Since I became single again a few years ago I have realised that the world is made for the most part just for pairs.
I suppose you can lay the blame on Noah. Everyone invited to his cruise had to have a partner, you were definitely not wanted on voyage if you were a solitary single, and never mind claims of being an hermaphrodite. There had to be two of you - one of each sex.
It's exactly the same today.
It was brought home to me quite forcibly recently when one of those 'free gifts for all' envelopes fell out of one of my Sunday papers offering holidays and airline tickets. For three weeks running my 'winning' ticket offered me the chance to buy a ticket and take a companion free.
What am I supposed to do - pick one up on the way to the airport? Pay for my own ticket and give a free loader a holiday? I think not.
If you try to go on holiday as a single person you are a nuisance. This is because almost all hotels think in doubles.
You are either found one of the only single rooms in the entire building - which surprisingly enough looks over the main drains with a pleasant view of the staff lavatories and is so small you can wash without getting out of bed, or you have to pay a single supplement.
This is a punishment for not having a companion to sleep in the other bed. The hotel's point of view is that your room is made for two and if there were two of you they would be getting double the price for it.
So even if 56 of the 57 rooms in the hotel are totally empty they will make you pay something for the empty bed because they just might have let your room to two people if you hadn't been inconvenient enough to arrive alone. Alright, there are exceptions in countries where the room price is quoted and not 'per person', but they are not all that common. And most package holidays are based on at least two sharing, so forget the cheap holidays.
Restaurants tend to be the same. How many restaurants actually have tables for one? Go to a restaurant alone and you will reluctantly be found a table for two, usually in the least favoured position, quite often so close to the kitchen you can carry out a Health and Safety examination without leaving your seat. And there is a slight air of exasperation and a clattering removal of the spare cutlery and glassware.
On planes a single is the person most likely to be asked to change seats to fit in family parties who can't bear to be parted from one another even for a few hours. And 'do you mind moving' from most airline staff isn't a query by the way, it's an order.
On coaches you can get there early and bag a nice window seat and 20 minutes later a couple will rush on late, look around and see there are only a couple of single places left and pick on someone to bully out of their seat so they can sit together.
You have two options; refuse and have one of the couple sit down next to you burning with resentment for the entire journey or move and sit down to someone who had been quite confident he or she has a seat to themselves for the entire journey and will now burn with resentment.
Then there are large functions - balls and dinner dances. There is nothing quite so depressing as going to a dinner dance on your own.
I know because in my early career as a journalist I was sent all too frequently to large and often glittering functions (well they glittered, I usually didn't).
This was purely because the chief reporter had burnt the back of his dinner jacket one night when he had slumped too close to a gas fire and the firm refused to buy him a new one.
As the only woman in the office he usually picked on me and my evening frock to report long and exceptionally tedious speeches, the reward for which was supposed to be a good dinner. As most of the functions were in the same four hotels I knew the sprout count in all of them and often meant to ask for the recipe for cardboard turkey slices and that strange chocolate sludge they put over the profiteroles.
I can't tell you the number of times I've slunk into a hotel past the slightly sneering door staff, fought my way to the bar as the only woman (the others were having drinks bought for them by their menfolk) and then got sat next to the most boring single man on earth who explained in fine detail how he had won the prize for selling the most insurance in Outer Mongolia three years running.
Lunches and cocktail parties were marginally better because they were usually catered events and you got to know the caterers so the wine waiter usually filled your glass eight times to everyone else's two and I usually lost my notebook and possibly fell into the profiteroles.
There were rare occasions when you got two tickets to an event but my husband because very crafty at finding other engagements rather than sit thought the annual dinner of the Giant Lending Corporation of Great Britain. I can't think why.
My favourite horror story was from a female colleague some time ago who went to a seminar at a London hotel, booked in and went down for a pre-dinner drink.
On entering the bar she was pounced on by an officious under-manager who said that women were not allowed in the bar on their own, they had to have a companion with them . She protested and he backed down. Later she discovered from a female receptionist that the rule was to prevent hookers patrolling the bar and picking up male guests.
My friend said she didn't know which was more insulting, to either be mistaken for a hooker or to have the under-manager make up his mind so quickly that she couldn't possibly be one.