Today I found myself on the tube or to go by its official name, the London Underground. I have never been a fan of the tube, it’s the sweat aspect of it really, people’s sweat in my face and my sweat on my pits. Anyway, I was on the tube because I was running late and even though I do not like it, and there are more changes, which does me no good at all, it is faster than the bus. Practical.
So there I was on the Victoria Line, with my walking stick. I walked through the sliding doors into the carriage, rattling my stick, to find all the seats taken. People looked up and me, but nobody was budging. Bastards. This threw me into a dilemma. The only reason I travel with the bloody stick is to avoid situations where I have to ask somebody for a seat. In terms of my manners with strangers, at times when I do not have steroids pumping through my veins, I am the most English of English people. I say sorry to people when they bash into me, I like to queue if there are seats, and as it turns out, I do not ask people if I can have a seat on the tube because I do not want to appear rude.
Ordinarily, I think I could have managed the 15 minute journey standing, but somebody on my train was taken ill, which added a further 20 minutes to the journey. People tutted. I rattled my walking stick some more and sighed. People did nothing. Instead, I had a couple who both needed to wash their hair, shove their instruments in my face.
I then had a hot flush, one really needs to sit during one of those bad boys, if only so there is something else there to absorb the sweat from my butt. And still, my fellow commuters, travelling outside of rush hour, were oblivious to my plight. Perhaps they were all afflicted with an invisible disability like me and were brave enough to face the world without a visible symbol of weakness, but the odds of that are pretty slim, like getting myeloma. I will take a gamble however and say that the majority did not have an invisible disability. The longer I stood, the more I could feel my back, invisibly poking me. Perhaps I need a badge, like the ‘Baby on Board’ badges that says, ‘Cancer. Weak Bones. Take Pity’. I did contemplate theatrically removing my hat, because I thought that my head plus walking stick would definitely result in somebody giving me there seat, but I vetoed that, because it would have meant that I had to carry my hat as well as my coat, stick and handbag. The longer I stood, the more I believed that everybody in my carriage was evil, and I mean urinate on puppies and kittens type of evil. By Oxford Circus, I was convinced that there were so evil, that they might actually defecate on those puppies and kittens too. Bastards.
All of that venom and anguish because I was too polite to ask for a seat. I say polite, you may say something else.
I’ll have to learn…
My name is Emma Jane Jones and I have a disability.
Fortunately my faith in humankind was almost restored on the District Line when a Mr Darcy-esque male with manners, offered me his seat without prompting when I changed tubes. I felt a bit sorry for him, not because he was wearing a pointy loafer, but because I was only on that train for a stop. But my, did that seat feel good. I sighed with pleasure. Trust me, that’s not a pleasant sound for anybody. I then felt sorry for everybody on the carriage. Well, the people not listening to their iPods.
