| Piggy in the middle |
[Apr. 3rd, 2003|02:25 pm] |
| [ | Feeling |
| | calm | ] |
| [ | Reading |
| | Minimalism, from the same Tate Gallery series | ] |
One of my pet hates is the type of commuter who wants to occupy three seats similtaneously on the train. The sort who plants himself in the middle of a set of three seats, spreads his knees as wide apart as he can, and opens a newspaper so wide that he elbows his neighbours in the throat. He's usually wearing a heavy coat that doubles his width, but of course he doesn't take it off. He may well have a mobile phone on which he loudly discusses business, or a briefcase with which he can bash people's shins.
I got one of them more-or-less opposite me this morning on the way into work. First his phone went off - he'd stowed it in his case in the luggage rack over my head so he stood up, leaned forward, found it, and remained standing there having his conversation while he leaned over the women sitting next to me, his coat trailing all over the newspaper she was trying to read. When he finally sat down again he squashed his neighbour, a small Asian businesswoman, hard against the side of the train so that she literally curved like a bow, her body pushed a good two feet to the left compared with her head and ankles. And he remained there, still on his phone, loudly discussing server racks and suchlike, until Clapham Junction where the businesswoman got off and he shuffled sideways into the seat she'd vacated. Looking happy, he produced a paperback and settled down to read in comfort for the rest of the journey.
At which point an even bigger bastard plonked himself down in the middle seat and our hero was squashed every bit as brutally as the Asian businesswoman had been...
Under the circumstances, I didn't feel too apologetic when I almost knocked his book out of his hand with an accidental swipe of my jacket when I stood up to get off at Waterloo. |
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| Comments: |
I sooooooooooooooo share your pet hate :D
I also despise the loud obnoxious people who get on together and force their hideous and unreasonable views on the whole train carrage *shudder*
cell phones should be illegal in public places... even more so than smoking, raaaar
Especially if they're rich teenage girls from South West London who shreik in plummy accents when they're doing it... | |
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