Re. the real traveler’s mantle….Yes. I feel this strongly. But I struggle with it too. Because as a sorta-kinda-wannabe-kinda-is “travel writer”, I try to stay immune from the expectations of people around me and online, and from my own impatience with myself. And I often fail. I write posts about how you can use your own town to learn to see with fresh eyes and how being a “traveler” is 90% attitude, 10% geography – but then I privately agonise about calling my blog a “travel” blog because I’ve mainly stayed in one place and picked through travel memories as much as written new travel-related material.

Not easy to deal with, those wider expectations – and they can infect a slightly insecure writer with slight insecurity, too.

But these days I think the problem isn’t the pigeonholing label – it’s the question that prompts it. Because is there anything more disheartening than having to boil down everything that you are and everything you do into one snappy little soundbyte?

“Hi! My name’s Mike.”

“Hi! So – what do you do, Mike?”

{usual lame answer] “Uh…I make a bit of money doing writing, and I, uh, have this blog, and….yeah.” *awkward silence*

{true unspoken answer} “Sorry, that’s a stupid question, and I’m complicated enough to be insulted by it, as you would be if I asked you and you had the wit to think it through like I just have. Want another shot?”

All this said – I want to be a British Travel Writer. (Khaki shorts, 6 weeks on the road now, leathery and gaunt, battered moleskine tucked into pocket, eyes that have seen too much buried in a face as creased as an elephant’s, sensible shoes fading fast, hipflask of single malt Talisker, pistol, malaria pills, mosquito net, untrustworthy map, something by Theroux).

That Kayt lady, she should write a book, you know.