The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
The holiday that changed me ‘I felt confident for the first time’
Comedian Rosie Jones came out of her shell on a family trip to Barbados, paving the way to be her true self As lockdown lifts, let’s forget the ‘Keswick is closed’ placards and welcome visitors back to the places where we live, says Laura Fowler
Growing up, I’d heard so much about Barbados. It was where my parents spent their honeymoon and they also spoke about the time they took me when I was three years old. The sun always shone and the water was a perfect turquoise blue. We always knew we’d go back but it wouldn’t be until I was 16 years old and had just completed my GCSEs.
School was tough. My “friend” group consisted of two girls I had known since Year 7. We initially got on well but as the years went on, they’d tell me I was too loud, too in-your-face, that I laughed too much. Once, on my birthday, to punish me for getting a bag similar to theirs, they showed up at my house and sat in silence for five hours. I suggested putting on a movie, eating cake – but they wanted to make it known that they disapproved of my latest accessory choice. My mother wanted to kill them but I was petrified they’d never speak to me again.
By Year 11, I was a shell of myself. My mum was a teacher in my school, so she could see that I was dimming my light there in comparison to who I was at home. To make myself as invisible as possible, I focused on studying hard for my GCSEs. As a celebration of all my hard work, and to mark my brother starting secondary school, we went on a three-week family trip to Barbados.
On the flight over, my mother decided to level with me about my socalled friends. “They’re not great people,” she said. “You’ve spent five years just agreeing with them and doing as they say, changing what I think is so amazing about you.”
In hindsight, I can see their behaviour was gaslighting because I told my mum that no, actually, they were helping me out. At the time, I thought I really was annoying and needed to tone it down. How could anyone like me for my true self? Being gay, disabled, loud and funny was too much in one 5ft person. I thought the fact that they were trying to make me fit into a box was good. My mum asked me to do her a favour: be myself for three weeks. I was to talk as loudly as I wanted, to laugh as much as I liked and to chat to whomever I pleased. “If you’re right, which I don’t think you are,” she said, “and people here find you annoying, you’ll never see any of them again – but you can say that for three weeks you were yourself.”
Deep down I knew she was right, so I agreed. When we touched down in Barbados, there was no hiding anymore. It’s not an exaggeration to say that I instantly made friends there. People referred to my parents as “Rosie’s mum and dad”. There were a lot of kids my age, and there were two lads who ended up teaching me how to play poker. Every night, my parents wondered where I’d spent the evening when I rocked back to the hotel room: I’d always respond: “Playing poker.” It was all so innocent – we would bet cocktail sticks! Playing poker now always reminds me of that wonderful time, because on this holiday I just felt like one of the guys for the first time. At my co-ed school, I spent all my time with just those two girls – so I got it into my head that boys didn’t like me. But because I knew I was gay, it wasn’t like, “Oh, why don’t boys fancy me?” I just thought they didn’t get me. In Barbados, I saw that wasn’t true. Now, my closest friends are male because I feel more comfortable with them.
Beyond the social aspect, after a year of studying, worrying about my future and being a person I didn’t want to be, for once I had no worries. I was sunbathing, sleeping, reading all day. My grandma is Spanish, so an hour in the sun made me golden brown. My hair had never looked better. I felt confident – for the first time, probably. I wasn’t quite an adult but I was getting there.
Towards the end of the trip, I remember looking at my mum – we were a few rum punches in at this point – and saying: “I love who I am. I’m going to take this version of me back to England.” I could have left that young, carefree girl in Barbados, but I fell in love with her so much that I brought her back to the UK.
It would take me another seven years to come out as gay, but when you think about what started me becoming who I am today, you can pinpoint it to that time in Barbados. During lockdown, I lived with my parents for a while, and we reflected on that holiday, with mum saying how proud she was that I became the person she knew I was.
And as for those girls, I didn’t reach out to them at all when I returned. In fact, they ended up falling out with each other later that very year.
As told to Aisling O’Leary
Trip Hazard: My Great British Adventure is broadcast on Fridays at 8.30pm on Channel 4 and available as a box set on All 4.
Overseas holidays are currently subject to restrictions. See Page 3. h Running on empty: without tourists ‘our cities and seaside resorts become dystopian ghost towns’
Well, it’s been emotional. But finally it’s here: the last weekend of lockdown before we can return to pub gardens and outdoor pools and, joy of joys, escape with our “bubble” to self-contained accommodation, at least in England or Wales.
So let’s hope that, after everything we have been through together, we are more willing to share our beaches and beauty spots than we were at the start of the pandemic, when villagers from the Cotswolds to Cumbria put up signs to ward off visitors (“Keswick is closed”) and tweeted “Stay away you lot!” In Cornwall, shopkeepers went so far as to ban any non-locals who attempted to buy bread. Residents were up in arms about “descending hordes” sitting on “their” beaches and clogging up “their” roads.
Were those cries of “stay away” about the pandemic, or simply xenophobia?
The thing is, those beaches don’t belong to Cornish people any more than George Stubbs’s Whistlejacket at the National Gallery belongs to me because I live in London. I can’t begrudge the queues at “my” favourite museum or expect priority for seats on “my” underground over the 30 million visitors who come for the same reasons I choose to live in this glorious city, where the streets teem year-round and we live cheek-by-jowl and travel nose-to-armpit – which, contrary to our glacial, uppity stereotype, has made Londoners a tolerant lot.
Yes, tourists are annoying. But without them, and all the diversity and buzz – and, let’s face it, the cash – they bring, our cities and seaside resorts become dystopian ghost towns. So never again will I huff and tut when theatregoers stand on the wrong side of Tube escalators or stop dead on Regent Street for selfies.
Come, friendly hordes, and descend on Hamleys,
Come friendly hordes, descend on Hamleys, keep our big wheel turning
keep our big wheel turning, our restaurants alive!
This year, let’s overcome fears and inconveniences, and greet visitors with open arms rather than hostile placards. Those of us lucky enough to live in places where people want to go should remember that Britain’s treasures, cultural and natural, belong to us all.