In public?

As a defence mechanism, my office door was shut this lunchtime. This is because, while I was ‘enjoying’ some fruit for lunch, a colleague right outside my office was tucking into pie and chips, with the chips swimming in vinegar. Itsh maching mesh schlivate juscht thinksing about it. The consumption of hot food at your desk is discouraged in the building, possibly because it will mean people enjoying themselves in a work environment, a clear health and safety issue, possibly because, as the delightful smell intoxicated me, I considered vaulting his desk, rendering him unconscious him with a monitor and stealing his lunch - also possibly a health and safety issue.

So what is acceptable in public?

Reading a blog post the other day about Public Displays of Affection on public transport, I chuckled and considered whether to plagiarise shamelessly. (Interestingly, that blogger has since pulled the post. I wonder if they were concerned about coming over as the Scrooge of SVD)

Certainly the sight of a couple attempting a dual tonsillectomy using only their tongues is one that might cause one to roll one’s eyes, or clench, or tut or wonder if they are married and if so, to each other? Others think that seeing snogging is sweet. Interestingly, those same people don’t half make a fuss if they discover you indulging in a spot of ‘self-love’ in the waiting room to while away the time if the train is late.

I could list the things about my fellow travellers that get right up my nose (body odour for instance) but that would probably degenerate (?) into a frothing rant that would mark me out not as an acute observer of life on public transport, but as a candidate for exorcism.

So lets just (ringtones, mobile phones in general, obstructing the doors, getting on before I’ve got off, having children, being dull, being old, being young, being there at all, reading the ‘Daily Mail’, being fucking cheerful early in the morning) concentrate on one example, the cough.

Now I don’t mind somebody who has a sniffle having a bit of a cough, as long as they get their hankie to their mouth in time. God knows, if they’ve eaten Bernard Matthews in the last few weeks, they are probably more disturbed about their cough than I am. No, what I object to is the person who coughs. Then sits, then coughs again, then sits, then coughs again and continues doing this for ages, like they are making no real effort to either cough or stop coughing. Why? It’s not as if they are miners or something and so have a right to have an annoying cough, it’s as if they are too lazy to sort it out with a huge coughing fit that gives the lungs a good solid work out and results in them teary-eyed, gasping for breath but feeling oddly light and pleasant - like sex…but with more tissues.