Naked

A friend recently pledged to post to her blog at least once a day. It’s quite a target; does that much really happen in our lives to post anything insightful that frequently?

In my case the answer is “no.” I’m not nearly interesting enough, but A is doing a fine job so far as long as you don’t mind that it’s an average rather than actually a daily occurrence! That’s not to say that nothing interesting ever happens to me. Take this, for example. It happened shortly after I moved to London.

I was sat on the Northern Line on the way home. It was later than normal but not that late, say around 9pm. The carriage was busy but not packed. We were all sat there reading books, magazines, newspapers. All was normal.

At one stop, Enbankment I think, a guy steps on. He stays standing where he got on as we continue reading and the guard announces that we should stand clear of the closing doors. The train gradually accelerates into the tunnel.

I’m at that level of tiredness where my eyes are lightly skimming over the words rather than studying every detail. This is how I notice that the man has taken off his ruck-sack and has placed his jumper in it. Not significant in and of itself, I grant you, however next he tucks his t-shirt into his bag. Next his trousers are folded and placed in the bag and finally his underpants.

Ladies and gentlemen, we now have a naked man in the carriage.

But this is England. We don’t make a fuss; we, “officially” at least, don’t even notice. We’re all far too busy reading to notice that there’s a naked man no more than ten metres from where we’re sitting.

The guy casually strides along to the end of the carriage, opens the door and steps through into the next car.

You couldn’t make this kind of thing up, but it happened. I was there. If only this kind of thing happened more often then I could post a blog more often than once a month…