I spotted a ‘you know you’re getting old when…‘ moment the other day on the tube - an avuncular greying chap got on a Jubilee train (all the exciting stuff happens on the Jubilee line - did I tell you about the evangelism man? I don’t think I did. I shall be shortly be producing a post entitled ‘Several Things That Have Happened To Me On Public Transport’) and was offered a chair by a dynamic young City-type - he might have been in finance, but he didn’t have the cowed expression of someone whose friends have all been fired and he’s next. There’s a lot of that going around at the moment.

Anyway - older chap gets offered a seat. ‘What a nice gesture’, you might think. Someone willing to give up their seat that someone else might attempt to pass across London in a modicum of comfort, you don’t get that a lot here. Normally people have to ask you for a seat, much like the woman in crutches on the bus last Sunday. Hey, I was comfortable and there was an bloke snoozing next to me. But yes - a really nice gesture. The Avuncular Older Man pasted a look on his visage that closely approximated a neat blend of confusion and disgust, before the internal measuring scales tipped onto the side of resting his knees. I took that look to be a look of realisation that this man was now one of those hooked, hunched, walking stick figures on the sticker that exhorts people to give up this seat in aid of someone more doddery than yourself.

This man clearly didn’t look in the mirror of a morning and see an unfortunate old person on a sticker. Depression ensues.

Tags: trains planes and automobiles

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