I was anticipating a tedious journey down to London after
my Hellish train ride up here, but at least I knew I had a seat booked this time. Once I was on the train, though, it looked like things might not be all that bad: there were a few empty seats and the aisles werenÂ’t full of baggage and the carriage was not filled with then smell of human excrement. I had been quite pleased with myself as although there was no signs on the platform saying where each coach would be, I had used the train waiting on the opposite side as a guide and guessed coach D would be in the same place when our train arrived, thus ensuring that I could stow my bag in one of the racks with relative ease.
Everything was looking good for an uneventful trip home, good in every respect, apart from the fact that this would mean that I would have nothing to write about on Warming Up.
However, luckily for you I was seated opposite two slightly stroppy South African women. As I settled down to watch my Beatles Anthology on my portable DVD player, I noticed the one opposite me pulling aggrieved faces. The reason for this was because I kept stepping on her toes. She was wearing flip-flops which must have been annoying, but the reason for my infringement of her digits was that she had stretched her legs under the table so they were directly below my seat. Thus, even though my feet were firmly on my side of the table it was difficult to move around at all as she clearly felt the need to stretch. I didnÂ’t mind this too much. I tried my best to accommodate her, but inevitably as both her feet were not together I did occasionally step on her as I tried to avoid getting pins and needles. I felt like commenting that this was really her fault, so she could huff all she liked, but decided to leave it.
I went to the loo after an hour or so, but when I came back and sat down I saw that the women had now spread out so completely that there was actually nowhere for me to put my feet down at all. This was quite an achievement. Her feet were under my chair and spread far enough to leave me no space at all.
“Excuse me,” I said politely, “You are going to have to move your feet back a little bit as I can’t actually put my feet on the floor if they’re there.”
The woman, clearly furious that I had stepped on her toes already, clearly thought this was the living end.
“My feet are on my side,” she protested. I think she believed this to be the case, which would probably explain why she was already annoyed, but they most definitely weren’t.
“They really aren’t,” I explained, “Here’s the half way point.” I then used my feet to indicate how much she was encroaching in my space, using the table podium and moving my feet across. Even though she had already moved back slightly her feet were still almost entirely in my half.
“Oh God, well I’ll just sit sideways on my seat, shall I?” she asked, as if I was worse than Hitler for daring to think that I deserved a tiny amount of space for my feet when she wanted it all for herself.
“Or just sit with your feet on your side of the table, like I am managing to do,” I replied. She wasn’t particularly tall. Even so I would have been happy to allow her to stretch her legs out if she kept them in one place and to one side, but she seemed to want to stretch them in different directions. I tried to explain what was going on in a reasonable way, but she had her headphones in and was making a massive deal about how aggrieved she was and just pulled a face and refused to listen.
I was not only astonished my her selfishness, but by the fact that she genuinely refused to acknowledge the fact that she might have done anything wrong. Even though she had been presented with firm evidence.
A few minutes later she had spread both feet out again into one corner. I didnÂ’t particularly mind this as there was at least some room for me to rest my own feet, but when I stretched out in a similar way slightly towards the opposite corner she kicked at my toes which were a couple of inches into her side and pulled a face.
“Look, I am just putting my feet there, because you’ve done the same, but if you’re going to be like that I am perfectly happy to put a board up at the half way point.”
Again she wasnÂ’t going to listen. Being a white South African she was used to occupying territory that wasnÂ’t her own and expecting no-one to complain. I moved my feet back, finding I had plenty of room on my side, but she carried on glaring and complaining and making out she had to sit sideways to fit into the space. If sheÂ’d not been such a dick about it I am sure we could have worked something out, but as I had no problem keeping to my own side I wasnÂ’t bothered at all. Except by her rudeness. And the slightly uncomfortable atmosphere that we now had to endure for the next three or four hours. I had travelled up with the Jews and returned with the Nazis.
We got through it without further confrontation and I was glad to be home, however briefly.
