So, now that I have work to go to every morning I have to ride the train. I get the same train everyday, it leaves Southwick at 9:37 and arrives at Hove at 9:44. Some of the people who get on at Southwick I see virtually every morning. It hasn't got to that stage yet where I could say "morning" and they'd recognise me though. They fairly often have papers or magazines to read. I invariably leave my issue of Kerrang at home and only have them to look at.
I get on my train, which is always the same level of fairly-busy. Now, here is an observation about English people. It's something that has been made many times before, but the point is that it's not just a cliché: it genuinely happens. We really do not like invading personal space.
As we noted weeks back with the male toilets, the train also appears to have this unwritten social rule about where you are allowed to sit down.
Arranged into rows of two seats on each side, there is also a couple of "table" seats in each carriage.
The table seats are the most highly prised commodity, even if you don't need a table remotely, you go and sit there if it's free.
If a table isn't free, then a free set of two is your best bet. If they are taken (and by taken I mean one person is sitting in the window seat: that constitutes both seats being taken) then you must sit on a table but at the furthest possible point away from the person who has already occupied the table. If they're facing forwards sitting on the window seat, you must sit facing backwards in the aisle seat.
After that it's better to stand than to encroach people's personal space.
No-one will complain or even give you a funny look if you sit down in the adjacent seat.
But inside you are dead to them. Dead.
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