Of tubes and elbows and flying pelvises (pelvii?)

Long before I met the poet, I’d been inducted into the unwritten code of travelling on the London Underground (the tube). You only make eye contact if there’s a weirdo/beggar/amusing or abusive drunk person in or moving through the carriage and you’re joining in the general carriage reaction. You don’t eat anything that’s going to stink up the carriage. You don’t bring your two giant, shedding dogs on the underground at peak hour. You don’t, unlike the man on my very first tube journey, sprawl across two seats drinking your 2 litre bottle of cider and allow your dog to lie across three more.

But most importantly, you don’t use another person’s portion of the armrest i.e. you use only the half of the armrest that is on your side. You get half an arm rest on the left and half an arm rest on the right, making one arm rest in total. Couldn’t be fairer? In reality, using just half an armrest is impossible, because the arm rests are so narrow that to comfortably rest any part of your arm on them means impinging on the seat next to you. And touching the person in that seat. London people don’t like to touch or be touched – and in summer, with the sweating and the stench and the sticky flesh, I do not blame them. And when you have a rather large person (tall, wide, whatever) sitting next to you, just the mere fact of their occupying the seat means that their elbows are in your space, however polite they are. It’s a complicated dance. Unless you have managed to nab a seat at the end of the row - this means you can lean against the ‘wall’ and spread out infinitesimally without needing an armrest at all. It’s the little things…

And then there are the ‘official’ rules, the ones on billboards and broadcast on board. Don’t put your feet on the seats? Let the passengers off first before attempting to board the train? Move right down inside the carriages? And that old Tshirt staple – Mind the gap!

But where’s the rule about keeping your legs closed? What is with those men who need to sit with their legs spread wide apart as though their pelvises are about to take flight? No, I do not need a full frontal view of your crotch, nor do I want my legs pinned to the seat by your knee.

And the ipods! I’m thinking of printing some natty little cards to hand out to the volume-challenged.