"I told him, 'If we're going to be monogamous, I think I want to get a DUI,'" confided my friend Cathy – a barely recovering commitmentphobe with her first serious boyfriend in years – "and he just stared back at me like an idiot and didn't say anything. Can you believe that?" She sipped her pint and waited for a reaction – for me to express disgust, incredulity, and ultimately validate her annoyance with him – but I could believe it, and I, too, stared back at her like an idiot.

"Kyahnahseetahayah?" frothed the Rugby-sized pub regular, as his substantial ass imagined itself small enough to wedge in next to me on the oversized chair in the London pub. "Can you sit here?" I repeated for clarification, but said ass was already testing the possibility and subsequently established, at the misfortune of my left thigh, that no, he physically couldn't. "You can sit there," I suggested with a lubricating smile, pointing at a seat a few metres away. In compromise, he squished himself up onto the arm of my chair instead. The giant body eclipsed my view of the rest of the bar and emanated noxious fumes. I met the degree of his lean with my own in the same direction so as to avoid contact with anything more intrusive than the spray of his saliva.

Generally, guided tours aren't my deal. Something to do with not being a herd animal, and something else to do with the risk inherent in entrusting my life and happiness to a potentially overzealous herdsman whilst crammed into a minibus with any sort of mammal for hours at a time. Very few scenarios can push me to a guided tour, like fear for my life, for example, as was the case in a Salvadoran national park at night, or a desire to see more of Ireland than Dublin pubs through the creamy blur of Guinness goggles, which is exactly how I found myself on a minibus just a few days ago.

No longer is "soliciting dates with foreigners" my main alternate activity to writing, but rather "soliciting dates with foreigner" – a subtle, but significant change. Did you catch that? Against all odds, I've gone singular.

"Where did she get that travel bug?" My parents still live in the small, fairly traditional community where they raised me and field the question all the time. What people are really asking is: Why hasn't she settled down yet? No husband? No boyfriend? No kids? No husband?! No boyfriend?! No kids?!