goings on
There was a fight on the tube this morning! At the time I was listening to This American Life at the far end of the platform (the most tumblr of excuses) so I didn’t realise anything was happening until I noticed that everybody around me was looking very concerned in the wrong direction, i.e. they weren’t looking in the direction of the approaching trains but at the ruckus which occurred between a tall, balding gentleman in a beige overcoat and a mother and child.
Since both the platform and the arriving trains were very busy I can only imagine that what happened is what usually happens in such circumstances: somebody (overcoat man) tried to squeeze onto a carriage that was too full to accept him, and so treated (passive-aggressively at first) some poor kid as occupying a precious footprint to which he himself felt entitled; as the child was less spatially flexible than he’d imagined (also wailing as a grown commuter would usually not) he proceeded to have an indignant meltdown of Costanza-like proportions.
As he was finally forced out of the carriage, all I heard was:
Mother: “Look what you’ve done to my child!” (child wails)
Overcoat Man: (yelling) “…I’D STRANGLE THE BUGGER!”
