It reminds me why I quit seeing movies at the cinema.  I’m a certified popcorn magnet!  Long gone are the days when a small bag of toffee‑covered Butter Kist was enough to satisfy the teenage appetite.  And, at least back then, however irritating, the munching would be over by the time the main feature began.  The last time I went, two fat adolescent boys had to carry their one giant bucket of popcorn between them, the biggest lad backing down the row of seats towards me.  Sure made a mess when I stuck my foot out.

Back in the here and now, the vile man’s crunching seems to go on forever.  It’s a supersized ‘grab bag’, not a regular one.  Every time a good word comes into my head for the poem, another one comes up for the man, and overwrites the first one before I can catch it and pin it to the page.  I’m making no progress at all, and my natural good humour and bonhomie seem to be wearing down rapidly.

The next stop, I reel with horror, not just at the crowds, but at the sight of pram wheels near the platform’s edge.  I mentally will the owner to steer those wheels to a different carriage, but no!

A little girl is plonked, unceremoniously, on a neighbouring seat, seemingly quiet.  It immediately becomes clear that either the little girl or I have recently had a backdoor accident in our pants.  I feel behind myself, cautiously, just to be on the safe side, relieved that there is no unexpected package.  I wrinkle my nose.

The girl begins to hiccup.  Oh joy!

I scowl sideways at the mother, clearly to blame, who tries to distract the girl with a toy that sparkles and makes high‑pitched sounds.  However, it is me that is momentarily fascinated with the whirling colours and the nursery rhyme tune, until the girl starts to wail.

I get up from my seat and stroll to a different carriage, marginally less busy, and focus once more, as the young man opposite begins to snore.

This really isn’t going well.  How the hell am I supposed to be able to concentrate?  To my great pleasure, the jolt of the doors at the next station awakens him, and he leaps for the door, like Superman, in a single bound.

I let out a grateful breath, but a teenager replaces him.  She is chewing gum with loud smacking noises, playing rap music, which I loathe, on her irritatingly powerful and modern telephonic device.  Without earphones! 

I tut.  Not once.  But twice. 

She glances sideways, sheer evil in her mad mascara‑caked eyes.  I’d take the snoring man back at once, given the choice, utterly clear that the female of the species is the deadlier of the two.  I swiftly rise and move again, under the baleful glare of her cold eyes, and to the sound of malevolent mastication, wondering if there is an exorcist on board.

It is about the seventh time I have moved on this journey and people’s eyes are now following my back‑and‑forth rambles with suspicion, as if I am the one who has some kind of problem.  Cheek!

The businessman nearby sits, sedately, reading his broadsheet newspaper.  No crisps, no drinks to slurp, no blaring music, no bad manners. Thank God and bless him!  I am relieved and start to relax.  Until he tries to turn the page.  There is a cacophony of rustling.  Crumpling and tearing are added to the paper symphony.  Perhaps ungenerously, I think: “Buy a tabloid you pin‑striped twat!  Or get a book on fucking origami!”  Am I being unreasonable?  I bet his name’s even fucking Russell.

“Calm down,” I tell myself.  I take some deep breaths, using a meditation technique I had once mastered, but subsequently abandoned in favour of the rapid short and shallow breaths that more naturally favour my stress‑prone personality.

I move to the end carriage (and only carriage I haven’t yet tried) suddenly unsure if it is an eight or ten‑carriage train.  But here, at last, the creative juices flow.

I tap out a brand new line. It’s a good one:

“Hard Picasso eyes drip lustful menace”.

Damn!  Damn!  It doesn’t really fit in a poem that’s all about my love of people.

But at least I am at a table seat.  Alone.  For one minute and twenty seconds.

A lady comes and sits opposite me.  She actually seems quietly pleasant and smiles.  I wonder what foul indignity she is escaping from and smile back with sympathy.  Poor woman!  She’s probably as pissed off as I am. 

She sighs.  

I can cope with a sigh.

Then she rummages in her plump handbag, which is almost as portly and buxom as she is.  She takes out a napkin and, right at that moment, shudders of terror streak down my spine.  She places it in front of her and, like a magician with a hat, retrieves an apple, followed by a pear, followed by a bag of carrot sticks.

She looks strangely sensual, pressing her bosom against the table edge.  I instantly know that the pear is soft and she will suck the juice in noisy, brazen rasps, while drips fall down the crevasse in that magnificent and mountainous fleshy ledge.

If I were a still-life painter, the sight of the apple, pear and carrot sticks against the yielding pink backdrop would immediately demand the setting up of easel and oils.  I’d splatter my art, as she will undoubtedly daub and splash her own edible materials across the table, painting a canvas in a unique, uninhibited and almost erotic style. 

I watch as her finger stabs forward.  I move my laptop, already anticipating a spraying waterfall of fruity droplets.

I consider putting up my umbrella, but fear it might look ridiculous.

She taps the apple – loathsome crunchy object that would be poison to man if I had my way – then changes her mind.  Instead, she opens the plastic bag of carrot sticks.  They will be absurdly noisy, their hard crispness sure to echo in the cavern of her gaping mouth.

I notice the train beginning to slow, as the orange stick nears her voluptuous lips.  Her tongue pokes out, in flirtatious greeting, drenched in fresh saliva.  As the twin rows of whitest teeth start to close on the elongated vegetable stick, I imagine myself yelling “No!” at the top of my voice, and slapping the carrot stick out of her hand, before she can take a bite.

I realise that it is exactly what I have done and hastily disembark as the doors open, leaving the startled woman in a state of slack‑jawed shock.   As I exit, I also notice, out of the corner of my eye, a little boy further down the carriage trying to extract what appears to be a firmly-wedged carrot‑baton from his bewildered mother’s tightly-permed hair.

I am more than an hour from home still, and decide it is wisest, as a diversionary tactic, to rush out for a taxi instead of waiting on the platform for the arrival of the next train - or the police.  I kind of wish I had a change of clothes and a false beard.  Maybe a hat even, though, to be honest, hats have never really suited me.

I tell the taxi‑driver my destination from behind the open glass screen.  He starts to talk conversationally, but I pretend to be deaf and slide the glass partition shut, emphatically.  I’ve had enough of people for one day.  I’ll write about their loveliness some other time.  

Ó 2009 Stuart Groom                                                                                Back to News