The empty train seat looked inviting, and all three of us stared at it, then looked away, not daring to either take it, or offer it to the other. This train from Clapham Junction to Surrey was absolutely packed. But when someone got up and there was a seat right next to me, I realised that under the prevailing conventions relating to equality, I could neither take it nor offer it.
I was squeezed between two ladies, one quite elderly who looked exhausted and desperate for a seat. She was standing slightly behind me, so, technically speaking, I was in line for the seat. But as she clearly had a good 20 years on me and looked tired, she should have the seat, the way I was brought up.
As I looked to the newly available seat, and back to her, she very purposefully looked away and refused to meet my eye, which I took as a possible sign that if I did offer her the seat, she would feel I was insulting her and being ageist.
I looked to the person the other side of me, who was almost as near to the seat as I was, and she also looked away. She was quite large, so it occurred to me in those long seconds of deliberation that if I offered her the seat she might think this offensive, because technically speaking she was slightly less near it than me, so I was potentially judging her as needing, or as presuming herself entitled to the seat based on my presumptions to do with…
Oh for heaven’s sake! It was all getting very complicated and I just wanted to sit down. If no one was going to sit on this seat because of uncertainty over the way the world works now, then it was a terrible waste. But I dare not take any chances.
An incident the builder boyfriend experienced when he was last in London hardly served to make me less paranoid.
The BB had been waiting for a train, also at Clapham Junction, and when it came and the doors opened, there was a scrum of people waiting to get on, queueing tightly one behind the other, to the right of the door. He, standing in the middle, could have boarded, but instead he made a polite gesture and told the lady at the front of the queue to the right to get on first.
This lady was pretty and blonde, slim and well-dressed. She smiled and thanked him and got on to the train. As she did so, he saw that the person behind her who now stepped forward was a large, green-haired, angry-looking woman in a big, baggy coat with Pride rainbow motifs on it and a Free Palestine badge, and she was carrying a cloth satchel bearing the legend ‘vegan’.
In that second, he realised that the gentlemanly thing to do was to emphasise even more generously that she was entitled to go first, because to let the pretty woman go first and then ignore the not-so-pretty woman would be very rude.
More than that, to offer to let her go in front of him any less charmingly and enthusiastically as he had the pretty woman would be ungallant, in his view. The BB is an old-fashioned man with impeccable manners. He said he made an even bigger gesture with his hand for her to go in front, smiled an even bigger smile and said: ‘Please, you first…’ And as he said this, the big, brassy leftie shouted at him: ‘It ain’t the dark ages you know!’ And she refused to move.
The BB boarded the train. And as he did so, the doors closed, and the woman was left on the platform, remonstrating with thin air. The BB shouted through the shut doors: ‘Welcome to equality!’ She shouted back insults, he countered with a statement expressing support for Israel, and the people on the train saw the funny side and laughed – but equally he could have ended up in a fist fight if someone wanted to slice and dice it that way.
So I stood on this train with the quite elderly lady slightly behind me, and the large lady slightly to the right of me, and the seat glared up at us, and none of us took it, least of all me, who was closest to it, as I assessed who I was going to offend more by taking it or offering it.
I looked between the ladies, and neither met my eye. They looked at the train ceiling, they looked out the window. So I looked at the floor to avoid suggesting that either of them was more in need or deserving of the seat.
This went on for what seemed like an eternity, with my feet aching from standing, until it crossed my mind that maybe I was looking so rough that day that both these women thought I was the deserving case, and they didn’t want to offend me by either offering me the seat or taking it from me. So I sat down.
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