I LOVE the Edinburgh Fringe. The sights, the sounds, the smells, the people – there’s nothing quite like an August in Edinburgh. The population swells over night, transforming the city into a bustling cosmopolitan metropolis. If, like me, you’re a city girl at heart, it’s a great way to get your fix of a genuine big-town feel, without leaving the comfort of your achingly villagey locale. It’s far cheaper than a plane ticket, and you don’t have to sleep in a strange bed at the end of the day.

With the influx of people, if you’re even vaguely involved in the festivals you’ll more than double your standard social interaction. There are times when the entire thing feels like one huge schmooze. If you’re not doing something or seeing something, you’re meeting someone.

With the party-like vibe hanging over town, and the nature of the work involved, the lines blur between the social and the professional. My enthusiastically thrust-forward hand is often batted away, rejected in favour of arm-touches, embraces and the obligatory double-cheek kiss. And this isn’t just confined to the boundaries of the Fringe. In the past few weeks, I’ve had at least three occasions when uninvited hands have been thrust into my hair – including an entire hen party who stopped me for a poke around as I walked home down Lothian Road late one Saturday evening. At the time I laughed it off, but the more I thought about, the more I recognised how threatening it had felt.

Now I’m going to out myself: I hate it. I don’t like being touched by people I don’t know. And I’m okay with that. Now.

As a hugely haptic individual, this has always felt like a dissonance in my personality. A glitch. Something that I should tolerate because I get such joy from experiencing the world through my fingertips. But as much as I want to touch, or express myself bodily, I just don’t do it because I know there’s nothing quite as instantly tone-shifting than the unwanted touch.You only have to look at a picture of Stephanie Carter’s face when Joe Biden swooped from behind and sniffed her hair, or the Duchess of Cambridge’s palpable discomfort when LeBron James grasped her close to him. I challenge any woman to look at those pictures and not see a feeling they recognise. We all have a story of unwanted touching.

When I’ve audibly expressed this discomfort to people before, I’ve been called helpful things like an “ice queen” or a “robot”. I’ve been told it sounds like I have issues with personal intimacy. It became a personal problem – something I should internalise and examine. For a while, I thought maybe it was me. Maybe I wasn’t loving, or warm, or the embodiment of pliant feminine traits we’re all supposed to grow up having. But as I examined that uneasiness, I saw a different picture. There were fewer clues of flaws in my character, and far more legitimate incidents I’d flagged as “uncool” or “please stop touching me”. The more I’ve spoken to my women friends, the less convinced I am of being an outlier.

I first really started to examine these feelings when I was pregnant with twins – my second and third children – and I once more found myself in possession of a giant, spherical hand-magnet beneath my shirt. Having been pregnant before, I was well used to the barrage of well-meaning strangers’ hands that in a second crossed the Rubicon of my personal space. It’s the magic of life in action, right? Who wouldn’t want to reach out and grab a fistful of that wonder? I knew I looked like an orange on a toothpick, that it was novel and interesting, but for the first time in my life I really felt like an object. A curio for the world to stroke. Whenever I expressed my discomfort, it was ushered away with reassurances of good intentions. And I was twenty and pregnant – what did I know about how the adult world worked?

It was only second time round, when my enormous tummy looked even more like the real-world manifestation of the big red button everyone needs to push, that I started to say really tune into my discomfort – yet it still took many more hands before I vocalised the word I’d been screaming inside my head both times: “no”. But even when I did, excuses were made for me, “she’s hormonal/tired/scared/stressed”. Deleted as appropriate. Not once did anyone ever suggest that it was okay to be given the heebie-jeebies by a stranger’s hand groping at your body.

I’ve carried these feelings long past pregnancy. I consider that period in my life less of a genesis of the discomfort, and more of an excavation. It unearthed feelings I’d long held and finally filled in the blanks. It gave me the words to express it and an understanding of why it felt weird when a male had touched the small of my back, or a train conductor had poked at my dimples, or a group of strangers had fingered my hair.

However good a place your touch comes from, there are other ways to show your appreciation – those that have respect at their heart. There’s been a lot of talk of the c-word lately – consent – and we could all do with drilling down into that a little deeper. It doesn’t just apply to the sexual or other intimate behaviours with a partner – it matters far beyond the bedroom door.

We all have the power to say “no”, “stop” and “this makes me uncomfortable” – but we can’t always find our voices when we need to. Our behaviours have the power to make others feel safe or unsafe, comfortable or uncomfortable, respected or violated. And that is a huge amount of influence to hold.