There are unwritten rules involved in travelling by train and today they were broken.
Seat selection is a very important daily decision process. Every seat has its pros and cons. A table seat can provide more space for reading or using a laptop, but you end up kicking the person opposite and they end up kicking you and it all gets messy. Then there are the priority disabled and elderly seats, which are brilliant for leg room, but not so good for reading, because the shelf to lean on is too far forward. Plus, there is always the risk that you might have to give up your seat. It never happens, but you never know.
Sometimes, of course, there are limited seats. When all the inside seats have gone, the choice becomes who to sit next to. I always choose the women. Don’t get me wrong, this has nothing to do with boosting my ego. I don’t take pleasure from telling people how many women I have sat next to in a day. The reason is entirely practical – leg room. Trains of a certain type have a gap between the two seats and I make it my daily quest to occupy this gap. Despite not being particularly tall, I have quite long legs and therefore to experience the full comfort of the journey, I seek after, lust for even, the ‘gap’. And that is why I choose women. Not wishing to be too stereotypical, but in general, women have shorter legs (I hope this isn’t classed as a sexist comment) and are less likely to carry resentment at my first step to world domination, occupying the ‘gap’.
I digress. On this occasion, I was travelling back from London after meeting colleagues for drinks and managed to grab one of the inside seats, next to the window. Naturally, being the busy train that it was, someone sat next to me… and then they continued to sit next to me. Half-way through the journey, at about the point that seats usually begin to become free, I looked up and I looked around. There, clearly opposite, were two free seats. But no, there was something about this special space next to mine that had this guy transfixed. Was it the comfort? Was it the privilege of sitting next to me? Whatever it was, I didn’t like it. I felt like pretending to get off at the next station and moving to another part of the train, but then this guy might see me later on and then he will know that I had wanted him to move. I didn’t want to risk placing that guilt on to him. Instead I just sat, with a quiet perplexity on my face. Does he not know that it is common courtesy to move when a free seat becomes available?
The train came into my station and I could now get up without any pretence. Just as I was about to, the guy next to me got up. It was his station as well. As we were waiting to alight from the train, I looked him squarely in the eyes, but he had no idea. He didn’t know the rules.
