AFTER six months of backpacking around South-East Asia, the lone traveller has returned, with an enviable pallor and enough words of wisdom to fill a shelf of self-help books.

“The key to a successful marriage is to wed an Egyptian or an older guy,” she espouses over a pizza rustica that takes her over an hour to eat due, she explains, to her constitution not yet being acclimatised to Western food.

We eye her over our spaghetti, not sure what our parents, now well into their fourth decades of matrimony, would make of her claims.

But there’s no time to ask the reasons behind her announcement before she’s off again, nearly knocking a glass of rosé off the table with an exaggerated hand gesture.

“I almost didn’t come back,” she confesses. “Got to the airport and, if it wasn’t for what my friends and family might say, I wouldn’t have got on the plane.”

Ah, how the fear of others’ perceptions can cripple even the strongest case of wanderlust.

We, at least, would have been supportive, we assure her, enjoying the experience of living vicariously through her adventures from the safety of our laptops.

We were in the canoe with her as she paddled through Thailand’s Khao Sok National Park, admired the “languid turquoise vista” and shaking our head at the apparent lack of wildlife – two bats and two birds.

We felt her pain as she watched a fleet-footed thief race off with her new digital camera, understood her frustration at the tardy pace of the local police and hid under our virtual tablecloths as she refused to pay the requested sum for a bottle of wine in Bangkok, demanding that the waiter Google its true value.

Dodging all emailed enquiries on her estimated date of return, the first clue to her arrival in the UK was an unexpected voicemail announcement: “I’m back!”

Her text messages arranging our reunion meeting were littered with unsubtle words of lament – “I’m back in Blighty regrettably” – and little faces with upside down smiles made of punctuation marks.

What a drastic effect a change of perspective has on the appearance of your life – you’re plodding along quite happily, enthusiastic about the smoothness of your newly replastered walls, still enlivened by the adventure of getting to work in the recent snow, pretty chuffed by the empty state of the recycle bin now that the binmen have finally been for the first time since Christmas, then a friend returns from a life of beach parties and reveals what it means to her.

Utter dread is how the lone traveller feels about my life, an overwhelming horror at the thought of staying in one place, caring about curtain material and going into the office each morning.

But then I am in a job I have always wanted and she has yet to figure out how she should spend her life when she’s not enjoying the sand between her toes.

But realising the depth of her revulsion is a wake-up call.

“We danced on the beach and played fire limbo during a full moon party,” she reveals, with a dramatic swoop of the arms.

The image of myself barefoot in a long dress, twirling round on golden sand before courageously ducking under a branch blazing with orange flames is shattered by the clatter of the pepper mill against my water glass.

And so a desire for adventure is once again stunted by reality.

But that’s OK, because I like my life and there’s always the summer holidays.

Besides, I give the lone traveller six months before she’s off again and the good thing about virtual travels is that you can just pick out the good bits.

IF YOU enjoyed this column, you can read more by Laura Davis at www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/lauradavis

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