Who's been sitting in my seat?

I bet Portillo doesn't have to put up with this!

In possibly the greatest rehabilitation of a personality since Paul went from tax collector to apostle, Michael Portillo is now better known as a presenter of charmingly inoffensive soufflé-weight documentaries about train travel than as The Hammer Of The Poor.  Essentially, the format of ‘Trains to Charming Places’ is that Michael, sporting a wardrobe that makes one question his sexuality and clutching a guide book as outdated as the ideas he had when in the Cabinet, takes trains hither and yon and stops off to discuss heritage trades like being a farrier, fletcher or cooper (back when these were trades and not merely surnames.  Presumably following the tradition of names deriving from trades, a century hence Tommy Callcentre and Susie Barista will be common enough names) before announcing ‘look at my bright trousers and tremble’ and ambling off towards the station.

Anyone watching this programme for longer than the necessary time (which is the length of time it takes to press the button on the remote to take you to the next channel) will note that when the presenter makes his train journey, he is inevitably in a not terribly crowded carriage.  This of course makes perfect sense as crouching across from the presenter is a cameraman, sound guy, director and the girl who fetches the paninis.

Anyone who commutes on a regular basis will know that such space is far from the norm, but then again the programme probably wouldn’t have the same relaxed air if Michael were standing in a vestibule (loom it up, it’s the right word) between carriages with his nose rubbing the camera lens, thanks to the overcrowding.

Neither does Michael apparently have to find his won seat by excavating a pile of used Metros and the debris of what appears to be a takeaway Medieval banquet.

Naturally, railway companies have to make huge profits somehow, and the latest trend appears to be charging ridiculous ticket prices and only employing cleaners every third day.  This means that you usually have the opportunity to play the Goldilocks Game when alighting, in other words ‘which anti-social fucker has been sitting in my seat’.  If you are lucky, it’s somebody who has carefully refolded their copy of the Metro before dropping it on the floor, if you are unlucky, it is somebody who has either breakfasted on the flakiest pastry ever made, or is a leper.

Occasionally though it’s just a single coffee cup.

What, Watson, can we deduce from this.  Firstly, that the drinker favours decaf, as their coffee has obviously not given them the energy required to bin the fucking thing.  Secondly, that there are either an oligarch or a fare dodger, as it is unlikely that anyone purchasing a ticket at today’s prices can also afford store-bought coffee.  Finally, that they have joined the growing tribe of adult litterlouts (yes, leaving a coffee cup for somebody else to clear away, when you actually have to walk past a bin in the carriage to exit, is littering).

Cardboard coffee cups are the new fag butts and as such are the very worst and most offensive sort of litter because coffee, like fags, is a product consumed by adults.  Crisp packets and sweetie wrappers are annoying litter but one can almost understand why Little Fuckers, sorry, why children, discard them, it’s because they are careless, have not been brought up properly and have never spent a Sunday morning tidying their front garden by plucking Haribo wrappers out of their hedges.

Commuting, I think, makes one more intolerant of stupidity, be it passive aggressive littering, leaky headphones or the inappropriate use of the mobile ‘phone in any carriage, actually, on any train I am in or on or even waiting for.

Which is why it would make for a magnificent conclusion to the series to see Portillo completely lose his fucking mind with an annoying fellow traveller who has their shitty music on too loud and beat the little prick to death with his Bradshaw.

Now that I would watch.

At least he didn't drop it far

Walking to work this morning I witnessed a small anti-social act, somebody ripping the cellophane cover from a packet of fags and tossing it to the pavement. I suppose pocketing it would have delayed their ripping open the packet itself to get their precious nicotine hit.

Usually I just tut and don’t reprimand the litterer, this is because I know that from psychopaths are more likely to litter than normal folk and I hate being knifed first thing in the morning.

On this occasion though there was absolutely no way I was going to confront the fellow.

This was because he was a dwarf on a mobility chariot.

I did briefly think of saying ‘smoking stunts your growth’ but was worried that his battery might be freshly charged and he would run me down, like Ben Hur, but shorter.

God alone knows why he needed a mobility chariot although with legs that size it must be faster than walking and I have no problem with him smoking, but why litter? Does he not realise that if everyone did that, the stuff would pile up in drifts. Okay for me, but by the time it was up to my thighs he’d need a snorkel.

I think what really put me off remonstrating, apart of course from a paralysing fear of any sort of confrontation, was that there was just no way it was going to end well. Nobody but me had witnessed the litter and folk on their way to work in the morning walk quickly and heads down, so what they would have been presented with was, no doubt, an altercation where a bloke was shouting at a disabled dwarf. There is no way I am coming out of that well.

In fact for the remainder of the walk to the office my rebel brain and sadist imagination ganged up on me. This is the same imagination, by the way, that steadfastly refuses to come up with the plot of a novel that will depose Dan Brown from the top of the bestseller charts and have me acknowledged as the Jane Austin of my generation (or should that be Dickens…which one wrote about bonnets?) Anyway the most likely scenario, according to my brain (which, truth be told has not had a track record of reliability in this sort of thing, especially during my twenties where, despite all the evidence of previous weeks and months, it kept convincing me that that girl over there would dance with me if asked and not result in yet another bout of humiliation) would be me and the bloke rolling in the gutter, my hands round his neck, his teeth clamped on my ear while a selection of collegues who happened to be passing watched aghast as they saw me trying to kill a dwarf, something that is usually the preserve of ringwraiths.