A Birds Nest

Good Advice

I don’t sit at a table anymore when I travel on a train. I now have a very strict rule about that and will do absolutely anything to avoid it, including a) looking like a buffoon, b) paying someone to sit there for me (in desperate circumstances) and c) pretending I have ‘writer’s ass’, a condition which prohibits me from sitting on seats which have been hardened by a million unique pairs of buttocks. You may think that the worst time to sit at a table seat is when other people are already sitting there, but you’d be wrong. So wrong! Never have I experienced a bad situation after sitting down next to others. No, the bad situations happen when you sit down first. If you’re like me and you have a habit of attracting odd / deranged / unsavory people, sitting down at an empty table seat is the equivalent of letting off a flare which screams “Go on! Please harass me! I really do want to hear about your microdermabrasion!”

The event I am about to talk about happened last weekend. I boarded a train to a certain place in the south of England that begins with the letter after M and ends in orfolk and made the mistake of thinking that an empty table might remain all to myself–

The guy was obese, wielding a plastic bag that had been used so much it looked like one-thousand year-old silk, and staring at me as if to make conversation. I said “Hello”. He said, “Thot yood av this all to yerself di ya?’ I said, “Hmm,” and under my breath “what is that smell?”

It was sushi of course. Supermarket sushi: individually wrapped, compact, the ideal meal for the train—providing you aren’t sitting opposite someone (in this case Me) who is wearing the same face as if a horse had just stepped on to the train and done his business on a nearby seat.

Take it from me, never sit at an empty table seat…