I have just met someone and am explaining to them about this little adventure.

‘I’m going with my family around the world.’

‘Oh wow – that’s amazing. Are your parents retired?’

‘Huh?’

‘Your parents – are they retired?’

‘Er…’ I’m thinking why is she asking me about my parents and their employment status? Talk about non sequitur. Then I twig.

‘Oh my god. No. No no no no no. I’m going with MY family – husband. Child. Definitely no parents involved.’

She laughs. I laugh. We all laugh. I’m slightly hysterical with the laughing. Two disturbing thoughts ramraid my head. One – she thinks I look like the kind of thirty something year old who’d actually go away travelling with their parents. I can’t even picture that. What would someone like that look like? A Morman? What do they look like? Do I look like one? No. I can’t get a frame on it. Nothing.

Before I can get too offended, my brain computes the second fact; that she’d automatically discounted that I might have a family – as in my own family. A – god don’t say it – CHILD. Or, no way, a husband! Madness. What madness.

I tell myself that she’s only thought this because I look like I’m 17 and the idea of me being married and having a child is stupendously unbelievable because we’re not in West Virginia or Sunderland. But hang on. I’m back to the Morman theory again. No. Definitely that can’t be it. I don’t look like a Morman though I don’t exactly know what one would look like – I recall a vague memory of Chloe Sevigny in a channel 4 show about Mormans and she looked like she’d stepped out of Little House on the Prairie.

So it must be that I look 17. I am afterall wearing Topshop today. My skirt is barely brushing my underwear, I have chipped nail varnish and smudgey inexpertly put on eyeliner and a pink sparkly lipgloss from Hard Candy – the 13 year old’s make up of choice. I look exactly, most definitely – that must be it-  like a 17 year old. I have even been caught today staring lustfully at a poster of New Moon and plotting when I’m going to go see it on repeat without John finding out. A proper 32 year old professional would be wearing Jigsaw, hems to the knee, precision drawn Mac eyeliner, Lancome lip gloss and have no chippage with the nail polish. A proper 32 year old would not be having lustful thoughts about a teenage vampire. Though I see that Sam Taylor Wood begs to differ, at least about the teenage bit.

Yep that’s why she thinks I’m going travelling with my parents. It has nothing  whatsoever to do with the fact that she’s looked at me and thought God forbid how did that loser ever bag someone / get impregnated?

That’s impossible.