Two's company

Have you ever wondered what makes you choose a particular seat on an empty bus, or a certain urinal in an empty toilet. Convienience? Superstition? Perhaps if you're a woman you might well wonder how you've ended up in a toilet with urinals in to in the first place, but no matter. There is an unwritten code, I think it's a British thing. It differs from region to region, but I'll come on to that later. If you walk on to a bus or train and the seats are all empty, you'll pick any vacant seat. Eveyerone else, unless they happen to know someone on the bus or train, will do the same thing until all seats are half filled. Then any newcomers have to start sitting next to people they don't know, and that's when you get these regional differences. In London, getting a seat on public transport is like winning the lottery, they're like gold dust to these people. A copy of the Metro or London Lite and a seat, they'd choose it over sex I'm sure of it. It doesn't matter who that seat is next to or how inconvenient it is to get it either. Children will fall to the floor, people who are reading will be jogged (and because of said Britisness show no emotion at all). Elsewhere in the country, people won't do this. They would rather stand than be so forward as to actually sit down on an empty seat next to someone they don't know. Sometimes the first incumbent of the other seat will try and engineer ways to keep the seat next to them free, they'll guard it with a bag or fall asleep on it. We really are quite an odd species when it comes to possession of public seating.

xxx

Anyway, this long introductory digression aside, I was recently on a train. You don't know need to know why I was on a train, there wasn't any particularly top secret about it, it just isn't really relavent. The fact is, I was on a train. It wasn't empty, but it was certainly closer to being empty than it was to being full, there were many empty seats. The train stopped at one of these Godforsaken villages you wish it would just drive straight though. An elderly man gets on and after looking down the carriage and deciding the walk wasn't for him sat next to me. You just don't do this. These aren't the rules. This isn't what has been agreed. There are other seats available, people start to think we must know each other, we don't! The man then continues to indiscreetly read my newspaper, this is where the Britishness comes in again. I begin to feel guilty for turning the page of my own newspaper in case this strange man hasn't finished reading the review of this week newly released albums. What a bizzare situation, occasionally I would turn and he would quickly look away as if to try and mask the fact he was stealthily, or unstealthily as the case may be, enjoying my newspaper. When I eventually got up to get off the train I left it there, although I suspect he'd already read most of it. The trouble in this situation is you can't just say 'excuse me, don't be offended, I don't begrudge you sitting in that particular seat, but I'm going to move to another one so I can stretch out'. Even if you're on a long journey and by the time you get to where you're going to there are barely any people left on the train, people feel rude moving. As if you've developed some kind of connection in the time you've been thrown together by chance for 40 minutes or so that makes you both feel obliged to stay where you are.

dddd

On the way back the other way, the same thing happened. This woman smelled of vodka, I think I really just paid the inevitable price for choosing a seat near the doors, it's invariably going to attract people either incapacitated by alcohol or age that can't or won't walk very far. I don't think there's really any conclusion I can draw from my experiences other than that when you're on the train or the bus you've bought one seat. Sometimes you don't even get that. You have no right or ownership over the other seat, it's a total lottery. All you can do is hope that if someone does target the next to yours they are at least odorless and bring reading material of their own.