I’m as blind as a bat. I bump into everything. Around the bed, it’s a war zone.”
• “I always forget something: toothbrush, loo roll, soap, knickers, but above all… my head. If you fast-forward the film, it’s Benny Hill, music and all!”
• “Being affectionately called a clumsy stupid French woman by the prison guard!”
• “Don’t push your luck with granny yogi!”
• Mum: “But it’s 7.10! You’re late! — Noooo, really? Well I never, that’s a first!”
• The child-style negotiation: “And how long are we going for?… My hips hurt!… we just go round the block — four and a half houses — and come back for a beer?!”
• “Big Dog… tail in the air, the windscreen wiper, sweeping his backside with joy.”
• “In my shoes, you wouldn’t last a single day more, you’d be popcorn in a deep-fat fryer.”

31“It” and Snow White — Off to Work!

• Epigraph, Audiard: “I’m against low blows, except when they’re well delivered.”
• Epigraph, Desproges: “Culture is like jam: the less you have, the more you spread it.”
• “If power tends to corrupt, absolute power, It corrupts absolutely.”
• “We used to have the witch with her apple, now we have the queen mother with her jar of jam. Power is like sugar, It makes you addicted.”
• “It is a fly that thinks it’s a lion, but behaves like a vulture. She’s had twelve people fired this year, she’s really on the up!”
• “I love you… but get out of my drak-car. Go away, loser! And come back when I call you. Come back! Go! Off you go, fetch! Bring it back! Good dog!”
• “I became his insecure tenant of love, on an emotional lease with an on-off eviction clause.”
• The contract lost live: “We have chosen your competitor. — Oh! I understand… congratulations!”
• Mum: “Did it go well? — Brilliant! In one ring, I lost my contract. A record!”
• The Viking: “Be charming and say no!” — Me: “That would make a great subtitle for my book! Thanks for your contribution!”
• “If I pick up a rubber I’ll erase you, like La Linea!”
• “I’ve updated my operating system, version 2.0, emotional bug fixed, limit installed, respect compulsory.”

32The Viking Runs Away!

• Epigraph, the Shadoks: “When you don’t know where you’re going, you have to go there… and as fast as possible!”
• Toasts that get out of hand: “Proost! → Porsche… Bless you! → Pffrt… Bottoms up, buttercup!”
• “I pick up the Viking language in stereo. To my ears, it’s an auditory UFO.”
• “He sounds like Élie Kakou, but with Cabrel’s accent… He chases butterflies without ever getting to the point.”
• “I couldn’t finish my sea bream because the translator was too slow?”
• “Go and buy yourself a home projector for your films. And stop projecting your drama and showbiz onto me!”
• “I’m not going to sacrifice myself to satisfy the whims of His Majesty the Sun King. You should have let me finish my sea bream in peace!”
• “Passers-by stare at this big smoking sea urchin still trembling. Nobody dares go near it, for fear it will explode.”
• The UN telegram: “Let’s stick to the facts. Stop. You’ve crossed my limits. Stop… You agree or I stop. Stop.”
• “Sunglasses were handed out to all the spectators, so they wouldn’t burn their retinas! The sun in 3D.”

33Summit Meeting

• Epigraph, La Rochefoucauld: “We all have strength enough to bear the misfortunes of others.”
• Epigraph, Desproges: “You can laugh at anything, but not with just anyone.”
• Dad: “Is work all right? Are you sure?… Trouble brewing with your boyfriend?… he’s got a problem, that lad… he drinks too much, like a whale!”
• It: “We must deploy the emergency plan. A lightning strike. No survivors. It’s political.”
• It: “I’m expected at the mayor’s drinks. I’ll take him a jar of jam.”
• The assistant mini-boss: “Let’s kiss the mini-boss’s backside, that’s an order!”
• Iznogoud: “She must suffer… It will be entertaining.” — “You’re a sadist, you remind me of It, the queen mother! Keep it up, you’ll go far!”
• “I’d rather drive laughing than end up a stowaway in my own anxieties.”
• “I’m a lightning conductor, I take the lightning.” — “With no plan, aren’t you afraid of hitting a wall?” — “Well, lightning smashes walls!”

34A Meteorite Fell… BOOM

• Epigraph, Prévert: “One day I’ll go and live in theory, because in theory everything goes well.”
• “This morning, the forecast predicted imminent disaster. I looked at the sky: clear blue… I could feel something terrible was about to happen.”
• “The three conspirators, to be avoided like covid.”
• “Iznogoud… wants to be Caliph instead of the Caliph. She studies the psychology of sadists to perfect her technique.”
• “It’s more of a feudal democracy… three black cats for one white mouse.”
• “The scapegoat is always ready to admit he was wrong. Especially if he’s done nothing.”
• “Nobody told me the guillotine was right there in the courtroom. Too late.”
• “A good joke’s worst enemy? A former teacher who’s far too serious, a sulking assistant mini-boss and a Judas Iznogoud.”

35A Message in a Bottle…

• Epigraph, in honour of Daniel Pennac: “When life hangs by a thread, it’s crazy what that thread costs!”
• Epigraph, Raymond Devos: “I’ve never had my feet on the ground, but I’m very attached to the floor.”
• The Viking: “I did up a house… with my three Big Dogs to protect me. They can’t do without me… I give the orders, they follow, it’s perfect!”
• The Viking: “No need for therapy, I trained them all by myself, I’m perfectly fine.” — He drinks a beer.
• Me: “I’m not safe from a happy ending!”

36The Great Reset

• Epigraph, Alain: “Humour is the politeness of despair.”
• Mum: “Have a nap… magnesium and green tea… lime blossom… half a passionflower tablet, no risk of addiction… And above all, call us tomorrow morning.”
• Dad: “Right, I’m coming! State of emergency!” — 3 minutes later he’s there.
• “Me, in tears, Niagara Falls in full flood.”
• The doctor: “Sick leave, immediately.” — Me: “No, I can’t, doctor, I’ve got loads of work!”
• The doctor: “What’s your address?” — “White as far as the eye can see. The size and temperature of Antarctica… Er… I can’t remember…” — “That’s exactly what I was saying. Go and see the psychologist. Right now!”

37Soft as a Feather — Out

• Epigraph, Audiard: “I treat lunatics, but I don’t work miracles: idiots, I can’t make them clever.”
• Epigraph, Gianni Rodari: “The absurd isn’t an obstacle, it’s a door.”
• “The psychologist is soft as a feather.”
• The test: “100 % success. Ah, that’s encouraging for once!… I tick all the boxes. That’s a good sign! See result at the bottom of the page: Burnout.”
• “Boom! I passed out! I was in denial. Reality knocked me out.”

38Hot and Cold Shower… with Spin Cycle

• Epigraph, Kaamelott: “I fought for what I believed in… and I lost. But I’m happy.”
• Epigraph, The Birdcage: “I’m not ill, I’m glamorously peculiar!”
• “I used to be like the girl in Notting Hill, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love me. Then I had what you might call a bad week.”
• “The Viking deity demanded a human offering: he sacrificed me on the altar of the Sun God… Now he works for Soumerland customs.”
• “I went out to cry in the rain. It’s more discreet when you sing out of tune.”
• “My clothes had shrunk in the brainwash. Age 10. When the Viking passes through, the spin cycle passes away!”
• “My brain was as sharp as an egg custard… a fluorescent English jelly blinking like a squid. I was wrung out.”
• “Loyal, yes! But to myself first… there’s no way I’m paying other people’s debts!”
• “I’d become the heroine who refuses to die in episode 3. All broken, but still standing.”
• “Writing is an extreme sport done sitting down… I just hold the pen and try not to spill my coffee.”

39Reinforced Protection

• Epigraph, Audiard: “When people push me too far, I don’t correct any more, I dynamite, I scatter, I blow them away.”
• Mum: “When you hit the bottom of the pool, all you have to do is give a big kick and you bob back up like a cork.”
• Dad: “Little twerps, the lot of them! Draw the curtain and move on!”
• My sister: “Since everything is energy, that makes room for you! Now you’re free!”
• The Pen: “You never bathe twice in the same river… Heraclitus.” — Me: “Maybe… but it’s still just as freezing!”
• The Pen: “Stay in your boots and wait for them to get it wrong. It’s the best way of being right.”
• The Pen: “Learn to say No. With a capital N.” — “In red, in bold, highlighted in fluorescent yellow. NO.”
• “I was a good little girl. So good that I negotiated world peace just to play. Zero decibels. An activist of the NO… a mini Gandhi.”
• The Viking: “Quickly? You’re joking. It took you a lifetime to say NO.” — Me: “True. But now I’m saving time.”

40The Sun King

• Epigraph, Miss Piggy: “There’s only one Miss Piggy, and she is Moi!”
• Epigraph, Kermit: “It’s nice to be important, but it’s important to be nice.”
• Epigraph, Montaigne: “Upon the highest throne in the world, we are seated, still, upon our arses.”
• “When he gets up, even the houseplants turn towards him to soak up his radiance.”
• “He looks into his soul and says to himself: What beauty, what I feel. The world should listen to me.”
• “Nobody has ever seen two suns rise in the morning, hand in hand, dancing a Brazilian samba.”
• “He has a PhD in it’s-everyone-else’s-fault.”
• “At a push, he lights up the moon… and even then! He loves me, he loves me not… Not at all.”
• “His core is Chernobyl. An escape game, but with no exit… Sunny one day, stormy forever. No weather forecast.”
• “I saw his core and thought: Wow! He’s deep! He’s suffered! I’ll love him to bits and save him. Spoiler: big mistake!”
• “Rule number 1: never play the rescuer with the sun.”
• “I burned — burn — I was ejected — out!”
• The psychologist: “It wasn’t the sun, it was just a spotlight whose bulb blew.”

41Switching Off the Siren…

• Epigraph, Alain: “There is only one way to fail, and that’s to give up before you’ve succeeded.”
• Epigraph, Kaamelott: “That’s not wrong.”
• “The supreme paradox with my parents is that they never call me when it’s serious!”
• “My parents are straight out of Monsieur Gangster: Don’t worry, we’ll handle it. First we sort the problem. Then we talk.”
• “We’re going to your cousin’s funeral. — When did it happen? — A week ago… The funeral’s in an hour. That’s why we’re telling you.”
• The bouquet: “Did you bring sandwiches as well, to see your cousin off to the afterlife?”
• The Pen: “Your brain is in Netflix trauma mode. It replays the episode on a loop, unlimited anxiety subscription.” — Me: “And how do you unsubscribe?”
• “Like the Gibis on their completely flat planet. Sometimes some of them fall off, and it’s very awkward… especially for the Gibi.”
• The Viking: “Admit it, you’re terrified of flopping!” — Me: “I own it: by the seaside, we live in flip-flops.”
• La Linea: “Look at me! If I fall, I get back up! Lighten up!” — Me: “Adios, my folders!” — La Linea: “And so modest with it!”

42My Everyday Heroes

• Epigraph, Gad Elmaleh: “When I was little, laughter was like a language in our family.”
• “My parents are a permanent sketch… two noisy, funny, rowdy superheroes… a commando operation because I put my phone on silent.”
• Mum: “I’ll jump.” — The captain: “Madam, can you swim?” — “Yes, an excellent swimmer, I’ll jump!” — “NO. You’ll go down the ladder.”
• The aunt lands in Ajaccio instead of Bastia: “It’s amazing how much Bastia has changed!”
• The brace on the ski slope: “She points at the snow: There it is. Indiana Jones in Moon Boots.”
• Mum to the cops: “Give me a GENERAL fine and let me go.”
• My sister, aged 2: “Now it’s certain, we’re in Spain, because here everyone speaks English!”
• “They founded a secret agency: the P.E.E. — Parents Encroaching on Everything.”
• “I’ve got a parental USB cable connected by Bluetooth to my breathing… two sneezes? The family SAS moves in.”
• The Pen: “You must say NO.” — “To whom? With a smile?” — “No. Just NO.”

43Driiiing… My Fears

• The dream, a wedding at 60: “He died of a heart attack.” — My parents: “Yes!!! Failed! Eliminated.”
• “For you, it’s the first time. For me, it’s been going on for 60 years.” — “We never took off. The plane crashed at the end of the runway.”
• “The ringing is coming from my coffin.” — “Hello, Mum?… not you as well?!”
• Before God: “Fantastic, darling, you made me laugh. I’ve prepared a dance floor for you facing the sea!” — Me: “First, I need to call my parents.”
• “A padded hammock, hummingbirds under a glass dome, the ministry of my inner peace.”
• “The bunker keeps out the bombs, but also the kisses.”
• “When you want to be loved at any price, you end up in the sale.”
• “If fear comes back, I’ll offer it a coffee… not the house keys.”

44The Meaning of Life

• Epigraph: “Does life have a meaning? Absolutely, a sense of humour!”
• Mum: “Your father bought a pair of shoes online without trying them on… They’re plastic and really ugly and he actually wears them!”
• Me: “My agent is checking whether the star is still breathing.”
• The Viking: “I was born without a weak mode.” — Me: “You live in a war film, in panic mode without knowing it.”
• “When I laugh, I get high with no prescription, no dodgy dealer, no hangover. Laughter is my everyday inner barman.”
• “When you laugh… cortisol packs its bags. Adios. Bye bye. Curtain.”
• “Comedians should be available on the NHS.”
• “Laughter is a universal medicine? — Exactly. No side effects. Apart from an irrepressible urge to live.”
• “Character of the day: Professor of My Blunders, from the Joyful Imperfect.”
• “I’m like a good cheese: imperfect, but full of flavour.” — The Viking: “The flavour of rancid!”

45A Matter of Conscience

• Epigraph, Pennac: “Stories are plasters on reality.”
• Epigraph, Gianni Rodari: “A fable is a lie that tells the truth.”
• The Viking: “It’s your war. Not mine.” — “Thanks for the express non-witness service. Very punctual.”
• “Did I just say NO?! YES. What if I went out to getsomeair to celebrate?”
• The psychologist: “Put on your firewall and your anti-nuclear-radiation suit. Bulletproof glasses, sun cream and parasol… The sun burns!”
• The Viking: “I don’t think, I act!… I’m a demigod, people adore me!”
• The Viking: “I plan to light a log fire with the pages of your book.” — Me: “I’ll pitch it to IKEA: a firelighter novel, organic, recycled, for your long winter evenings. Zero waste. Very eco-friendly.”
• “I printed only one copy, and I signed it for you.” — The Viking: “Wow! You’ve lost me! It’s going to flop!”
• “My boldness stops where my peace begins.”

46Your Turn to Play!

• “The raindrops crack as if they’d taken drum lessons.”
• The waiter: “Have you been swimming?” — Me: “No. I walked through a cloud.”
• The Viking: “I add some spice. Otherwise it’s boring.” / “I don’t do anything by halves.”
• The Viking: “You brandish your pen like Don Quixote.” — Me: “I turn abuses of power into characters in a book. Not into life partners.”
• “And what category am I in? — Main character. Alas.”
• “So I’m a walking therapy. — With longship and saxophone options.”
• “And me, do I count for nothing? — For salted butter. It brings out the flavour.”
• The Viking: “I’m lying in wait for volume 2.” — “There won’t be a volume 2. — Want to bet? — No. I’ve learnt to say no, remember? — Touché.”
• The Viking: “You get your readers to do your work! Talk about exploitation! When you’ve got no talent, you’ve got ideas!”

47The Hammock and the Hummingbirds — My pen is my No

• Epigraph, Romain Rolland: “There is only one heroism in the world: to see the world as it is, and to love it.”
• Epigraph, The Muppet Show: “Life’s like a movie. Write your own ending… pull over and have a picnic with a pig.”
• “I created the Soul and Smile Prize… The Viking liked the idea!” — “He paid you, didn’t he? I knew it!”
• The Viking: “With no crew, no longship and no experience of storms, you won’t get very far…”
• “A paperback… you can dog-ear, highlight, stroke.” — The Viking: “That one, I’ll be able to use to light my log fires.”
• The Viking: “With me, it’s going to be a smash hit! Hand out the sunglasses. They’re all going to get a tan.”
• Pivot’s questionnaire: “Your favourite word? — A burst of laughter. — Your most hated word? — Mountain. — What puts you off? — Taking everything seriously. — If heaven exists, what would you like God to say to you? — Shall we dance?”
• Pet words: “Tchoutchourit. Tchaffé. Magna Magna.”