I was travelling on the Tube to City Airport, when I noticed the woman opposite me was smiling, as though, say, she'd just remembered a particularly amusing incident from a few years ago. I didn't think anything of it, in fact it was quite pleasant to see someone smiling on the tube for a change - after all, it's not somewhere that generally encourages happiness.
However, when I glanced back a few minutes later she was still smiling in exactly the same way. And again a few minutes after that. Now, as any fule kno, persistent and willful smiling in the face of a lengthy Tube journey is Not Right. The carriage was quite empty (most people had got off at Canary Wharf) and I started to feel more than a little paranoid. Was she laughing at me? Was she a complete nutter just waiting to launch a savage spoon and fork attack on me for looking at her in the wrong way*? Worse, was she a complete nutter waiting to catch my eye and then launch into a rambling exposition of her theory that the government was run by giant lizards?
It was completely unsettling, she smiled to herself in a completely suspicious way for three stops and then I got out. She could be smiling still for all I know.
Eventually it dawned on me, she was probably a tourist.
*This actually happened to a friend of mine, fortunately the mad person tried to stab him in the leg with a table fork rather than the carving knife she had in the other hand.
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