I’m always shocked my rudeness, by the mean- and I’m always
shocked that I’m shocked.
The young man was sitting on the steps going down to the
Great Northern rail and the Victoria line at Highbury and Islington at 7:35 AM
on a Tuesday. It’s busy at that time in the morning, yet I had just been
thinking that it was much quieter than normal. I think I was about to ask the
man if was ok when I noticed someone was already doing it, or perhaps I’m
making excuses- I should have asked him. This second man was on his phone,
(which is an odd thing to do when you’re underground, perhaps he was listening
to a voicemail). This man, I think he’s a builder because he’s got those work
trousers on which have lots of pockets, they’ve got paint on them and he’s
wearing a florescent jacket, he’s saying ‘something,
something… you can’t sit there man.’ He’s aggressive, he’s actually angry.
I don’t think people enjoy sitting in crowded smelly stations. He doesn’t stop
moving, he marches forward, looking back at him and sneering; his upper lip
curled to show yellowish teeth. The young man, the first man, who I now see is
pale and green, his eyes chubby and pink, cheeks swollen, he says, meekly ‘I’ve just been sick,’ and he gestures the
wall next to him that’s splattered with clear acidic vomit. I just keep
walking, I have to catch my train. Now I’m on the train and I’m thinking of
that young man walking down the steps, suddenly hit with nausea, trembling stopping, dropping his laptop bag,
clutching the hand rail, people shoving him as his liquid breakfast churns and
comes up and out. He had the sort of face where it could be anything, he could
be an alcoholic or an addict deep in pain, or maybe it’s cancer and today is
about to be the worst day of his life or the chemo has split open his insides,
or maybe he’s got sick from holding onto a rail on the tube that had recently
been licked by a 3 year old tummy bug toddler then he bit the nail on his
thumb, thus ingesting those pesky germs. Whatever it is, I’m sorry he’s having
a shit day and I’m cross that I didn’t ask if he needed some help. I could have
walked him back up for air, out of the
(This is when I realised I’d missed my stop.)
