Yesterday I read Alyssa Ramos's travel blog about the particular problems she encounters. Since I too travel, and have tits and eyelashes, I thought I'd share some of my experiences with you.
I have also been mistaken for a prostitute while travelling alone. Five times. All at locations I haven't needed my passport to get to. Once was at Corley services on the M6. Another was in Wales. My headshot doesn't give much away, so if you want to know what a Welsh prostitute looks like, you'll have to Google Image me. I'm not the Helen Keeler who's written a book about Catholicism, or the Helen Keeler who's an unsuccessful dead actress from the 1930s. I'm the other one. The one who looks like a Welsh prostitute.
I also have been asked several times when travelling when my baby is due - when I'm not pregnant. This is clearly because ugly people can't get pregnant and not because in 1994 I was so self conscious about my figure that when I went parascending in The Bahamas I stole the parachute for occasion wear.
After a week in San Francisco a few years back, on the last day of my stay it rained for the first time. The guy who owned the bagel bar I'd been having breakfast at said, "You leave today. The city weeps." I was outraged at this. He thought I was so pretty I controlled the weather! I said, 'Mate, if I could choose whether it rained or not, do you think the UK would be in the fucking state it's in?"
People do assume that I'm travelling alone due to a break-up and sometimes that's true. Well, once. I wrote about it here. Mostly I have too much to do when planning a holiday to fit a break-up in as well as remembering to buy sunscreen.
So some people are puzzled as to the main reason why I travel alone. Let me solve that for you. It's either that or take the kids with me. The main reason I want to go to Iceland is because they're not there.
Sometimes I travel with my sister, which is even more problematic because together we have twice the tits. On one trip to Spain, at the breakfast buffet a Frenchman touched my arse with his chin. I went back to the table and told my sister. She said, "I hope you said something to him!" And I said, "Of course I did, I asked him where the town hall was." Which is the only thing I know how to say in French. I hesitate to admit this because when I was fourteen I told Mrs. Ward this is a phrase I would never use in my entire life. Anyway, he told me where the town hall was, so I think we all know who the winner was there.
Alyssa Ramos once met a German guy on a beach. I also once met a German guy on a beach. He correctly guessed I was twenty-one (I was thirty). He didn't seem to think I was a prostitute, though, which was a bit disappointing.
Another time I was travelling alone, I took a wrong turn down a dead end road and ended up wetting my knickers climbing over a police barrier in the rain. The police just watched me, which was definitely because I'm so pretty and not because I'm a graceless idiot. I love Glasgow. Don't bother going for the beaches, though.
This is where I should include a photo of myself taken with a selfie stick, but I don't use selfie sticks because no matter how beautiful the surroundings or how carefully thought out the composition or how flattering the light, you still look like a prick. But people do ask me how I have photos of myself silhouetted against the sky on a big rock I'd climbed to strike a yoga pose but instead ending up leaning with my hands on my knees, wheezing like a warthog on a treadmill. And this is how I do it: if I want someone to take a photo of me, I just ask someone to take a photo of me and I'm so pretty, they say yes!
Well, I hope that's cleared a few things up. I don't use my looks when I travel, I just happen to carry them round on my face. I know you probably feel a bit sad that you don't work hard enough to travel to nice places on your own, but whenever you start to feel down about it, just remember how bad it is for me. A man once really blatantly sniffed my hair on the tube. And I didn't even get a photo of it for my blog.